Page:Aeneid (Conington 1866).djvu/147

And chief, the traitor's effigy,
Well knowing what should be.
The blazing altars stand around:
The priestess, with her hair unbound,
Three hundred gods proclaims,
Grim Erebus and Chaos old,
And Hecat-Dian, power threefold,
Three faces and three names.
Around the lustral stream she flings,
Drawn, so she feigns, from Stygian springs:
And poison-plants by moonlight shorn
She fetches, not unsought:
And love's mysterious token, torn
From forehead of a foal new-born,
Ere by the mother caught.
Before the altars Dido stands
With ritual cake and stainless hands,
One foot unshod, unchecked by bands
Her vesture's ample flow:
There calls on heaven, or ere she die,
And on the starry host on high
That fate's deep counsels know:
And makes her passionate appeal
To gods, if gods there be, that feel
For ill-matched lover's woe.

'Tis night: earth's tired ones taste the balm,
The precious balm of sleep,
And in the forest there is calm,
And on the savage deep:
The stars are in their middle flight:
The fields are hushed: each bird or beast
That dwells beside the silver lake
Or haunts the tangles of the brake
In placid slumber lies, released
From trouble by the touch of night: