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my ships subdue, but let their sacred birth
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on my charmed hills their strength and safety be!”
Then spake her son, who guides the wheeling spheres:
“Wouldst thou, my mother, strive to oversway
the course of Fate? What means this prayer of thine?
Can it be granted ships of mortal mould
to wear immortal being? Wouldst thou see
Aeneas pass undoubting and secure
through doubtful strait and peril? On what god
was e'er such power bestowed? Yet will I grant
a different boon. Whatever ships shall find
a safe Ausonian haven, and convey
safe through the seas to yon Laurentian plain
the Dardan King, from such I will remove
their perishable shapes, and bid them be
sea-nymphs divine, like Nereus' daughters fair,
Doto and Galatea, whose white breasts
divide the foaming wave.” He said, and swore
by his Tartarean brother's mournful stream,
the pitch-black floods and dark engulfing shore
of Styx; then great Jove bowed his head, and all
Olympus quaked at his consenting brow.
Now was the promised day at hand (for Fate
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had woven the web so far) when Turnus' rage
stirred the divine progenitress to save
her sacred ships from fire. Then sudden shone
a strange effulgence in the eastern air;
and in a storm-cloud wafted o'er the sky
were Corybantic choirs, whose dreadful song
smote both on Teucrian and Rutulian ear:
“O Teucrians, fear not for the sure defence
of all the ships, nor arm your mortal hands.
Yon impious Turnus shall burn up the seas
before my pine-trees blest. Arise! Be free,
ye goddesses of ocean, and obey
your mother's mighty word.” Then instant broke
the hawsers of the sterns; the beaked prows
went plunging like great dolphins from the shore
down to the deeps, and, wonderful to tell,
the forms of virgin goddesses uprose,
