No More Learning

Fear thou no commands of thy mother, nor refuse to obey her
counsels. Here, where thou seest sundered piles of masonry and rocks
violently torn from rocks, and smoke eddying mixed with dust, Neptune
with his great trident shakes wall and foundation out of their places,
and upturns all the city from her base. Here Juno in all her terror
holds the Scaean gates at the entry, and, girt with steel, calls her
allied army furiously from their ships. . . . Even now on the citadel's
height, look back! Tritonian Pallas is planted in glittering halo and
Gorgonian terror. Their lord himself pours courage and prosperous
strength on the Grecians, himself stirs the gods against the arms of
Dardania. Haste away, O son, and put an end to the struggle. I will
never desert thee; I will set thee safe in the courts of thy father's
house. "

'She ended, and plunged in the dense blackness of the night. Awful faces
shine forth, and, set against Troy, divine majesties . . .
'Then indeed I saw all Ilium sinking in flame, and Neptunian Troy
uprooted from her base: even as an ancient ash on the mountain heights,
hacked all about with steel and fast-falling axes, when husbandmen
emulously strain to cut it down: it hangs threateningly, with shaken top
and quivering tresses asway; till gradually, overmastered with
[631-662]wounds, it utters one last groan, and rending itself away,
falls in ruin along the ridge. I descend, and under a god's guidance
clear my way between foe and flame; weapons give ground before me, and
flames retire.

'And now, when I have reached the courts of my ancestral dwelling, our
home of old, my father, whom it was my first desire to carry high into
the hills, and whom first I sought, declines, now Troy is rooted out, to
prolong his life through the pains of exile.

'"Ah, you," he cries, "whose blood is at the prime, whose strength
stands firm in native vigour, do you take your flight. . . . Had the
lords of heaven willed to prolong life for me, they should have
preserved this my home. Enough and more is the one desolation we have
seen, survivors of a captured city. Thus, oh thus salute me and depart,
as a body laid out for burial. Mine own hand shall find me death: the
foe will be merciful and seek my spoils: light is the loss of a tomb.
This long time hated of heaven, I uselessly delay the years, since the
father of gods and king of men blasted me with wind of thunder and
scathe of flame. "

'Thus held he on in utterance, and remained obstinate. We press him,
dissolved in tears, my wife Creusa, Ascanius, all our household, that
our father involve us not all in his ruin, and add his weight to the
sinking scale of doom. He refuses, and keeps seated steadfast in his
purpose. Again I rush to battle, and choose death in my misery.