d wings,
With fresh guile spying out the place where goodly on the shore,
With toils and speed 'gainst woodland beasts, Iulus waged the war.
Here for his hounds Cocytus' Maid a sudden madness blent,
Crossing the nostrils of the beasts with long familiar scent, 480
As eagerly they chased a hart. This first began the toil,
And kindled field-abiders' souls to war and deadly broil.

There was a hart most excellent, a noble horned thing,
That Tyrrheus' sons had stolen from its own dam's cherishing,
And fostered: he, their father, had the kingly herd to heed,
And well was trusted far and wide, the warden of the mead.
But to their sister Sylvia's hand the beast was used, and oft
She decked him lovingly, and wreathed his horns with leafage soft,
And combed him oft, and washed him oft in water of the well.
Tame to her hand, and used enow amid manfolk to dwell, 490
He strayed the woods; but day by day betook him evermore,
Of his own will at twilight-tide, to that familiar door.
Him now Iulus' hunting hounds mad-eager chanced to stir
Afar from home, and floating whiles adown the river fair,
Or whiles on bank of grassy green beguiling summer's flame.
Therewith Ascanius, all afire with lust of noble fame,
Turned on the beast the spiky reed from out the curved horn;
Nor lacked the God to his right hand; on was the arrow borne
With plenteous whirr, and smote the hart through belly and through flank;
Who, wounded, to the well-known house fled fast, and groaning shrank
Into the stalls of his abode, and bloody, e'en as one 501
Who cries for pity, filled the place with woefulness of moan.

Then first the sister Sylvia there, smiting her breast, cried out,
Calling to aid the hardy hearts of field-folk thereabout;
And swifter than the thought they came; for still that bitter Bane
Lurked in the silent woods: this man a half-burned brand did gain
For weapon; that a knotted stake: whate'er came first to hand,
The seeker's wrath a weapon made: there Tyrrheus cheers his band,
Come from the cleaving of an oak with foursome driven wedge,
Panting and fierce he tossed aloft the wood-bill's grinded edge. 510
But she, that Evil, on the watch, noting the death anigh,
Climbs up upon the stall-house loft, and from its roof on high
Singeth the shepherd's gathering sign