g friends, and watch the bale-fires out. 200
Nor may they tear themselves away until the dewy night
Hath turned the heavens about again with gleaming stars bedight.

Nor less the unhappy Latins build upon another stead
The bale-fires numberless of tale: but of their warriors dead,
A many bodies there they dig into the earth adown,
And bear them into neighbouring lands, or back into the town:
The rest, a mighty heap of death piled up confusedly,
Untold, unhonoured, there they burn: then that wide-lying lea
Glareth with fires that thick and fast keep rising high and high.
But when the third dawn drew away cold shadows from the sky, 210
Weeping, great heaps of ashes there and blended bones they made,
And over them the weight of earth yet warm with fire they laid.

But in the houses, in the town of that rich Latin king
More heavy was the wail, more sore the long-drawn sorrowing:
Here mothers, wretched fosterers here, here sisters loved and lorn,
And sorrowing sore, and lads whose lives from fathers' care were torn,
Were cursing of the cruel war, and Turnus and his bride,
"He, he, in arms, he with the sword should play it out," they cried,
"Who claims the realm of Italy and foremost lordship there."
And bitter Drances weights the scale, and witnessing doth bear 220
That Turnus only is called forth, the battle-bidden man.
But divers words of many folk on Turnus' side yet ran,
And he was cloaked about withal by great Amata's name,
And plenteous signs of battle won upheld his fair-won fame.

Now midst these stirs and flaming broils the messengers are here
From Diomedes' mighty walls; and little is the cheer
Wherewith they bring the tidings back that every whit hath failed
Their toil and pains: that not a whit hath gold or gifts availed,
Or mighty prayers, that Latin folk some other stay in war
Must seek, or from the Trojan king a craven peace implore. 230
Then e'en Latinus' counsel failed amid such miseries:
The wrath of God, the tombs new-wrought that lay before their eyes,
Made manifest AEneas come by will of God and Fate.
Therefore a mighty parliament, the firstlings of estate,
By his commandment summoned there, unto his house he brings.
Wherefore they gather, streaming forth unto that house of kings
By the thronged ways: there in the midst Latinus sit