new-born is Diana's love, I trow;
No fit of fondness this, or fancy known but now

LXX. "When tyrant Metabus his people's hate
Drove from Privernum, for his deeds of shame.
His babe he bore, the partner of his fate,
Through war and battle, and, her mother's name
Casmilla changed, Camilla she became.
To lonely woods and hill-tops fain to fly,
Fierce swords and Volscians all around, he came
Where Amasenus, with its waves bank-high,
Athwart him foamed; so vast a deluge rent the sky.

LXXI. "Prepared to plunge, he pauses, sore assailed
By love, and terror for a charge so dear.
All means revolving, this at last prevailed.
Fire-dried and knotted, an enormous spear
Of seasoned oak the warrior chanced to bear.
To the mid shaft the tender babe he ties,
Swathed in the covering of a cork-tree near,
Then lifts the load, and, poising, ere it flies,
The ponderous lance, looks up, and thus invokes the skies:

LXXII. "'O Queen of woods, Latonia, virgin fair!
To thee my daughter I devote this day,
Thy handmaid. See, thus early through the air
She bears thy weapons. Make her thine, I pray,
And safely through the doubtful air convey.'
So prayed the sire, and nerved him for the throw,
Then aimed, and launched the missile on its way.
The babe forlorn, while roars the stream below,
Link'd to the shaft, is borne across the current's flow.

LXXIII. "In plunges Metabus, the foemen near,
And Trivia's gift, safe landing from the wave,
Plucks from the grass,--the maiden and the spear.
No town is his, to shelter and to save,
His savage mood no shelter deigns to crave.
A shepherd's life on lonely hills he leads,
In tangled covert, or in woodland cave.
The milk of beasts supplies his daughter's needs,
And from the wild-mare's teats her tender lips he feeds.

LXXIV. "And when the tottering infant first essayed
To plant her footsteps, to her hands he strung
A lance, and o'er the shoulders of the maid
The light-wing'd arrows and the bow he slung.
For golden coif and trailing mantle, hung
A tiger's spoils. Her tiny hand e'en then
Hurled childish darts; e'en then the tough hide, swung
Around her temples, as she roamed the plain,
Brought down the snowy swan, or swift Strymonian crane.

LXXV. "Full many a Tuscan mother far and near
Has wooed Camilla for her son in vain.
Contented with Diana yea