Page:The Aeneid of Virgil JOHN CONINGTON 1917 V2.pdf/176

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me with the tale that you were dead: that the sword had done its worst? Was it, alas, to a grave that I brought you? By the stars of heaven I swear, by the powers above, by all that is most sacred here underground, against my will, fair queen, I quitted your coast. 5 No; it was the command of the gods; the same stern force which compels me now to pass through this realm of shade, this wilderness of squalor and abysmal night; it was that which drove me by its uttered will: nor could I have thought that my departure would bring on you 10 such violence of grief. Stay your step, and withdraw not from the look I bend on you. Whom would you shun? the last word which fate suffers me to address you is this." With words like these, Æneas kept soothing the soul that blazed forth through those scowling eyes, and moving 15 himself to tears. She stood with averted head and eyes on the ground, her features as little moved by the speech he essayed as if she held the station of a stubborn flint, or a crag of Marpessa.[o] At length she flung herself away, and, unforgiving still, fled into the shadow of the 20 wood, where her former lord, Sychæus, answers her sorrows with his, and gives her full measure for her love. Yet, none the less, Æneas, thrilled through and through by her cruel fate, follows far on her track with tears, and sends his pity along with her. 25

Thence he turns, to encounter the appointed way. And now they were already in the furthest region, the separate place tenanted by the great heroes of war. Here there meets him Tydeus, here Parthenopæus, illustrious in arms, and the spectre of pale Adrastus. Here 30 are chiefs of Dardan line, wailed long and loudly in the upper air as they lay low in fight: as he saw them all in long array, he groaned heavily. Glaucus and Medon, and Thersilochus, the three sons of Antenor, and Polyphœtes, Ceres' priest, and Idæus, with his hand still on the car, 35 still on the armour. They surround him, right and left, the ghostly crowd; one look is not sufficient: they would fain linger on and on, and step side by side with him,