Awaits them. Go ye, on these souls renowned,
Who poured their blood, to purchase from the foe
This country for our fatherland, bestow
The last, sad gift, the tribute of a tomb.
First to Evander's city, whelmed in woe,
Send Pallas back, whom Death's relentless doom
Hath reft ere manhood's prime, and plunged in early gloom."

V. He spake, and sought the threshold, weeping sore,
Where by dead Pallas watched with pious care
Acoetes; once Evander's arms he bore,
His squire; since then, with auspices less fair,
The trusted guardian of his dear-loved heir.
A crowd of sorrowing menials stand around,
And Troy's sad matrons, with their streaming hair.
These, when AEneas at the door is found,
Shriek out, and beat their breasts, and bitter wails resound.

VI. He marked the pillowed head, the snow-white face,
The smooth breast, gaping with the wound, and cried
In anguish, while the tears burst forth apace,
"Poor boy; hath Fortune, in her hour of pride,
To me thy triumph and return denied?
Not such my promise to thy sire; not so
My pledge to him, who, ere I left his side
In quest of empire, clasped me, boding woe,
And warned the race was fierce, and terrible the foe.

VII. "He haply now, by empty hope betrayed,
With prayer and presents doth the gods constrain.
We to the dead, whose debt to Heaven is paid,
The rites of mourners render, but in vain.
Unhappy! doomed to see thy darling slain.
Is this the triumph? this the promise sworn?
This the return? Yet never thine the pain
A coward's flight, a coward's scars to mourn;
Not thine to long for death, thy loved one saved with scorn.

VIII. "Ah, weep, Ausonia! thou hast lost to-day
Thy champion. Weep, Iulus; he is ta'en,
Thy heart's delight, the bulwark of the fray!"
Thus he with tears, and bids them lift the slain.
A thousand men, the choicest of his train,
He sends as mourners, with the corpse to go,
And stand between the parent and his pain,
A scanty solace for so huge a woe,
But such as pity claims, and piety doth owe.

IX. Of oaken twigs and arbutus they wove
A wattled bier. Soft leaves beneath him made
His pillow, and with leafy boughs above
They twined a verdurous canopy of shade.
There, on his rustic couch the youth is laid,
Fair as the hyacinth, with drooping head,
Cropped by the careless fingers of a mai