but assist thy flight,
And set thee safely at thy father's door.'
She spake, and vanished in the gloom of night.
Dread shapes and forms terrific loomed in sight,
And hostile deities, whose faces frowned
Destruction. Then, amid the lurid light,
I see Troy sinking in the flames around,
And mighty Neptune's walls laid level with the ground.

LXXXV. "So, when an aged ash on mountain tall
Stout woodmen strive, with many a rival blow,
To rend from earth; awhile it threats to fall,
With quivering locks and nodding head; now slow
It sinks and, with a dying groan lies low,
And spreads its ruin on the mountain side.
Down from the citadel I haste below,
Through foe, through fire, the goddess for my guide.
Harmless the darts give way, the sloping flames divide.

LXXXVI. "But when Anchises' ancient home I gain,
My father,--he, whom first, with loving care,
I sought and, heedful of my mother, fain
In safety to the neighbouring hills would bear,
Disdains Troy's ashes to outlive and wear
His days in banishment: 'Fly ye, who may,
Whom age hath chilled not, nor the years impair.
For me, had Heaven decreed a longer day,
Heaven too had spared these walls, nor left my home a prey.

LXXXVII. "'Enough and more, to live when Ilion fell,
And once to see Troy captured. Leave me, pray,
And bid me, as a shrouded corpse, farewell.
For death--this hand will find for me the way,
Or foes who spoil will pity me and slay.
Light is the loss of sepulchre or pyre,
Loathed have I lived and useless, since the day
When man's great monarch and the God's dread sire
Breathed his avenging blast and scathed me with his fire.'

LXXXVIII. "So spake he, on his purpose firmly bent.
We--wife, child, family and I--with prayer
And tears entreat the father to relent,
Nor doom us all the common wreck to share,
And urge the ruin that the Fates prepare.
He heeds not--stirs not. Then again I fly
To arms--to arms, in frenzy of despair,
And long in utter misery to die.
What other choice was left, what other chance to try?

LXXXIX. "'What, _I_ to leave thee helpless, and to flee?
O father! could'st thou fancy it? Could e'er
A parent speak of such a crime to me?
If Heaven of such a city naught should spare,
And thou be pleased that thou and thine should share
The common wreck, that way to death is plain.