The gods invoked, the Rutuli prepare
Their arms, and warm each other to the war.
His beauty these, and those his blooming age,
The rest his house and his own fame engage.
While Turnus urges thus his enterprize,
The Stygian Fury to the Trojans flies;
New frauds invents, and takes a steepy stand,
Which overlooks the vale with wide command;
Where fair Ascanius and his youthful train,
With horns and hounds, a hunting match ordain,
And pitch their toils around the shady plain.
The Fury fires the pack; they snuff, they vent,
And feed their hungry nostrils with the scent.
'Twas of a well-grown stag, whose antlers rise
High o'er his front, his beams invade the skies.
From this light cause, the infernal maid prepares
The country churls to mischief, hate, and wars.
The stately beast the two Tyrrhidæ bred,
Snatched from his dam, and the tame youngling fed.
Their father Tyrrheus did his fodder bring,
Tyrrheus, chief ranger to the Latian king:
Their sister Silvia cherished with her care
The little wanton, and did wreaths prepare
To hang his budding horns, with ribbons tied
His tender neck, and combed his silken hide,
And bathed his body. Patient of command
In time he grew, and, growing used to hand,
He waited at his master's board for food;
Then sought his savage kindred in the wood,
Where grazing all the day, at night he came
To his known lodgings, and his country dame.
This household beast, that used thewoodland grounds,
Was viewed at first by the young hero's hounds,
As down the stream he swam, to seek retreat
In the cool waters, and to quench his heat.
Ascanius, young, and eager of his game,
Soon bent his bow, uncertain in his aim:

But the dire fiend the fatal arrow guides,
Which pierced his bowels through his panting sides.
The bleeding creature issues from the floods,
Possessed with fear, and seeks his known abodes,
His old familiar hearth, and household gods.
He falls; he fills the house with heavy groans,
Implores their pity, and his pain bemoans.
Young Silvia beats her breast, and cries aloud
For succour from the clownish neighbourhood:
The churls assemble; for the fiend, who lay
In the close woody covert, urged their way.
One with a brand yet burning from the flame,
Armed with a knotty club another came :
Whate'er they catch or find, without their care,
Their fury makes an instrument of war.
Tyrrheus, the foster-father of the beast,
Then clenched a hatchet in his horny fist,
But held his hand from the descending stroke,
And left his wedge within the cloven oak,
To whet their courage, and their rage provoke.
And now the goddess, exercised in ill,

}

Who watched an hour to work her impious will,
Ascends the roof, and to her crooked horn,
Such as was then by Latian shepherds borne,
Adds all her breath. The rocks and woods around,
And mountains, tremble at the infernal sound.
The sacred lake of Trivia from afar,

The Veline fountains, and sulphureous Nar,
Shake at the baleful blast, the signal of the war.
Young mothers wildly stare, with fear possessed,
And strain their helpless infants to their breast.

The clowns, a boisterous, rude, ungoverned crew, With furious haste to the loud summons flew. The powers of Troy, then issuing on the plain, With fresh recruits their youthful chief sustain :

Not theirs a raw and unexperienced train,
But a firm body of embattled men.

At first, while fortune favoured neither side,
The fight with clubs and burning brands was tried:
But now, both parties reinforced, the fields
Are bright with flaming swords and brazen shields.
A shining harvest either host displays,

And shoots against the sun with equal rays.

Thus, when a black-browed gust begins to rise, White foam at first on the curled ocean fries; Then roars the main, the billows mount the skies; Till, by the fury of the storm full blown, The muddy bottom o'er the clouds is thrown. First Almon falls, old Tyrrheus' eldest care, Pierced with an arrow from the distant war: Fixed in his throat the flying weapon stood, And stopped his breath, and drank his vital blood. Huge heaps of slain around the body rise: Among the rest, the rich Galesus lies;

A good old man, while peace he preached in vain,
Amidst the madness of the unruly train:

Five herds, five bleating flocks, his pastures filled;
His lands a hundred yoke of oxen tilled.
Thus, while in equal scales their fortune stood,
The Fury bathed them in each other's blood;
Then, having fixed the fight, exulting flies,
And bears fulfilled her promise to the skies.
To Juno thus she speaks :-" Behold! 'tis done,
The blood already drawn, the war begun ;
The discord is complete; nor can they cease
The dire debate, nor you command the peace.
Now, since the Latian and the Trojan brood
Have tasted vengeance, and the sweets of blood;
Speak, and my power shall add this office more:
The neighbouring nations of the Ausonian shore
Shall hear the dreadful rumour, from afar,
Of armed invasion, and embrace the war."

Then Juno thus:-" The grateful work is done,
The seeds of discord sowed, the war begun :
Frauds, fears, and fury, have possessed the state,
And fixed the causes of a lasting hate.
A bloody Hymen shall the alliance join
Betwixt the Trojan and Ausonian line:
But thou with speed to night and hell repair;
For not the gods, nor angry Jove, will bear
Thy lawless wandering walks in upper air.
Leave what remains to me." Saturnia said:
The sullen fiend her sounding wings displayed,
Unwilling left the light, and sought the nether
shade.

In midst of Italy, well known to fame,
There lies a lake (Amsanctus is the name)
Below the lofty mounts: on either side
Thick forests the forbidden entrance hide.
Full in the centre of the sacred wood,
An arm arises of the Stygian flood,

Which, breaking from beneath with bellowing sound,
Whirls the black waves and rattling stones around.
Here Pluto pants for breath from out his cell,
And opens wide the grinning jaws of hell.
To this infernal lake the Fury flies;

Here hides her hated head, and frees the labouring skies.

Saturnian Juno now, with double care,
Attends the fatal process of the war.

The clowns, returned from battle, bear the slain,
Implore the gods, and to their king complain.
The corpse of Almon, and the rest, are shown:
Shrieks, clamours, murmurs, fill the frighted town.
Ambitious Turnus in the press appears,

And, aggravating crimes, augments their fears;
Proclaims his private injuries aloud,

A solemn promise made, and disavowed;

A foreign son is sought, and a mixed mongrel brood.

Then they, whose mothers, frantic with their fear,
In woods and wilds the flags of Bacchus bear,
And lead his dances with dishevelled hair,
Increase the clamour, and the war demand,
(Such was Amata's interest in the land,)
Against the public sanctions of the peace,
Against all omens of their ill success.
With fates averse, the rout in arms resort,
To force their monarch, and insult the court.
But, like a rock unmoved, a rock that braves
The raging tempest and the rising waves-
Propped on himself he stands; his solid sides
Wash off the sea-weeds, and the sounding tides-
So stood the pious prince unmoved, and long
Sustained the madness of the noisy throng.
But, when he found that Juno's power prevailed,
And all the methods of cool counsel failed,
He calls the gods to witness their offence,
Disclaims the war, asserts his innocence.
"Hurried by fate," he cries, "and borne before
A furious wind, we leave the faithful shore!
O more than madmen! you yourselves shall bear
The guilt of blood and sacrilegious war :
Thou, Turnus, shalt atone it by thy fate,
And pray to heaven for peace, but pray too late.
For me, my stormy voyage at an end,

I to the port of death securely tend.
The funeral pomp which to your kings you pay,
Is all I want, and all you take away.'
He said no more, but, in his walls confined,
Shut out the woes which he too well divined;
Nor with the rising storm would vainly strive,
But left the helm, and let the vessel drive.

A solemn custom was observed of old,
Which Latium held, and now the Romans hold,
Their standard when in fighting fields they rear
Against the fierce Hyrcanians, or declare
The Scythian, Indian, or Arabian war-