Virgil

She is weary of gazing on the arch of heaven.

Her torments multiply, over and over her passion

surges back into heaving waves of rage.

You're running away—from me? Oh, I pray you

by these tears, by the faith in your right hand—

what else have I left myself in all my pain?—

by our wedding vows, the marriage we began,

if I deserve some decency from you now,

if anything mine has ever won your heart,

pity a great house about to fall, I pray you,

if prayers have any place—reject this scheme of yours!

Do you think that dust or buried shades give heed to that?

Had I not set my face against remarriage

After my first love died and failed me, left me

Barren and bereaved—and sick to death

At the mere thought of torch and bridal bed—

I could perhaps give way in this one case

To frailty.

Come all! See who takes the victory prize, the palm.

You trusted—oh, Palinurus—

far too much to a calm sky and sea.

Your naked corpse will lie on an unknown shore.

None of the trials you tell of, virgin,

is strange or unexpected: all of these

I have foreseen and journeyed in my thought.

I pray that the earth gape deep enough to take me down

or the almighty Father blast me with one bolt to the shades,

the pale, glimmering shades in hell, the pit of night,

before I dishonor you, my conscience, break your laws.

He's carried my love away, the man who wed me first—

may he hold it tight, safeguard it in his grave.

though my mind shudders to remember, and has recoiled in grief, I will begin.

I shake myself from sleep and, climbing to the roof's topmost height, stand with straining ears: even as, when fire falls on a cornfield while south winds are raging, or the rushing torrent from a mountain-stream lays low the fields, lays low the glad crops and labours of oxen and drags down forests headlong, spell-bound the bewildered shepherd hears the roar from a rock's lofty peak.

With that

and with all his might the old man flings his spear—

but too impotent now to pierce, it merely grazes

Pyrrhus' brazen shield that blocks its way

and clings there, dangling limp from the boss,

all for nothing.