Virgil

Black night hovers around with sheltering shade.

He lacks not much that lacks a grave.

All praised the sentence, pleased the storm should fall

On one alone, whose fury threatened all.

Hear now the treachery of the Greeks and from one learn the wickedness of all.

Purple light of youth.

Arms, my comrades,

bring me arms! The last light calls the defeated.

Send me back to the Greeks, let me go back

to fight new battles. Not all of us here

will die today without revenge.

May the gods—

And surely there are powers that care for goodness,

Surely somewhere justice counts—may they

And your own consciousness of acting well

Reward you as they should.

So come, dear father, climb up onto my shoulders!

I will carry you on my back. This labor of love

will never wear me down. Whatever falls to us now,

we both will share one peril, one path to safety.

Little Iulus, walk beside me, and you, my wife,

follow me at a distance, in my footsteps.

The mad prophetic Sibyl you shall find,

Dark in a cave, and on a rock reclined.

She sings the fates, and, in her frantic fits,

The notes and names inscribed, to leafs commits.

What she commits to leafs, in order laid,

Before the cavern's entrance are displayed:

Unmoved they lie; but, if a blast of wind

Without, or vapors issue from behind,

The leafs are borne aloft in liquid air,

And she resumes no more her museful care,

Nor gathers from the rocks her scattered verse,

Nor sets in order what the winds disperse.

Thus, many not succeeding, most upbraid

The madness of the visionary maid,

And with loud curses leave the mystic shade.

The queen, for her part, all that evening ached

With longing that her heart's blood fed, a wound

Or inward fire eating her away.

Sky on all sides and on all sides sea.

Think it not loss of time a while to stay,

Though thy companions chide thy long delay;

Though summoned to the seas, though pleasing gales

Invite thy course, and stretch thy swelling sails:

But beg the sacred priestess to relate

With willing words, and not to write thy fate.

The fierce Italian people she will show,

And all thy wars, and all thy future woe,

And what thou may'st avoid, and what must undergo.

She shall direct thy course, instruct thy mind,

And teach thee how the happy shores to find.

This is what Heaven allows me to relate:

Now part in peace; pursue thy better fate,

And raise, by strength of arms, the Trojan state.