Page:The Aeneid of Virgil JOHN CONINGTON 1917 V2.pdf/124

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off, I conjure you, if prayer be not too late, the mind,that clothes you. It is owing to you that the Libyan tribes and the Nomad chiefs hate me, that my own Tyrians are estranged; owing to you, yes, you, that my woman's honour has been put out, and that which was my one passport 5 to immortality, my former fame. To whom are you abandoning a dying woman, my guest?—since the name of husband has dwindled to that. Why do I live any longer?—to give my brother Pygmalion time to batter down my walls, or Iarbas the Moor to carry me away captive? 10 Had I but borne any offspring of you before your flight, were there some tiny Æneas to play in my hall, and remind me of you, though but in look, I should not then feel utterly captive and forlorn."

She ceased. He all the while, at Jove's command, was 15 keeping his eyes unmoved, and shutting up in his heart his great love. At length he answers in brief:—"Fair queen, name all the claims to gratitude you can, I shall never gainsay one, nor will the thought of Elissa[o] ever be unwelcome while memory lasts, while breath animates this 20 frame. A few words I will say, as the case admits. I never counted—do not dream it—on stealthily concealing my flight. I never came with a bridegroom's torch in my hand, nor was this the alliance to which I agreed. For me, were the Fates to suffer me to live under a star 25 of my own choosing, and to make with care the terms I would, the city of Troy, first of all the dear remains of what was mine, would claim my tendance. Priam's tall roof-tree would still be standing, and my hand would have built a restored Pergamus, to solace the vanquished. But 30 now to princely Italy Grynean[o] Apollo, to Italy his Lycian oracles bid me repair. There is my heart, there my fatherland. If you are riveted here by the sight of your stately Carthage, a daughter of Phœnicia by a Libyan town, why, I would ask, should jealousy forbid Teucrians to 35 settle in Ausonian land? We, like you, have the right of looking for a foreign realm. There is my father Anchises, oft as night's dewy shades invest the earth, oft as the fiery