Book 4
A second sign was given: for in her house
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a marble altar to her husband's shade,
with garlands bright and snowy fleeces dressed,
had fervent worship; here strange cries were heard
as if her dead spouse called while midnight reigned,
and round her towers its inhuman song
the lone owl sang, complaining o'er and o'er
with lamentation and long shriek of woe.
Forgotten oracles by wizards told
whisper old omens dire. In dreams she feels
cruel Aeneas goad her madness on,
and ever seems she, friendless and alone,
some lengthening path to travel, or to seek
her Tyrians through wide wastes of barren lands.
Thus frantic Pentheus flees the stern array
of the Eumenides, and thinks to see
two noonday lights blaze oer his doubled Thebes;
or murdered Agamemnon's haunted son,
Orestes, flees his mother's phantom scourge
of flames and serpents foul, while at his door
avenging horrors wait. Now sorrow-crazed
and by her grief undone, resolved on death,
the manner and the time her secret soul
prepares, and, speaking to her sister sad,
she masks in cheerful calm her fatal will:
“I know a way—O, wish thy sister joy!—
to bring him back to Iove, or set me free.
On Ocean's bound and next the setting sun
lies the last Aethiop land, where Atlas tall
lifts on his shoulder the wide wheel of heaven,
studded with burning stars. From thence is come
a witch, a priestess, a Numidian crone,
who guards the shrine of the Hesperides
and feeds the dragon; she protects the fruit
of that enchanting tree, and scatters there
her slumb'rous poppies mixed with honey-dew.
Her spells and magic promise to set free
what hearts she will, or visit cruel woes
on men afar. She stops the downward flow
of rivers, and turns back the rolling stars;
