chance, a pair of doves come flying along the sky, under the hero's very eyes, and settle on the turf at his feet. At once the mighty chief recognizes his mother's birds, and gladly breathes a second prayer: "Oh guide us on our way, wherever it be, and as ye fly direct our steps into the grove 5 where the precious branch casts its shade on the rich ground! Thou too forsake not our perplexity, O goddess mother!" Thus much he said, and checked his advancing foot, watching to see what prognostics they bring, whither they aim their onward course. They, as they graze, go 10 ever forward on the wing, as far as the eyes of the travellers can keep them in view. Then when they come to Avernus' noisome jaws, swiftly they soar aloft, and gliding through the clear sky, settle twain on the same tree, their chosen seat, whence there flashed through the branches the contrasted 15 gleam of gold. Even as in the woods, in the cold of midwinter, the mistletoe is wont to put forth new leaves, a vegetable growth, but of no parent tree, and with its yellow produce to surround the tapering boles, so looked the leafy gold among the holm-oak's dark shade—so in the 20 light breeze tinkled the foil. Æneas snatches it at once, plucks it off with eagerness overpowering its delay, and carries it to the home of the prophetic Sibyl.
Meantime, with not less zeal, the Teucrians on the shore were mourning for Misenus, and paying the last 25 honour to the thankless ashes. First they raised a pile, unctuous with pine-wood, and high-heaped with planks of oak: they wreath its sides with gloomy foliage, and set up before it funeral cypresses, and adorn it with a covering of refulgent armour. Some make ready heated water and 30 cauldrons bubbling over the fire, and wash and anoint the cold corpse. Loud rings the wail: then, the dirge over, they place the limbs on the couch that claims them, and fling over them purple garments, the dead men's usual covering. Some put their shoulders to the heavy 35 bier in melancholy service, and after ancestral fashion, with averted eyes, apply the torch from under. The rich heap is ablaze—offerings of incense, sacrificial viands, oil
