enly folk was slaying on the shore
A glorious bull: at hand by chance a mound at topmost bore
A cornel-bush and myrtle stiff with shafts close set around:
Thereto I wend and strive to pluck a green shoot from the ground,
That I with leafy boughs thereof may clothe the altars well;
When lo, a portent terrible and marvellous to tell!
For the first stem that from the soil uprooted I tear out
Oozes black drops of very blood, that all the earth about
Is stained with gore: but as for me, with sudden horror chill
My limbs fall quaking, and my blood with freezing fear stands still. 30
Yet I go on and strive from earth a new tough shoot to win,
That I may search out suddenly what causes lurk within;
And once again from out the bark blood followeth as before.

I turn the matter in my mind: the Field-Nymphs I adore,
And him, Gradivus, father dread, who rules the Thracian plain,
And pray them turn the thing to good and make its threatenings vain.
But when upon a third of them once more I set my hand,
And striving hard thrust both my knees upon the opposing sand--
--Shall I speak now or hold my peace?--a piteous groan is heard
From out the mound, and to mine ears is borne a dreadful word: 40
'Why manglest thou a wretched man? O spare me in my tomb!
Spare to beguilt thy righteous hand, AEneas! Troy's own womb
Bore me, thy kinsman; from this stem floweth no alien gore:
Woe's me! flee forth the cruel land, flee forth the greedy shore;
For I am Polydore: pierced through, by harvest of the spear
O'ergrown, that such a crop of shafts above my head doth bear.'

I stood amazed: the wildering fear the heart in me down-weighed.
My hair rose up, my frozen breath within my jaws was stayed.
Unhappy Priam privily had sent this Polydore,
For fostering to the Thracian king with plenteous golden store. 50
In those first days when he began to doubt the Dardan might,
Having the leaguered walls of Troy for ever in his sight.
This king, as failed the weal of Troy and fortune fell away,
Turned him about to conquering arms and Agamemnon's day.
He brake all right, slew Polydore, and all the gold he got
Perforce: O thou gold-hunger cursed, and whither driv'st thou not
The hearts of men?
But when at length the fear from me did fall,
Unto the chosen of the folk, my father fir