d loosed the girth of shame.

Then straight they fare unto the shrines, by every altar's flame
Praying for peace; and hosts they slay, chosen as custom would,
To Phoebus, Ceres wise of law, Father Lyaeus good,
But chiefest unto Juno's might, that wedlock hath in care.
There bowl in hand stands Dido forth, most excellently fair, 60
And pours between the sleek cow's horns; or to and fro doth pace
Before the altars fat with prayer, 'neath very godhead's face,
And halloweth in the day with gifts, and, gazing eagerly
Amid the host's yet beating heart, for answering rede must try.
--Woe's me! the idle mind of priests! what prayer, what shrine avails
The wild with love!--and all the while the smooth flame never fails
To eat her heart: the silent wound lives on within her breast:
Unhappy Dido burneth up, and, wild with all unrest,
For ever strays the city through: as arrow-smitten doe,
Unwary, whom some herd from far hath drawn upon with bow 70
Amid the Cretan woods, and left the swift steel in the sore,
Unknowing: far in flight she strays the woods and thickets o'er,
'Neath Dictae's heights; but in her flank still bears the deadly reed.

Now midmost of the city-walls AEneas doth she lead,
And shows him the Sidonian wealth, the city's guarded ways;
And now she falls to speech, and now amidst a word she stays.
Then at the dying of the day the feast she dights again,
And, witless, once again will hear the tale of Ilium's pain;
And once more hangeth on the lips that tell the tale aloud.
But after they were gone their ways, and the dusk moon did shroud 80
Her light in turn, and setting stars bade all to sleep away,
Lone in the empty house she mourns, broods over where he lay,
Hears him and sees him, she apart from him that is apart
Or, by his father's image smit, Ascanius to her heart
She taketh, if her utter love she may thereby beguile.
No longer rise the walls begun, nor play the youth this while
In arms, or fashion havens forth, or ramparts of the war:
Broken is all that handicraft and mastery; idle are
The mighty threatenings of the walls and engines wrought heaven high.

Now when the holy wife of Jove beheld her utterly 90
Held by that plague, whose madness now not e'en her fame might stay,
Then unto Venus, Saturn's seed began such