Virgil - Aeneid (Book 4, Lines 410-545) lyrics

“Deceiver, did you even hope to hide so harsh a crime, to leave this land of mine without a word? Can nothing hold you back— neither your love, the hand you pledged, nor even the cruel d**h that lies in wait for Dido? Beneath the winter sky are you preparing a fleet to rush away across the deep among the north winds, you who have no feeling? What! Even if you were not seeking out strange fields and unknown dwellings, even if your ancient Troy were still erect, would you return to Troy across such stormy seas? Do you flee me? By tears, by your right hand— this sorry self is left with nothing else— by wedding, by the marriage we began, if I did anything deserving of you or anything of mine was sweet to you, take pity on a fallen house, put off your plan, I pray—if there is still place for prayers. Because of you the tribes of Libya, all the Nomad princes hate me, even my own Tyrians are hostile; and for you my honor is gone and that good name that once was mine, my only claim to reach the stars. My guest, to whom do you consign this dying woman? I must say ‘guest': this name is all I have of one whom once I called my husband. Then why do I live on? Until Pygmalion, my brother, batters down my walls, until Iarbas the Gaetulian takes me prisoner? Had I at least before you left conceived a son in me; if there were but a tiny Aeneas playing by me in the hall, whose face, in spite of everything, might yet remind me of you, then indeed I should not seem so totally abandoned, beaten.” Her words were ended. But Aeneas, warned by Jove, held still his eyes: he struggled, pressed care back within his breast. With halting words he answers her at last: “I never shall deny what you deserve, the kindnesses that you could tell; I never shall regret remembering Elissa for as long as I remember my own self, as long as breath is king over these limbs. But now Grynean Apollo's oracles would have me seize great Italy, the Lycian prophecies tell me of Italy: there is my love, there is my homeland. If the fortresses of Carthage and the vision of a city in Libya can hold you, who are Phoenician, why, then, begrudge the Trojans' settling on Ausonian soil? There is no harm: it is Right that we, too, seek out a foreign kingdom. For often as the night conceals the earth with dew and shadows, often as the stars ascend, afire, my father's anxious image approaches me in dreams. Anchises warns and terrifies; I see the wrong I have done to one so dear, my boy Ascanius, whom I am cheating of Hesperia, the fields a**igned by fate. And now the gods' own messenger, sent down by Jove himself— I call as witness both our lives—has brought his orders through the swift air. My own eyes have seen the god as he was entering our walls—in broad daylight. My ears have drunk his words. No longer set yourself and me afire. Stop your quarrel. It is not my own free will that leads to Italy.” But all the while Aeneas spoke, she stared askance at him, her glance ran this way, that. She scans his body with her silent eyes. Then Dido thus, inflamed, denounces him: “No goddess was your mother, false Aeneas, and Dardan*s no author of your race; the bristling Caucasus was father to you on his harsh crags; Hyrcanian tigresses gave you their teats. And why must I dissemble? Why hold myself in check? For greater wrongs? For did Aeneas groan when I was weeping? Did he once turn his eyes or, overcome, shed tears or pity me, who was his loved one? What shall I cry out first? And what shall follow? No longer now does mighty Juno or our Father, son of Saturn, watch this earth with righteous eyes. Nowhere is certain trust. He was an outcast on the shore, in want. I took him in and madly let him share my kingdom; his lost fleet and his companions I saved from d**h. Oh I am whirled along in fire by the Furies! First the augur Apollo, then the Lycian oracles, and now, sent down by Jove himself, the gods' own herald, carrying his horrid orders. This seems indeed to be a work for High Ones, a care that can disturb their calm. I do not refute your words. I do not keep you back. Go then, before the winds, to Italy. Seek out your kingdom overseas; indeed, if there be pious powers still, I hope that you will drink your torments to the lees among sea rocks and, drowning, often cry the name of Dido. Then, though absent, I shall hunt you down with blackened firebrands; and when chill d**h divides my soul and body, a Shade, I shall be present everywhere. Depraved, you then will pay your penalties. And I shall hear of it, and that report will come to me below, among the Shadows.” Her speech is broken off; heartsick, she shuns the light of day, deserts his eyes; she turns away, leaves him in fear and hesitation, Aeneas longing still to say so much. As Dido faints, her servants lift her up; they carry her into her marble chamber; they lay her body upon the couch. But though he longs to soften, soothe her sorrow and turn aside her trouble with sweet words, though groaning long and shaken in his mind because of his great love, nevertheless pious Aeneas carries out the gods' instructions. Now he turns back to his fleet.