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Who, thus encouraged, answered our demand:
' From Ithaca, my native soil, I came
To Troy, and Achæmenides my name.
Me my poor father with Ulysses sent;
(O had I stayed with poverty content!)
But fearful for themselves, my countrymen
Left me forsaken in the Cyclops' den;

The cave, though large, was dark, the dismal floor
Was paved with mangled limbs and putrid gore;
Our monstrous host, of more than human size,
Erects his head and stares within the skies.
Bellowing his voice, and horrid is his hue;
Ye gods, remove this plague from mortal view!
The joints of slaughtered wretches are his food,
And for his wine he quaffs the streaming blood.
These eyes beheld, when with his spacious hand
He seized two captives of our Grecian band;
Stretched on his back, he dashed against the stones
Their broken bodies and their crackling bones ;
With spouting blood the purple pavement swims,
While the dire glutton grinds the trembling limbs.
"Not unrevenged Ulysses bore their fate,
Nor thoughtless of his own unhappy state;
For, gorged with flesh and drunk with human wine,
While fast asleep the giant lay supine,
Snoring aloud and belching from his maw
His undigested foam and morsels raw,

We pray, we cast the lots, and then surround
The monstrous body, stretched along the ground;
Each, as he could approach him, lends a hand
To bore his eyeball with a flaming brand;
Beneath his frowning forehead lay his eye
(For only one did the vast frame supply),
But that a globe so large, his front it filled,
Like the sun's disk, or like a Grecian shield.

The stroke succeeds, and down the pupil bends ;

This vengeance followed for our slaughtered friends.
But haste, unhappy wretches, haste to fly,
Your cables cut, and on your oars rely.
Such and so vast as Polypheme appears,

A hundred more this hated island bears;

Like him in caves they shut their woolly sheep;
Like him their herds on tops of mountains keep;

Like him with mighty strides, they stalk from steep to

steep.

And now three moons their sharpened horns renew,
Since thus in woods and wilds, obscure from view,
I drag my loathsome days with mortal fright,
And in deserted caverns lodge by night;
Oft from the rocks a dreadful prospect see
Of the huge Cyclops, like a walking tree;
From far I hear his thundering voice resound,
And trampling feet that shake the solid ground:
Cornels and savage berries of the wood,
And roots and herbs have been my meagre food.
"While all around my longing eyes I cast,

I saw your happy ships appear at last;
On those I fixed my hopes, to these I run—
'Tis all I ask, this cruel race to shun;

What other death you please yourselves bestow.'
Scarce had he said, when on the mountain's brow
We saw the giant shepherd stalk before
His following flock, and leading to the shore.
A monstrous bulk, deformed, deprived of sight,
His staff a trunk of pine to guide his steps aright;
His ponderous whistle from his neck descends;
His woolly care their pensive lord attends;
This only solace his hard fortune sends.

Soon as he reached the shore and touched the waves,
From his bored eye the guttering blood he laves ;

He gnashed his teeth and groaned, through seas he strides,

And scarce the topmost billows touched his sides.

"Seized with a sudden fear, we run to sea,

The cables cut and silent haste away,

The well-deserving stranger entertain;

Then buckling to the work, our oars divide the main.
The giant hearkened to the dashing sound,
But when our vessels out of reach he found,
He strided onward, and in vain essayed
The Ionian deep, and durst no farther wade.
With that he roared aloud; the dreadful cry
Shakes earth, and air, and seas; the billows fly
Before the bellowing noise to distant Italy;
The neighbouring Ætna trembling all around,
The winding caverns echo to the sound;
His brother Cyclops hear the yelling roar,
And rushing down the mountains, crowd the shore;
We saw their stern distorted looks from far,
And one-ey'd glance, that vainly threatened war,

A dreadful council, with their heads on high;
The misty clouds about their foreheads fly;
Not yielding to the towering tree of Jove,
Or tallest cypress of Diana's grove.
New pangs of mortal fear our minds assail,
We tug at every oar, and hoist up every sail,
And take the advantage of the friendly gale.
Forewarned by Helenus, we strive to shun
Charybdis' gulf, nor dare to Scylla run:
An equal fate on either side appears:
We, tacking to the left, are free from fears;
For from Pelorus' point the north arose,

And drove us back where swift Pantagias flows.
His rocky mouth we pass, and make our way
By Thapsus and Megara's winding bay;
This passage Achæmenides had shown,
Tracing the course which he before had run.
Right o'er against Plemmyrium's watery strand

There lies an isle once called the Ortygian land;
Alpheus, as old fame reports, has found

From Greece a secret passage underground;
By love to beauteous Arethusa led,

And mingling here, they roll in the same sacred bed.
As Helenus enjoined, we next adore

Diana's name, protectress of the shore ;

With prosperous gales we pass the quiet sounds
Of still Elorus and his fruitful bounds;

Then doubling Cape Pachynus, we survey
The rocky shore extending to the sea;
The town of Camarine from far we see,
And fenny lake undrained by fate's decree ;
In sight of the Geloan fields we pass,
And the large walls where mighty Gela was;
Then Agragas with lofty summits crowned,
Long for the race of warlike steeds renowned;
We passed Selinus and the palmy land,
And widely shun the Lilybæan strand,
Unsafe for secret rocks and moving sand.
At length on shore the weary fleet arrived,
Which Drepanum's unhappy port received;
Here, after endless labours, often tossed
By raging storms, and driven on every coast,
My dear, dear father, spent with age, I lost :
Ease of my cares and solace of my pain,
Saved through a thousand toils, but saved in vain.
The prophet who my future woes revealed,

D

Yet this, the greatest and the worst, concealed;
And dire Celano, whose foreboding skill
Denounced all else, was silent of this ill.
This my last labour was. Some friendly god
From thence conveyed us to your blest abode."
Thus to the listening Queen the royal guest
His wandering course and all his toils expressed;
And here concluding, he retired to rest.

BOOK IV.

THE ARGUMENT.

Dido discovers to her sister her passion for Æneas, and her thoughts of marrying him. She prepares a hunting-match for his entertainment. Juno, by Venus' consent, raises a storm which separates the hunters, and drives Æneas and Dido into the same cave, where their marriage is supposed to be completed. Jupiter despatches Mercury to Eneas, to warn him from Carthage; Eneas secretly prepares for his voyage: Dido finds out his design, and to put a stop to it, makes use of her own and her sister's entreaties, and discovers all the variety of passions that are incident to a neglected lover. When nothing would prevail upon him, she contrives her own death, with which this book concludes.

BUT anxious cares already seized the Queen—
She fed within her veins a flame unseen-
The hero's valour, acts, and birth inspire
Her soul with love, and fan the secret fire;
His words, his looks, imprinted in her heart,
Improve the passion, and increase the smart.
Now, when the purple morn had chased away
The dewy shadows and restored the day,
Her sister first with early care she sought,
And thus in mournful accents eased her thought:
'My dearest Anna, what new dreams affright

66

My labouring soul; what visions of the night
Disturb my quiet and distract my breast
With strange ideas of our Trojan guest?
His worth, his actions, and majestic air,
A man descended from the gods declare.
Fear ever argues a degenerate kind;
His birth is well asserted by his mind.
Then what he suffered when by fate betrayed,
What brave attempts for falling Troy he made!
Such were his looks, so gracefully he spoke,
That were I not resolved against the yoke
Of hapless marriage, never to be cursed
With second love, so fatal was my first,

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