h, and is
weary of gazing on the arch of heaven. The more to make her fulfil her
purpose and quit the light, she saw, when she laid her gifts on the
altars alight with incense, awful to tell, the holy streams blacken, and
the wine turn as it poured into ghastly blood. Of this sight she spoke
to none--no, not to her sister. Likewise there was within the house a
marble temple of her ancient lord, kept of her in marvellous honour, and
fastened with snowy fleeces and festal boughs. Forth of it she seemed to
hear her husband's voice crying and calling when night was dim upon
earth, and alone on the house-tops the screech-owl often made moan with
funeral note and long-drawn sobbing cry. Therewithal many a warning of
wizards of old terrifies her with appalling presage. In her sleep fierce
Aeneas drives her wildly, and ever she seems being left by herself
alone, ever going uncompanioned on a weary way, and seeking her Tyrians
in a solitary land: even as frantic Pentheus sees the [470-503]arrayed
Furies and a double sun, and Thebes shows herself twofold to his eyes:
or Agamemnonian Orestes, renowned in tragedy, when his mother pursues
him armed with torches and dark serpents, and the Fatal Sisters crouch
avenging in the doorway.

So when, overcome by her pangs, she caught the madness and resolved to
die, she works out secretly the time and fashion, and accosts her
sorrowing sister with mien hiding her design and hope calm on her brow.

'I have found a way, mine own--wish me joy, sisterlike--to restore him
to me or release me of my love for him. Hard by the ocean limit and the
set of sun is the extreme Aethiopian land, where ancient Atlas turns on
his shoulders the starred burning axletree of heaven. Out of it hath
been shown to me a priestess of Massylian race, warder of the temple of
the Hesperides, even she who gave the dragon his food, and kept the holy
boughs on the tree, sprinkling clammy honey and slumberous poppy-seed.
She professes with her spells to relax the purposes of whom she will,
but on others to bring passion and pain; to stay the river-waters and
turn the stars backward: she calls up ghosts by night; thou shalt see
earth moaning under foot and mountain-ashes descending from the hills. I
take heaven, sweet, to witness, and thee, mine own darling sister, I do
not willingly arm myself with the arts of magic. Do thou secretly raise
a pyre in the inner court, and let them lay on it the arms that the
accursed one lef