The Portable Roman Reader (Portable Library) (41 page)

“Me fly‘st thou? By these tears and thy right hand
(Since this is all’s now left to wretched me),
By marriage’s new joys, and sacred band,
If ought I did could meritorious be,
If ever ought of mine were sweet to thee,
Pity our house, which must with my decay
Give early period to its sovereignty;
And put, I do beseech thee, far away
This cruel mind, if cruel minds hear them that pray.

 

“For thee the Libyan nations me defy,
The kings of Scythia hate me, and my Tyre:
For thee I lost my shame, and that whereby
Alone I might unto the stars aspire,
The chaster fame which I did once acquire.
To whom, my guest (for husband’s out of date),
Dost thou commit me ready to expire?
Why stay I? Till Pygmalion waste my state?
Or on Iarbas’ wheels, a captive queen, to wait?

 

“Yet if before thou fled‘st out of this place,
Some child at least I unto thee had borne,
If in my court, resembling but thy face,
Some young Æneas play’d, I should not mourn
As one so quite deluded or forlorn.”
Here ceased she. But he, whom Jove had tied
With strict commands, his eyes did no way turn,
But stoutly did his grief suppress and hide
Under his secret heart. Then thus in short replied:

 

“For me, O Queen, I never will deny
But that I owe you more than you can say,
Nor shall I stick to bear in memory
Elissa’s name, whilst breath these limbs doth sway.
But to the point. I never did intend,
Pray charge me not with that, to steal away:
And much less did I wedlock-bands pretend,
Neither to such a treaty ever condescend.

 

“Would Fates permit me mine own way to take,
And please myself in choosing of a land,
Ilium out of her ashes I would rake,
And glean my earth’s sweet relics; Troy should stand,
The vanquish’d troops replanted by my hand,
And Priam’s towers again to Heav’n aspire.
But now I have the oracles’ command
To seek great Italy; the same require
The Destinies. My country’s this; this my desire.

 

“If you of Tyre with Carthage towers are took,
Why should our seeking Latian fields offend?
May not the Trojans to new mansions look?
As oft as night moist shadows doth extend
Over the earth, and golden stars ascend,
My father’s chiding ghost affrights my sleep:
My son, on whom that realm is to descend,
And those dear eyes do freshly seem to weep,
Complaining that from him his destin’d crown I keep.

“And now Jove’s son, by both their heads I swear,
Was sent to me, myself the god did see
In open day, and with these ears did hear:
Then vex not with complaints yourself and me,
I go against my will to Italy,”
Whilst thus he spake, she look’d at him askew,
Rolling her lightning eyes continually,
And him from head to foot did silent view,
When, being throughly heat, these thund‘ring words
ensue.

“Nor goddess was thy mother, nor the source
Of thy high blood renowned Dardanus,
But some Hyrcanian tigress was thy nurse,
Out of the stony loins of Caucasus
Descended, cruel and perfidious.
For with what hopes should I thy faults yet cover?
Did my tears make thee sigh? Or bend, but thus,
Thine eyes? Or sadness for my grief discover?
Or if thou couldst not love, to pity yet a lover?

 

“Whom first accuse I since these loves began?
Jove is unjust, Juno her charge gives o‘er;
Whom may a woman trust? I took this man
Homeless, a desperate wrack upon my shore,
And fondly gave him half the crown I wore:
His ships rebuilt, t’ his men new lives I lent.
And now the Fates, the oracles, what more?
(It makes me mad) Jove’s son on purpose sent
Brings him forsooth a menace through the firmament.

 

“As if the gods their blissful rest did break
With thinking on thy voyages. But I
Nor stop you, nor confute the words you speak.
Go, chase on rolling billows realms that fly,
With fickle waves uncertain Italy.
Some courteous rock, if Heaven just curses hear,
Will be revenger of my injury:
When thou perceiving the sad fate draw near,
Shalt Dido, Dido, call, who surely will be there.

 

“For when cold death shall part with dreary swoon
My soul and flesh, my ghost, where‘er thou be,
Shall haunt thee with dim torch, and light thee down
To thy dark conscience: I’ll be Hell to thee,
And this glad news will make Hell Heav’n to me.”

Here, falling as far from him as she might,
She fainted ere her speech was finished:
Leaving him tossing in his tender spright
What he should say to her, or leave unsaid,
Her maids convey her to her ivory bed.
But good Æneas, though he fain would prove
To swage her grief, and leave her comforted,
Pierc’d to the soul with her so ardent love,
Yet goes to view his fleet, obedient unto Jove.

 

Ay, now the Trojans fall to work for good,
And hale their vessels down from all the shores;
The caulk’d ships are on float, and from the wood
They bring whole oaks unwrought and leavy oars,
For haste to fly away.
Through every gate they pack and trudge amain:
As when the emmets sally through earth’s pores
To sack, for hoard, some barn full-stuff’d with grain,
Rememb‘ring barren winter must return again;

 

The black troops march, and through the meadows bear
The booty by a narrow path; some hale
The heavy corns; others bring up the rear,
And prick them forwards that begun to fail,
The busy labourers every path engrail.
What sighs gav‘st thou now, Dido, looking out
From thy high tower? How did thy senses quail
Seeing the shores so swarm’d, and round about
Hearing confused shoutings of the nautic rout?

 

O Tyrant Love, how absolute thou art
In human breasts! Again she’s forc’d to fly
To tears and prayers, and bow her prostrate heart
To the subduing passion, glad to try
All cures before the last, which is to die.
“Sister,” said she, “thou seest they all repair
To th’ port, and only for a wind do lie,
Inviting it with streamers wav’d i’ th’ air:
Had I but fear’d this blow, I should not now despair.

 

“Yet try for me this once; for only thee
That perjur’d soul adores, to thee will show
His secret thoughts: thou when his seasons be,
And where the man’s accessible dost know.
Go, sister, meekly speak to the proud foe.
I was not with the Greeks at Aulis sworn
To raze the Trojan name, nor did I go
‘Gainst Ilium with my fleet, neither have torn
Anchises’ ashes up from his profaned urn.

 

“Why is he deaf to my entreaties? Whither
So fast? It is a lover’s last desire
That he would but forsake me in fair weather
And a safe time. I do not now aspire
To his broke wedlock-vow, neither require
He should fair Latium and a sceptre leave:
Poor time I beg, my passions to retire;
Truce to my woe; nor pardon, but reprieve;
Till griefs, familiar grown, have taught me how to
grieve.

 

“For sisterhood, for sense of my distress,
Let me this last boon, ere I die, obtain.”
This Dido spake. The sad ambassadress
Carries her tears, and brings them back again
(As brackish tides post from and to the main).
But not an ocean of bitter tears
Can alter him, nor will he entertain
The flattering force of words: he only hears
The Fates, and Jove’s command, which dams up his
mild ears.

 

 

As an old oak, but yet not weak with eld,
Which showers and blasts to overthrow contend,
It cracks and, the trunk shook, leaves strow the field,
That sticks in rocks, whose roots tow‘rds Hell descend
As far as towards Heav’n the boughs ascend:
So stands the hero, beat with wind and rain;
His stout heart groans, and his affections bend,
Shook with their sighs; but his resolves remain
As unremov’d as rocks, tears roll their waves in vain.

 

Then doth unhappy Dido, given o‘er
By her last hope, desire to die. The light
Is irksome to her eyes. To confirm more
Her purpose to embrace eternal night,
Placing on th’ incense-burning altars bright
Her gifts, the holy water she beheld
Converted to black ink, portentous sight!
And the pour’d wine to roaping blood congeal’d;
This thing to none, not to her sister, she reveal’d.

A marble fane too in the house she had,
Where lay her first lord’s ashes, kept among
Her most adored reliques: ‘twas with sad
Dark yew-tree and the whitest fleeces hung.
Hence in the night she heard her husband’s tongue
Call her, she thought. And oft the boding owl
Alone on the house-top harsh dirges sung,
And with long notes quaver’d a doleful howl,
Besides old prophecies, which terrify her soul.

 

Cruel Æneas ev’n her sleep torments:
And still she dreams she’s wand‘ring all alone
Through a long way with steep and dark descents,
Calling her Tyrians in a land where none
But some pale ghost echoes her with a groan.
As when mad Pentheus troops of furies fright,
Who sees a twofold Thebes and double sun:
Or when Orestes flies his mother’s sight,
Hunting his bloody track with hell-hounds by torch
light.

 

Sunk then with grief, possess’d with Furies, bent
On death, she plots the means, and in her eye
A feign’d hope springing, hiding her intent,
Accosts sad Anne. “Partake thy sister’s joy;
I’ve found a way to make him burn as I,
Or turn me cold like him. Near Phœbus‘set
At the land’s end doth Æthiopia lie,
Where on great Atlas’ neck the heav’n thick set
With glorious diamond-stars hangs like a carcanet.

 

“Of a great sorceress have I been told
There born, who did th’ Hesperian temple keep,
The dragon fed, and sacred fruit of gold
Watch’d on the tree which she for dew did steep
In honey, and moist poppy causing sleep.
She undertakes to cure the love-sick breast,
And whom she list to plunge in love as deep,
The water’s course in rivers to arrest,
And call down stars from heav‘n, and call up ghosts
from rest.

 

 

“Under her tread thou shalt perceive earth groan,
And oaks skip from the hills; I swear to thee,
Calling the gods to record, and thine own
Sweet head, that forc’d to these black arts I flee.
Thou on some tower a stack build secretly,
Lay on it the man’s clothes, and sword which lies
Within, and that which prov’d a grave to me,
My wedding bed. So doth the witch advise,
Ev’n that I blot out all the traitor’s memories.”

 

 

This said, grew pale. Yet thinks not Anne that she
With these new rites her funeral doth shade,
Nor fears such monsters or worse ecstasy
Than at Sychæus’ death; therefore obey’d.
But Dido, a great pile of wood being made,
The place with flowers and fatal cypress crown‘d,
There on his clothes and sword bequeathed laid
His picture on the bed, the mystic ground
Known only to herself. Altars are placed round.

 

With hair dispread like a black falling storm,
Th’ inchantress thunders out three hundred names,
Orcus, and Chaos, Hecate triform,
Which virgin Dian’s triple power enseams:
She sprinkled too Avernus’ fabulous streams:
And herbs were sought for, sprouting forth ripe bane,
With brazen sickles cropt in the moon’s beams;
And pull’d from new-born colt, that lump, which
ta‘en
From the dam’s mouth, no love t’ her issue doth remain.

 

Herself in a loose vest, one foot unshod,
With meal in pious hands near th’ altar drew;
“Witness, ye guilty stars, and every god,”
Saith she, “I’m forc’d to die.” Invokes them too
Who care of lovers take (if any do)
Unequally. ‘Twas night, and conquering sleep
With weari’d bodies the whole earth did strew;
When woods are quiet, and the cruel deep,
When stars are half-way down, when fields still silence
keep,

 

And beasts and painted birds, which liquid springs
Inhabit, or which bushy lands contain,
Nuzzling their cares beneath sleep’s downy wings,
Do bury the past day’s forgotten pain;
All but the hapless queen, she doth refrain
From rest, nor takes it at her eyes or heart.
After long seeming dead, love rose again
And fought with wrath as when two tides do thwart,
While thus her big thoughts roll and wallow to each
part.

 

“What shall I do? Shall I a suitor be
To my old suitors, scorned by the new,
And woo those kings so oft despis’d by me?
What then? Shall I the Ilian fleet pursue,
And share all this man’s fates? Yes, he doth shew
Such sense of my first aids: or, say I would,
Whom he hath mock‘d, will not his proud ships too
Reject? Ah, fool, by whom the perjur’d brood
Of false Laomedon is not yet understood!

 

“Grant they’d admit me, shall I fly alone
With mariners? Or chase him with the power
O’ th’ emptied town, and servants of mine own,
And whom I scarce from Tyre by the roots uptore,
Compel to plough the horrid seas once more?
No, die as thou deserv‘st, cure woes with woe.
Thou sister, first, when I my tears did shower
To quench these rising flames, thou didst them
blow
And out of cruel pity sold’st me to the foe.

“Why might not I, alas! have mourn’d away
My widow’d youth, as well as turtles do?
Nor twice have made myself misfortune’s prey,
Or to Sychæus’ ashes prov’d untrue?”
These words with sighs out of her bosom flew.
Æneas slept aboard, all things prepar’d;
To whom again Jove’s son with the same hue
Divine, so silver-voic‘d, so golden-hair’d,
So straight and lovely shap‘d, thus rousing him ap
pear’d.

 

“0 goddess-born, now dost thou sleep? nor know
How many dangers watch to compass thee?
Nor hear this good wind whispering thee to go?
Purpos’d to die, great plots and dire broods she,
Who boils with rage like a high going sea.
Fly while thou may‘st fly. If the morning find
Thee napping here, the seas will cover’d be
With ships, the shore with flames; fly with the wind:
Trust that, but do not trust a woman’s fickle mind.”