rought in the old time may win belief), nor of thyself, O fitly
remembered! He, helpless and trammelled, withdrew backward, the deadly
spear-shaft trailing from his shield. The youth broke forward and
plunged into the fight; and even as Aeneas' hand rose to bring down the
blow, he caught up his point and held him in delay. His comrades follow
up with loud cries, so the father may withdraw in shelter of his son's
shield, while they shower their darts and bear back the enemy with
missiles from a distance. Aeneas wrathfully keeps covered. And as when
storm-clouds pour down in streaming hail, all the ploughmen and
country-folk scatter off the fields, and the wayfarer cowers safe in his
fortress, a stream's bank or deep arch of rock, while the rain falls,
that they may do their day's labour when sunlight reappears; thus under
the circling storm of weapons Aeneas sustains the cloud of war till it
thunders itself all away, and calls on Lausus, on Lausus, with chiding
and menace: 'Whither runnest thou on thy death, with daring beyond thy
strength? thine affection betrays thee into rashness.' But none the less
he leaps madly on; and now wrath rises higher and fiercer in the
Dardanian captain, and the Fates pass Lausus' last [815-849]threads
through their hand; for Aeneas drives the sword strongly right through
him up all its length: the point pierced the light shield that armed his
assailant, and the tunic sewn by his mother with flexible gold: blood
filled his breast, and the life left the body and passed mourning
through the air to the under world. But when Anchises' son saw the look
on the dying face, the face pale in wonderful wise, he sighed deeply in
pity, and reached forth his hand, as the likeness of his own filial
affection flashed across his soul. 'What now shall good Aeneas give
thee, what, O poor boy, for this thy praise, for guerdon of a nature so
noble? Keep for thine own the armour thou didst delight in; and I
restore thee, if that matters aught at all, to the ghosts and ashes of
thy parents. Yet thou shalt have this sad comfort in thy piteous death,
thou fallest by great Aeneas' hand.' Then, chiding his hesitating
comrades, he lifts him from the ground, dabbling the comely-ranged
tresses with blood.

Meanwhile his father, by the wave of the Tiber river, stanched his wound
with water, and rested his body against a tree-trunk. Hard by his brazen
helmet hangs from the boughs, and the heavy armour lies quietly on the