alone upbear our might
Before the gates: round each of them are gathered hosts of fight
Thick-thronging, and a harvest-tide that bristles with the sword;
While here thou wendest car about the man-deserted sward."

Bewildered then with images of diverse things he stood
In silent stare; and in his heart upswelled a mighty flood
Of mingled shame and maddening grief: the Furies goaded sore
With bitter love and valour tried and known from time of yore.
But when the cloud was shaken off and light relit his soul,
His burning eyeballs toward the town, fierce-hearted, did he roll, 670
And from the wheels of war looked back unto the mighty town;
And lo, behold, a wave of flame into a tongue-shape grown
Licked round a tower, and 'twixt its floors rolled upward unto heaven:
A tower that he himself had reared with timbers closely driven,
And set beneath it rolling-gear, and dight the bridges high.

"Now, sister, now the Fates prevail! no more for tarrying try.
Nay, let us follow where the God, where hard Fate calleth me!
Doomed am I to AEneas' hand; doomed, howso sore it be,
To die the death; ah, sister, now thou seest me shamed no more:
Now let me wear the fury through ere yet my time is o'er." 680

He spake, and from the chariot leapt adown upon the mead,
And left his sister lone in grief amidst the foe to speed,
Amidst the spears, and breaketh through the midmost press of fight,
E'en as a headlong stone sweeps down from off the mountain-height,
Torn by the wind; or drifting rain hath washed it from its hold,
Or loosed, maybe, it slippeth down because the years grow old:
Wild o'er the cliffs with mighty leap goes down that world of stone,
And bounds o'er earth, and woods and herds and men-folk rolleth on
Amidst its wrack: so Turnus through the broken battle broke
Unto the very city-walls, where earth was all a-soak 690
With plenteous blood, and air beset with whistling of the shafts;
There with his hand he maketh sign, and mighty speech he wafts:

"Forbear, Rutulians! Latin men, withhold the points of fight!
Whatever haps, the hap is mine; I, I alone, of right
Should cleanse you of the broken troth, and doom of sword-edge face."

So from the midst all men depart, and leave an empty space;
But now the Father AEneas hath hearkened Turnus' name,
And backwar