and the Clarian's bay, and what the stars fulfil, 360
And tongues of fowl, and omens brought by swift foreflying wing,
Come, tell the tale! for of my way a happy heartening thing
All shrines have said, and all the Gods have bid me follow on
To Italy, till outland shores, far off, remote were won:
Alone Celaeno, Harpy-fowl, new dread of fate set forth,
Unmeet to tell, and bade us fear the grimmest day of wrath,
And ugly hunger. How may I by early perils fare?
Or doing what may I have might such toil to overbear?'

So Helenus, when he hath had the heifers duly slain,
Prays peace of Gods, from hallowed head he doffs the bands again, 370
And then with hand he leadeth me, O Phoebus, to thy door,
My fluttering soul with all thy might of godhead shadowed o'er.
There forth at last from God-loved mouth the seer this word did send:

'O Goddess-born, full certainly across the sea ye wend
By mightiest bidding, such the lot the King of Gods hath found
All fateful; so he rolls the world, so turns its order round.
Few things from many will I tell that thou the outland sea
May'st sail the safer, and at last make land in Italy;
The other things the Parcae still ban Helenus to wot,
Saturnian Juno's will it is that more he utter not. 380
First, from that Italy, which thou unwitting deem'st anigh,
Thinking to make in little space the haven close hereby,
Long is the wayless way that shears, and long the length of land;
And first in the Trinacrian wave must bend the rower's wand.
On plain of that Ausonian salt your ships must stray awhile,
And thou must see the nether meres, AEaean Circe's isle,
Ere thou on earth assured and safe thy city may'st set down.
I show thee tokens; in thy soul store thou the tokens shown.
When thou with careful heart shalt stray the secret stream anigh,
And 'neath the holm-oaks of the shore shalt see a great sow lie, 390
That e'en now farrowed thirty head of young, long on the ground
She lieth white, with piglings white their mother's dugs around,--
That earth shall be thy city's place, there rest from toil is stored.
Nor shudder at the coming curse, the gnawing of the board,
The Fates shall find a way thereto; Apollo called shall come.
But flee these lands of Italy, this shore so near our home,
That washing of the strand thereof our ver