Book 4
on midnight ghosts she calls: her vot'ries hear
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earth bellowing loud below, while from the hills
the ash-trees travel down. But, sister mine,
thou knowest, and the gods their witness give,
how little mind have I to don the garb
of sorcery. Depart in secret, thou,
and bid them build a lofty funeral pyre
inside our palalce-wall, and heap thereon
the hero's arms, which that blasphemer hung
within my chamber; every relic bring,
and chiefly that ill-omened nuptial bed,
my death and ruin! For I must blot out
all sight and token of this husband vile.
'T is what the witch commands.” She spoke no more,
and pallid was her brow. Yet Anna's mind
knew not what web of death her sister wove
by these strange rites, nor what such frenzy dares;
nor feared she worse than when Sichaeus died,
but tried her forth the errand to fulfil.
Soon as the funeral pyre was builded high
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in a sequestered garden, Iooming huge
with boughs of pine and faggots of cleft oak,
the queen herself enwreathed it with sad flowers
and boughs of mournful shade; and crowning all
she laid on nuptial bed the robes and sword
by him abandoned; and stretched out thereon
a mock Aeneas;—but her doom she knew.
Altars were there; and with loose locks unbound
the priestess with a voice of thunder called
three hundred gods, Hell, Chaos, the three shapes
of triple Hecate, the faces three
of virgin Dian. She aspersed a stream
from dark Avernus drawn, she said; soft herbs
were cut by moonlight with a blade of bronze,
oozing black poison-sap; and she had plucked
that philter from the forehead of new foal
before its dam devours. Dido herself,
sprinkling the salt meal, at the altar stands;
one foot unsandalled, and with cincture free,
on all the gods and fate-instructed stars,
