low there well-chosen men for thee,
O Holy One: But give thou not thy songs to leaf of tree,
Lest made a sport to hurrying gales confusedly they wend;
But sing them thou thyself, I pray!"
Therewith his words had end.
Meanwhile the Seer-maid, not yet tamed to Phoebus, raves about
The cave, still striving from her breast to cast the godhead out;
But yet the more the mighty God her mouth bewildered wears,
Taming her wild heart, fashioning her soul with weight of fears. 80
At last the hundred mighty doors fly open, touched of none,
And on the air the answer floats of that foreseeing one:

"O Thou, who dangers of the sea hast throughly worn away,
Abides thee heavier toil of earth: the Dardans on a day
Shall come to that Lavinian land,--leave fear thereof afar:
Yet of their coming shall they rue. Lo, war, war, dreadful war!
And Tiber bearing plenteous blood upon his foaming back.
Nor Simois there, nor Xanthus' stream, nor Dorian camp shall lack:
Yea, once again in Latin land Achilles is brought forth,
God-born no less: nor evermore shall mighty Juno's wrath 90
Fail Teucrian men. Ah, how shalt thou, fallen on evil days,
To all Italian lands and folks thine hands beseeching raise!
Lo, once again a stranger bride brings woeful days on Troy,
Once more the wedding of a foe.
But thou, yield not to any ill, but set thy face, and wend
The bolder where thy fortune leads; the dawn of perils' end,
Whence least thou mightest look for it, from Greekish folk shall come."

Suchwise the Seer of Cumae sang from out her inner home
The dreadful double words, wherewith the cavern moans again,
As sooth amid the mirk she winds: Apollo shakes the rein 100
Over the maddened one, and stirs the strings about her breast;
But when her fury lulled awhile and maddened mouth had rest,
Hero AEneas thus began:
"No face of any care,
O maiden, can arise on me in any wise unware:
Yea, all have I forecast; my mind hath worn through everything.
One prayer I pray, since this they call the gateway of the King
Of Nether-earth, and Acheron's o'erflow this mirky mere:
O let me meet the eyes and mouth of my dead father dear;
O open me the holy gate, and teach me where to go!
I bore him on these shoulders once from midmost