id the inner house
'Neath the bare heavens, piled high with fir and cloven oak enow,
Hangeth the garlands round the place, and crowns the bale with bough
That dead men use: the weed he wore, his very effigy,
His sword, she lays upon the bed, well knowing what shall be.
There stand the altars, there the maid, wild with her scattered hair,
Calls Chaos, Erebus, and those three hundred godheads there, 510
And Hecate triply fashioned to maiden Dian's look;
Water she scattered, would-be wave of dark Avernus' brook;
And herbs she brought, by brazen shears 'neath moonlight harvested,
All downy-young, though inky milk of venomed ill they shed.
She brings the love-charm snatched away from brow of new-born foal
Ere yet the mother snatcheth it.
Dido herself the altars nigh, meal in her hallowed hands,
With one foot of its bindings bare, and ungirt raiment stands,
And dying calls upon the Gods, and stars that fateful fare;
And then if any godhead is, mindful and just to care 520
For unloved lovers, unto that she sendeth up the prayer.

Now night it was, and everything on earth had won the grace
Of quiet sleep: the woods had rest, the wildered waters' face:
It was the tide when stars roll on amid their courses due,
And all the tilth is hushed, and beasts, and birds of many a hue;
And all that is in waters wide, and what the waste doth keep
In thicket rough, amid the hush of night-tide lay asleep,
And slipping off the load of care forgat their toilsome part.
But ne'er might that Phoenician Queen, that most unhappy heart,
Sink into sleep, or take the night unto her eyes and breast: 530
Her sorrows grow, and love again swells up with all unrest,
And ever midst her troubled wrath rolls on a mighty tide;
And thus she broods and turns it o'er and o'er on every side.

"Ah, whither now? Shall I bemocked my early lovers try,
And go Numidian wedlock now on bended knee to buy:
I, who so often scorned to take their bridal-bearing hands?
Or shall I, following Ilian ships, bear uttermost commands
Of Teucrian men, because my help their lightened hearts makes kind;
Because the thank for deed I did lies ever on their mind?
But if I would, who giveth leave, or takes on scornful keel 540
The hated thing? Thou knowest not, lost wretch, thou may'st not feel,
Wha