Of Picus nothing but the name remains.
“ ‘The winds from drisling damps now purge the air,
The mist subsides, the settling skies are fair;
The court their sovereign seek with arms in hand;
They threaten Circe, and their lord demand.
Quick she invokes the spirits of the air,
And twilight elves, that on dun wings repair
To charnels, and the unhallow’d sepulchre.
“ ‘Now, strange to tell, the plants sweat drops of blood,
The trees are toss’d from forests where they stood.
Blue serpents o’er the tainted herbage slide,
Pale glaring spectres on the ether ride,
Dogs howl, earth yawns, rent rocks forsake their beds,
And from their quarries heave their stubborn heads.
The sad spectators, stiffen’d with their fears,
She sees, and sudden every limb she smears,
Then each of savage beasts the figure bears.
“ ‘The sun did now to western waves retire,
In tides to temper his bright world of fire.
Canens laments her royal husband’s stay,
Ill suits fond love with absence or delay.
Where she commands, her ready people run;
She wills, retracts; bids, and forbids anon.
Restless in mind, and dying with despair,
Her breasts she beats, and tears her flowing hair.
Six days and nights she wanders on, as chance
Directs, without or sleep or sustenance.
Tiber at last beholds the weeping fair;
Her feeble limbs no more the mourner bear;
Stretch’d on his banks, she to the flood complains,
And faintly tunes her voice to dying strains.
The sickening swan thus hangs her silver wings,
And, as she droops, her elegy she sings.
Ere long sad Canens wastes to air; while fame
The place still honours with her hapless name.’
“Here did the tender tale of Picus cease;
Above belief the wonder I confess.
Again we sail, but more disasters meet,
Foretold by Circe, to our suffering fleet.
Myself unable further woes to bear,
Declined the voyage, and am refuged here.”
Aeneas Arrives in Italy
Latinus, king of Latium, bestows the hand of his daughter on Aeneas, who is opposed by Turnus, the affianced husband of the maiden—Aeneas obtains a supply of auxiliary troops from the Etruscans; while the Rutuli despatch an embassy to Diomed in behalf of Tumus.
Thus Macareus. Now with a pious aim
Had good Aeneas raised a funeral flame,
In honour of his hoary nurse’s name.
Her epitaph he fix’d; and setting sail,
Cajeta left, and catch’d at every gale.
He steer’d at distance from the faithless shore,
Where the false goddess reigns with fatal power,
And sought those grateful groves, that shade the plain,
Where Tiber roll’s majestic to the main,
And fattens, as he runs, the fair champaign.
His kindred gods the hero’s wishes crown
With fair Lavinia, and Latinus’ throne;
But not without a war the prize he won.
Drawn up in bright array the battle stands:
Turnus with arms his promised wife demands.
Etrurians, Latians equal fortune share,
And doubtful long appears the face of war.
Both powers from neighbouring princes seek supplies,
And embassies appoint for new allies.
Aeneas, for relief, Evander moves;
His quarrel he asserts, his case approves.
The bold Rutulians, with an equal speed,
Sage Venulus despatch to Diomed.
The king, late griefs revolving in his mind,
These reasons for neutrality assign’d:
“Shall I, of one poor dotal town possess’d,
My people thin, my wretched country waste;
An exiled prince, and on a shaking throne;
Or risk my patron’s subjects, or my own?
You’ll grieve the harshness of our hap to hear;
Nor can I tell the tale without a tear.
Adventures of Diomedes
Diomed briefly recounts to the Rutulian embassy the misfortunes he has encountered since the destruction of Troy.
“After famed Ilium was by Argives won,
And flames had finish’d what the sword begun;
Pallas, incensed, pursued us to the main,
In vengeance of her violated fane.
Alone Oileus forced the Trojan maid,
Yet all were punish’d for the brutal deed.
A storm begins, the raging waves run high,
The clouds look heavy, and benight the sky;
Red sheets of lightning o’er the seas are spread,
Our tackling yields, and wrecks at last succeed.
’Tis tedious our disastrous state to tell;
Ev’n Priam would have pitied what befell.
Yet Pallas saved me from the swallowing main;
At home new wrongs to meet, as fates ordain.
Chased from my country, I once more repeat
All sufferings seas could give, or war complete.
For Venus, mindful of her wound, decreed
Still new calamities should past succeed.
Agmon, impatient through successive ills,
With fury, love’s bright goddess thus reviles:
‘These plagues in spite of Diomed are sent;
The crime is his, but ours the punishment.
Let each my friends her puny spleen despise,
And dare that proud dictator of the skies.’
“The rest of Agmons insolence complain,
And of irreverence the wretch arraign.
About to answer, his blaspheming throat
Contracts, and shrieks in some disdainful note.
To his new skin a fleece of feathers clings,
Hides his late arms and lengthens into wings.
The lower features of his face extend,
Warp into horn, and in a beak descend.
Some more experience Agmon’s destiny,
And wheeling in the air, like swans they fly:
These thin remains to Daunus’ realms I bring,
And here I reign, a poor precarious king.”
Transformation of Appulus
The disrespectful treatment of the wood nymphs by Appulus is punished by his transformation into a wild olive-tree.
Thus Diomedes. Venulus withdraws;
Unsped the service of the common cause.
Puteoli he passes, and survey’d
A cave long honour’d for its awful shade.
Here trembling reeds exclude the piercing ray,
Here streams in gentle falls through windings stray,
And with a passing breath cool zephyrs play.
The goatherd god frequents the silent place,
As once the wood nymphs of the sylvan race,
Till Appulus with a dishonest air,
And gross behaviour, banish’d thence the fair:
The bold buffoon, whene’er they tread the green,
Their motion mimics, but with jest obscene.
Loose language oft he utters; but ere long
A bark in filmy network binds his tongue.
Thus changed, a base wild olive he remains;
The shrub the coarseness of the clown retains.
Trojan Ships Transformed to Sea Nymphs
Turnus sets fire to the Trojan ships, which are transformed into sea deities by Cybele—Aeneas, at length, surmounts all opposition, and is united to Lavinia.
Meanwhile the Latians all their power prepare,
’Gainst fortune, and the foe to push the war.
With Phrygian blood the floating-fields they stain;
But short of succours, still contend in vain.
Turnus remarks the Trojan fleet ill mann’d,
Unguarded, and at anchor near the strand;
He thought; and straight a lighted brand he bore,
And fire invades what ’scaped the waves before.
The billows from the kindling prow retire;
Pitch,
