f lightly passing o'er,
Long leagues divide, and many a pathless mere.
First must Trinacrian waters bend the oar,
Ausonian waves thy vessels must explore,
First must thou view the nether world, where flows
Dark Styx, and visit that AEaean shore,
The home of Circe, ere, at rest from woes,
Thou build the promised walls, and win the wished repose.

LI. "'These tokens bear, and in thy memory store.
When, musing sad and pensive, thou hast found
Beside an oak-fringed river, on the shore,
A huge sow thirty-farrowed, and around,
Milk-white as she, her litter, mark the ground,
That spot shall see thy promised town; for there
Thy toils are ended, and thy rest is crowned.
Fear not this famine--'tis an empty scare;
The Fates will find a way, and Phoebus hear thy prayer.

LII. "'As for yon shore and that Italian coast,
Washed, where the land lies nearest, by our main,
Shun them; their cities hold a hostile host.
There Troy's old foes, the evil Argives, reign,
Locrians of Narycos her towns contain.
There fierce Idomeneus from Crete brought o'er
His troops to vex the Sallentinian plain;
There, girt with walls and guarded by the power
Of Philoctetes, stands Petelia's tiny tower.

LIII. "'Nay, when thy vessels, ranged upon her shore,
Rest from the deep, and on the beach ye light
The votive altars, and the gods adore,
Veil then thy locks, with purple hood bedight,
And shroud thy visage from a foeman's sight,
Lest hostile presence, 'mid the flames divine,
Break in, and mar the omen and the rite.
This pious use keep sacred, thou and thine,
The sons of sons unborn, and all the Trojan line.

LIV. "'When, wafted to Sicilia, dawns in sight
Pelorus' channel, keep the leftward shore,
Though long the circuit, and avoid the right.
These lands, 'tis said, one continent of yore
(Such change can ages work) an earthquake tore
Asunder; in with havoc rushed the main,
And far Sicilia from Hesperia bore,
And now, where leapt the parted lands in twain,
The narrow tide pours through, 'twixt severed town and plain.

LV. "'Here Scylla, leftward sits Charybdis fell,
Who, yawning thrice, her lowest depths laid bare,
Sucks the vast billows in her throat's dark hell,
Then starward spouts the refluent surge in air.
Here Scylla, gaping from her gloomy lair,
The passing vessels on the rocks doth