Page:The Aeneid of Virgil JOHN CONINGTON 1917 V2.pdf/233

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dealt with his sword that repeated havoc, and bereaved my city of so many of her sons. But you, great powers above, and thou, Jupiter, mightiest ruler of the gods, have pity, I implore you, on an Arcadian monarch, and give ear to a father's prayer; if your august will, if destiny 5 has in store for me the safe return of my Pallas, if life will make me see him and meet him once more, then I pray that I may live; there is no trial I cannot bear to outlast. But if thou, dark Fortune, threatenest any unnamed calamity, now, oh, now, be it granted me to snap 10 life's ruthless thread, while care wears a double face, while hope cannot spell the future, while you, darling boy, my love and late delight, are still in my arms: nor let my ears be pierced by tidings more terrible." So was the father heard to speak at their last parting; his servants 15 were seen carrying within doors their fallen lord.

And now the cavalry had passed the city's open gates, Æneas among the first and true Achates, and after them the other Trojan nobles; Pallas himself the centre of the column, conspicuous with gay scarf and figured armour; 20 even as the morning-star just bathed in the waves of the ocean, Venus' favourite above all the stellar fires, sets in a moment on the sky his heavenly countenance, and melts the darkness. There are the trembling matrons standing on the walls, following with their eyes the cloud 25 of dust and the gleam of the brass-clad companies. They in their armour are moving through the underwood, their eye on the nearest path: hark! a shout mounts up, a column is formed, and the four-foot beat of the hoof shakes the crumbling plain. Near the cool stream of Caere stands 30 a vast grove, clothed by hereditary reverence with widespread sanctity; on all sides it is shut in by the hollows of hills, which encompass its dark pine-wood shades. Rumour says that the old Pelasgians dedicated it to Silvanus, god of the country and the cattle, a grove with a 35 holiday—the people who once in early times dwelt on the Latian frontier. Not far from this Tarchon and the Tyrrhenians were encamped in a sheltered place, and from