Page:Aeneid (Conington 1866).djvu/182

In equal parts the bands divide,
And gallop off on either side:
Then wheeling round in full career
Charge at a call with levelled spear.
Again, again, they come and go
Through adverse spaces to and fro;
Circles in circles interlock.
And, sheathed in arms, the gazers mock
With mimicry of battle-shock.
And now they turn their backs in flight,
Now put their spears in rest,
And now in amity unite,
And ride the field abreast.
E'en as of old the Cretan maze
With blind blank walls its secret hid,
A tangle of a thousand ways,
Which whoso sought by signs to thrid
Went wandering, baffled and involved,
Through paths returnless and unsolved:
Such tangle make the youths of Troy
As o'er the champaign they deploy,
And deftly weave in sportive play
A mingled web of fight and fray,
As dolphins at their sport with ease
The expanse of ocean sweep
'Twixt Libyan and Carpathian seas
And gambol o'er the deep.
This pageantry of mimic strife
Ascanius called again to life,
What time with wall and rampart strong
He girdled Alba, named the Long,
And to the elder Latins showed
The celebration and the mode
Which erst he practised when a boy,
And, 'neath his lead, the youth of Troy.