They crowd the shore their canvas wooes the wind!
Behold the poops with festal garlands crown'd.
If I could bear this prospect, I shall find
Strength still to suffer, and a soul resign'd.
One boon I ask--O pity my distress--
For thee alone he tells his inmost mind,
To thee alone unperjur'd; thou can'st guess
The means of soft approach, the seasons of address;

LV. "Go, sister, meekly tell the haughty foe,
Not I at Aulis with the Greeks did swear
To smite the Trojans and their towers o'erthrow,
Nor sought his father's ashes to uptear.
Whom shuns he? wherefore would he spurn my prayer?
Beg him, in pity of poor love, to stay
Till flight is easy, and the winds breathe fair.
Not now for wedlock's broken vows I pray,
Nor bid him lose for me fair Latium and his sway.

LVI. "I ask but time--a respite and reprieve--
A little truce, my passion to allay,
Till fortune teach my baffled love to grieve.
Grant, sister, this, the latest grace I pray,
And Death with interest shall the debt repay."
She spake; sad Anna to the Dardan bears
Her piteous plea. But Fate hath barred the way:
Deaf stands AEneas to her prayers and tears:
Jove, unrelenting Jove, hath stopped his gentle ears.

LVII. E'en as when Northern Alpine blasts contend
This side and that to lay an oak-tree low,
Aged but strong: the branches creak and bend,
And leaves thick-falling all the ground bestrow:
The trunk clings firmly to the rock below:
High as it rears its weather-beaten crest,
So dive its roots to Tartarus. Even so
Beset with prayers, the hero stands distrest;
So vain are Anna's tears, so moveless is his breast.

LVIII. Then--then unhappy Dido prays to die,
Maddened by Fate, aweary of the day,
Aweary of the over-arching sky.
And lo! an omen seems to chide delay,
And steel her purpose. As, in act to pay
Her gifts, with incense at the shrine she kneels,
Black turns the water, horrible to say;
To loathsome gore the sacred wine congeals.
Not e'en to Anna's self this vision she reveals.

LIX. Nay more; within the precincts of her house
There stood a marble shrine, with garlands bright
And snow-white fleeces, sacred to her spouse.
Hence, oft as darkness shrouds the world from sight,
Voices she hears, and accents of affright,
As though Sychaeus told aloud his wrong,
Hears from the roof-top, t