Where shall I seek thee? What earth hides thy body, mangled sore,
And perished limbs? O son, to me bringest thou back no more 490
Than this? and have I followed this o'er every land and sea?
O pierce me through, if ye be kind; turn all your points on me,
Rutulians! Let me first of all with battle-steel be sped!
Father of Gods, have mercy thou! Thrust down the hated head
Beneath the House of Tartarus with thine own weapon's stress,
Since otherwise I may not break my life-days' bitterness."

Their hearts were shaken with her wail, and Sorrow fain will weep,
And in all men their battle-might unbroken lay asleep.
But Actor and Idaeus take that flaming misery,
As bade Ilioneus, and young Iulus, sore as he 500
Went weeping: back in arms therewith they bear her 'neath the roof.

But now the trump with brazen song cast fearful sound aloof,
Chiding to war; and shouts rise up and belloweth back the heaven,
And forth the Volscians fare to speed the shield-roof timely driven.
Some men fall on to fill the ditch and pluck the ramparts down;
Some seek approach and ladders lay where daylight rends the crown
Of wall-wards, and would get them up where stands the hedge of war
Thinner of men: against their way the Teucrian warders pour
All weapon-shot: with hard-head pikes they thrust them down the steep.
Long was the war wherein they learned the battle-wall to keep. 510
Stones, too, of deadly weight they roll, if haply they may break
The shield-roof of the battle-rush; but sturdily those take
All chances of the play beneath their close and well-knit hold.
Yet fail they; for when hard at hand their world of war was rolled,
A mighty mass by Teucrians moved rolls on and rushes o'er,
And fells the host of Rutuli and breaks the tiles of war.
Nor longer now the Rutuli, the daring hearts, may bear
To play with Mars amid the dark, but strive the walls to clear
With storm of shaft and weapon shot.

But now Mezentius otherwhere, a fearful sight to see, 520
Was tossing high the Tuscan pine with smoke-wreathed fiery heart:
While Neptune's child, the horse-tamer Messapus, played his part,
Rending the wall, and crying out for ladders to be laid.

Speak, Song-maids: thou, Calliope, give thou the singer aid
To tell what wise by Turnus' sword the field of fig