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The foes enclosing, and his friend pursued ;
Forelayed and taken, while he strove in vain
The shelter of the friendly shades to gain.
What should he next attempt! what arms employ,
What fruitless force to free the captive boy?
Or desperate should he rush and lose his life,
With odds oppressed, in such unequal strife?
Resolved at length, his pointed spear he shook,
And casting on the moon a mournful look :
"Guardian of groves, and goddess of the night,
Fair queen," he said, "direct my dart aright;
If e'er my pious father for my sake
Did grateful offerings on thy altars make,
Or I increased them with my sylvan toils,

And hung thy holy roofs with savage spoils;
Give me to scatter these." Then from his ear

He poised and aimed and launched the trembling spear.
The deadly weapon, hissing from the grove,
Impetuous on the back of Sulmo drove.

Pierced his thin armour, drank his vital blood,

And in his body left the broken wood.

He staggers round, his eyeballs roll in death,

And with short sobs he gasps away his breath.

All stand amazed, a second javelin flies

With equal strength, and quivers through the skies;
This through thy temples, Tagus, forced the way,
And in the brain-pan warmly buried lay.

Fierce Volscens foams with rage, and gazing round
Descried not him who gave the fatal wound,
Nor knew to fix revenge; "but thou," he cries,

66 Shalt pay for both ;" and at the prisoner flies

With his drawn sword. Then struck with deep despair,
That cruel sight the lover could not bear,
But from his covert rushed in open view,
And sent his voice before him as he flew.

"Me, me," he cried, "turn all your swords alone
On me; the fact confessed, the fault my own.
He neither could nor durst, the guiltless youth;
Ye moon and stars, bear witness to the truth!
His only crime (if friendship can offend)
Is too much love to his unhappy friend."
Too late he speaks; the sword, which fury guides,
Driven with full force, had pierced his tender sides.
Down fell the beauteous youth; the yawning wound
Gushed out a purple stream and stained the ground,
His snowy neck reclines upon his breast,

Like a fair flower by the keen share oppressed,
Like a white poppy sinking on the plain,
Whose heavy head is overcharged with rain.
Despair, and rage, and vengeance justly vowed,
Drove Nisus headlong on the hostile crowd;
Volscens he seeks; on him alone he bends;
Borne back and bored by his surrounding friends,
Onward he pressed, and kept him still in sight;
Then whirled aloft his sword with all his might.
The unerring steel descended while he spoke,
Pierced his wide mouth, and through his weazen broke.
Dying, he slew; and staggering on the plain,
With swimming eyes he sought his lover slain ;
Then quiet on his bleeding bosom fell,
Content in death to be revenged so well.

O happy friends, or if my verse can give
Immortal life, your fame shall ever live ;
Fixed as the Capitol's foundation lies,
And spread where'er the Roman eagle flies.

The conquering party first divide the prey,
Then their slain leader to the camp convey.
With wonder, as they went, the troops were filled,
To see such numbers whom so few had killed.
Serranus, Rhamnes, and the rest they found;
Vast crowds the dying and the dead surround,
And the yet reeking blood o'erflows the ground.
All knew the helmet which Messapus lost,
But mourned a purchase that so dear had cost.
Now rose the ruddy morn from Tithon's bed,
And with the dawn of day the skies o'erspread,
Nor long the sun his daily course withheld,
But added colours to the world revealed,
When early Turnus, wakening with the light,
All clad in armour calls his troops to fight.
His martial men with fierce harangues he fired,
And his own ardour in their souls inspired.
This done, to give new terror to his foes,
The heads of Nisus and his friend he shows,
Raised high on pointed spears-a ghastly sight:
Loud peals of shouts ensue and barbarous delight.
Meantime the Trojans run where danger calls,
They line their trenches and they man their walls
In front extended to the left they stood,
Safe was the right surrounded by the flood;
But casting from their towers a frightful view
They saw the faces which too well they knew,

Though then disguised in death and smeared all o'er
With filth obscene and dropping putrid gore.
Soon hasty Fame through the sad city bears
The mournful message to the mother's ears;
An icy cold benumbs her limbs, she shakes,
Her cheeks the blood, her hand the web forsakes.
She runs the rampires round amidst the war,
Nor fears the flying darts; she rends her hair,
And fills with loud laments the liquid air :
"Thus, then, my lov'd Euryalus appears—
Thus looks the prop of my declining years!
Was't on this face my famished eyes I fed?
Ah, how unlike the living is the dead!
And couldst thou leave me, cruel, thus alone-
Not one kind kiss from a departing son;
No look, no last adieu before he went,
In an ill-boding hour to slaughter sent;
Cold on the ground, and pressing foreign clay,
To Latian dogs and fowls he lies a prey!
Nor was I near to close his dying eyes,
To wash his wounds, to weep his obsequies;
To call about his corpse, his crying friends,
Or spread the mantle (made for other ends)
On his dear body, which I wove with care,
Nor did my daily pains or nightly labour spare.
Where shall I find his corpse, what earth sustains
His trunk dismembered and his cold remains?
For this, alas, I left my needful ease,
Exposed my life to winds and winter seas.
If any pity touch Rutulian hearts,

Here empty all your quivers, all your darts;
Or if they fail, thou Jove conclude my woe,

And send me thunderstruck to shades below."

Her shrieks and clamours pierce the Trojans' ears,

Unman their courage and augment their fears;

Nor young Ascanius could the sight sustain,

Nor old Ilioneus his tears restrain,

But Actor and Ideus, jointly sent,

To bear the madding mother to her tent.

And now the trumpets terribly from far,

With rattling clangour rouse the sleepy war.
The soldiers' shouts succeed the brazen sounds,
And heaven, from pole to pole, the noise rebounds.
The Volscians bear their shields upon their head,
And rushing forward, form a moving shed;

These fill the ditch, those pull the bulwarks down ;

Some raise the ladders, others scale the town.
But where void spaces on the walls appear,
Or thin defence, they pour their forces there;
With poles and missive weapons from afar
The Trojans keep aloof the rising war.
Taught by their ten years' siege defensive fight,
They roll down ribs of rocks, an unresisted weight;
To break the penthouse with the ponderous blow:
Which yet the patient Volscians undergo.
But could not bear the unequal combat long,
For where the Trojans find the thickest throng
The ruin falls, their shattered shields give way,
And their crushed heads become an easy prey.
They shrink for fear, abated of their rage,
No longer dare in a blind fight engage-
Contented now to gall them from below
With darts and slings, and with the distant bow.
Elsewhere Mezentius, terrible to view,

A blazing pine within the trenches threw,
But brave Messapus, Neptune's warlike son,
Broke down the palisades, the trenches won,
And loud for ladders calls, to scale the town.
Calliope begin: ye sacred Nine

Inspire your poet in his high design,

To sing what slaughter manly Turnus made,
What souls he sent below the Stygian shade;
What fame the soldiers with their captain share,
And the vast circuit of the fatal war;
For you in singing martial facts excel,
You best remember, and alone can tell.

There stood a tower, amazing to the sight,
Built up of beams, and of stupendous height;
Art and the nature of the place conspired
To furnish all the strength that war required.
To level this the bold Italians join,

The wary Trojans obviate their design;

With weighty stones o'erwhelmed their troops below,
Shoot through the loopholes, and sharp javelins throw.
Turnus, the chief, tossed from his thundering hand,
Against the wooden walls, a flaming brand---

It stuck, the fiery plague; the winds were high,
The planks were seasoned and the timber dry,
Contagion caught the posts; it spread along,
Scorched, and to distance drove the scattered throng :
The Trojans fled; the fire pursued amain,
Still gathering fast upon the trembling train;

Till crowding to the corners of the wall,
Down the defence and the defenders fall.
The mighty flaw makes heaven itself resound;
The dead and dying Trojans strew the ground.
The tower that followed on the fallen crew

Whelmed o'er their heads and buried whom it slew ;
Some stuck upon the darts themselves had sent;
All the same equal ruin underwent.

Young Lycus and Helenor only 'scape,

Saved, how they know not, from the steepy leap.
Helenor, elder of the two, by birth

On one side royal, one a son of earth,
Whom to the Lydian King, Lycimnia bare,
And sent her boasted bastard to the war
(A privilege which none but freemen share);
Slight were his arms, a sword and silver shield,
No marks of honour charged its empty field.
Light as he fell, so light the youth arose,
And rising found himself amidst his foes.
Nor flight was left, nor hopes to force his way;
Emboldened by despair, he stood at bay,
And like a stag, whom all the troop surrounds
Of eager huntsmen and invading hounds,
Resolved on death, he dissipates his fears,
And bounds aloft against the pointed spears.
So dares the youth, secure of death, and throws
His dying body on his thickest foes.

But Lycus, swifter of his feet by far,

Runs, doubles, winds and turns amidst the war;
Springs to the walls and leaves his foes behind,
And snatches at the beam he first can find.
Looks up and leaps aloft at all the stretch,

In hopes the helping hand of some kind friend to reach.
But Turnus followed hard his hunted prey

(His spear had almost reached him in the way,

Short of his reins and scarce a span behind),

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66

Fool," said the chief, though fleeter than the
wind,

Couldst thou presume to 'scape when I pursue?
He said, and downward by the feet he drew
The trembling dastard, at the tug he falls,

Vast ruins come along, rent from the smoking walls.
Thus on some silver swan or timorous hare,
Jove's bird comes sousing down from upper
Her crooked tallons truss the fearful prey,
Then out of sight she soars, and wings her way:

air ;

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