hour will have no tarrying o'er fair shows for idle eyes;
'Twere better from an unyoked herd seven steers to sacrifice,
And e'en so many hosts of ewes in manner due culled out."

She spake; her holy bidding then the warriors go about, 40
Nor tarry: into temple high she calls the Teucrian men,
Where the huge side of Cumae's rock is carven in a den,
Where are an hundred doors to come, an hundred mouths to go,
Whence e'en so many awful sounds, the Sibyl's answers flow.
But at the threshold cried the maid: "Now is the hour awake
For asking--Ah, the God, the God!"
And as the word she spake
Within the door, all suddenly her visage and her hue
Were changed, and all her sleeked hair, and gasping breath she drew,
And with the rage her wild heart swelled, and greater was she grown,
Nor mortal-voiced; for breath of God upon her heart was blown 50
As He drew nigher:
"Art thou dumb of vows and prayers, forsooth,
Trojan AEneas, art thou dumb? unprayed, the mighty mouth
Of awe-mazed house shall open not."
Even such a word she said,
Then hushed: through hardened Teucrian bones swift ran the chilly dread,
And straight the king from inmost heart the flood of prayers doth pour:
"Phoebus, who all the woe of Troy hast pitied evermore,
Who Dardan shaft and Paris' hands in time agone didst speed
Against Achilles' body there, who me withal didst lead
Over the seas that go about so many a mighty land,
Through those Massylian folks remote, and length of Syrtes' sand, 60
Till now I hold that Italy that ever drew aback;
And now perchance a Trojan fate we, even we may lack.
Ye now, O Gods and Goddesses, to whom a stumbling-stone
Was Ilium in the days of old, and Dardan folk's renown,
May spare the folk of Pergamus. But thou, O holiest,
O Maid that knowest things to come, grant thou the Latin rest
To Teucrian men, and Gods of Troy, the straying way-worn powers!
For surely now no realm I ask but such as Fate makes ours.
To Phoebus and to Trivia then a temple will I raise,
A marble world; in Phoebus' name will hallow festal days: 70
Thee also in our realm to be full mighty shrines await,
There will I set thine holy lots and hidden words of fate
Said to my folk, and hal