скачать книгу бесплатно
While trees the mountain tops with shades supply,
Your honor, name, and praise shall never die.
Whate’er abode my fortune has assign’d,
Your image shall be present in my mind.”
Thus having said, he turn’d with pious haste,
And joyful his expecting friends embrac’d:
With his right hand Ilioneus was grac’d,
Serestus with his left; then to his breast
Cloanthus and the noble Gyas press’d;
And so by turns descended to the rest.
The Tyrian queen stood fix’d upon his face,
Pleas’d with his motions, ravish’d with his grace;
Admir’d his fortunes, more admir’d the man;
Then recollected stood, and thus began:
“What fate, O goddess-born; what angry pow’rs
Have cast you shipwrack’d on our barren shores?
Are you the great Aeneas, known to fame,
Who from celestial seed your lineage claim?
The same Aeneas whom fair Venus bore
To fam’d Anchises on th’ Idaean shore?
It calls into my mind, tho’ then a child,
When Teucer came, from Salamis exil’d,
And sought my father’s aid, to be restor’d:
My father Belus then with fire and sword
Invaded Cyprus, made the region bare,
And, conqu’ring, finish’d the successful war.
From him the Trojan siege I understood,
The Grecian chiefs, and your illustrious blood.
Your foe himself the Dardan valor prais’d,
And his own ancestry from Trojans rais’d.
Enter, my noble guest, and you shall find,
If not a costly welcome, yet a kind:
For I myself, like you, have been distress’d,
Till Heav’n afforded me this place of rest;
Like you, an alien in a land unknown,
I learn to pity woes so like my own.”
She said, and to the palace led her guest;
Then offer’d incense, and proclaim’d a feast.
Nor yet less careful for her absent friends,
Twice ten fat oxen to the ships she sends;
Besides a hundred boars, a hundred lambs,
With bleating cries, attend their milky dams;
And jars of gen’rous wine and spacious bowls
She gives, to cheer the sailors’ drooping souls.
Now purple hangings clothe the palace walls,
And sumptuous feasts are made in splendid halls:
On Tyrian carpets, richly wrought, they dine;
With loads of massy plate the sideboards shine,
And antique vases, all of gold emboss’d
(The gold itself inferior to the cost),
Of curious work, where on the sides were seen
The fights and figures of illustrious men,
From their first founder to the present queen.
The good Aeneas, paternal care
Iulus’ absence could no longer bear,
Dispatch’d Achates to the ships in haste,
To give a glad relation of the past,
And, fraught with precious gifts, to bring the boy,
Snatch’d from the ruins of unhappy Troy:
A robe of tissue, stiff with golden wire;
An upper vest, once Helen’s rich attire,
From Argos by the fam’d adultress brought,
With golden flow’rs and winding foliage wrought,
Her mother Leda’s present, when she came
To ruin Troy and set the world on flame;
The scepter Priam’s eldest daughter bore,
Her orient necklace, and the crown she wore
Of double texture, glorious to behold,
One order set with gems, and one with gold.
Instructed thus, the wise Achates goes,
And in his diligence his duty shows.
But Venus, anxious for her son’s affairs,
New counsels tries, and new designs prepares:
That Cupid should assume the shape and face
Of sweet Ascanius, and the sprightly grace;
Should bring the presents, in her nephew’s stead,
And in Eliza’s veins the gentle poison shed:
For much she fear’d the Tyrians, double-tongued,
And knew the town to Juno’s care belong’d.
These thoughts by night her golden slumbers broke,
And thus alarm’d, to winged Love she spoke:
“My son, my strength, whose mighty pow’r alone
Controls the Thund’rer on his awful throne,
To thee thy much-afflicted mother flies,
And on thy succor and thy faith relies.
Thou know’st, my son, how Jove’s revengeful wife,
By force and fraud, attempts thy brother’s life;
And often hast thou mourn’d with me his pains.
Him Dido now with blandishment detains;
But I suspect the town where Juno reigns.
For this ’tis needful to prevent her art,
And fire with love the proud Phoenician’s heart:
A love so violent, so strong, so sure,
As neither age can change, nor art can cure.
How this may be perform’d, now take my mind:
Ascanius by his father is design’d
To come, with presents laden, from the port,
To gratify the queen, and gain the court.
I mean to plunge the boy in pleasing sleep,
And, ravish’d, in Idalian bow’rs to keep,
