Book 4
This madman onset; let the wish for death
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Die in their souls.' Thus to its embers shrank
The fire within, when battle was denied,
And fainter grew their rage until the night
Drew down her starry veil and sank the sun.
Thus keener fights the gladiator whose wound
Is recent, while the blood within the veins
Still gives the sinews motion, ere the skin
Shrinks on the bones: but as the victor stands
His fatal thrust achieved, and points the blade
Unfaltering, watching for the end, there creeps
Torpor upon the limbs, the blood congeals
About the gash, more faintly throbs the heart,
And slowly fading, ebbs the life away.
Raving for water now they dig the plain
Seeking for hidden fountains, not with spade
And mattock only searching out the depths,
But with the sword; they hack the stony heights,
In shafts that reach the level of the plain.
No further flees from light the pallid wretch
Who tears the bowels of the earth for gold.
Yet neither riven stones revealed a spring,
Nor streamlet whispered from its hidden source;
No water trickled on the gravel bed,
Nor dripped within the cavern. Worn at length
With labour huge, they crawl to light again,
After such toil to fall to thirst and heat
The readier victims: this was all they won.
All food they loathe; and 'gainst their deadly thirst
Call famine to their aid. Damp clods of earth
They squeeze upon their mouths with straining hands.
Wherever on foulest mud some stagnant slime
Or moisture lies, each dying soldier strives
With dying comrade first to lap the draught,
Loathsome had life been his. Like beasts they drain
The swollen udder, and where milk was not,
They suck the life-blood forth. From herbs and boughs
Dripping with dew, from tender shoots they press,
Nay, from the pith of trees, the juice within.
Happy the host that onward marching finds
