Aeneid
Virgil
Vergil. The Aeneid of Virgil. Williams, Theodore, C, translator. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1910.
- Here Daedalus, the ancient story tells,
- Escaping Minos' power, and having made
- Hazard of heaven on far-mounting wings,
- Floated to northward, a cold, trackless way,
- And lightly poised, at last, o'er Cumae's towers.
- Here first to earth come down, he gave to thee
- His gear of wings, Apollo! and ordained
- Vast temples to thy name and altars fair.
- On huge bronze doors Androgeos' death was done;
- And Cecrops' children paid their debt of woe,
- Where, seven and seven,—0 pitiable sight!—
- The youths and maidens wait the annual doom,
- Drawn out by lot from yonder marble urn.
- Beyond, above a sea, lay carven Crete:—
- The bull was there; the passion, the strange guile;
- And Queen Pasiphae's brute-human son,
- The Minotaur—of monstrous loves the sign.
- Here was the toilsome, labyrinthine maze,
- Where, pitying love-lorn Ariadne's tears,
- The crafty Daedalus himself betrayed
- The secret of his work; and gave the clue
- To guide the path of Theseus through the gloom.
- 0 Icarus, in such well-graven scene
- How proud thy place should be! but grief forbade:
- Twice in pure gold a father's fingers strove
- To shape thy fall, and twice they strove in vain.
- Aeneas long the various work would scan;
- But now Achates comes, and by his side
- Deiphobe, the Sibyl, Glaucus' child.
- Thus to the prince she spoke :
- “Is this thine hour
- To stand and wonder? Rather go obtain
- From young unbroken herd the bullocks seven,
- And seven yearling ewes, our wonted way.”
- Thus to Aeneas; his attendants haste
- To work her will; the priestess, calling loud,
- Gathers the Trojans to her mountain-shrine.