No More Learning

I believe it well, with no vain assurance,
his blood is divine. Fear proves the vulgar spirit. Alas, by what
destinies is he driven! what wars outgone he chronicled! Were my mind
not planted, fixed and immoveable, to ally myself to none in wedlock
since my love of old was false to me in the treachery of death; were I
not sick to the heart of bridal torch and chamber, to this temptation
alone I might haply yield. Anna, I will confess it; since Sychaeus mine
husband met his piteous doom, and our household was shattered by a
brother's murder, he only hath [22-55]touched mine heart and stirred
the balance of my soul. I know the prints of the ancient flame. But
rather, I pray, may earth first yawn deep for me, or the Lord omnipotent
hurl me with his thunderbolt into gloom, the pallid gloom and profound
night of Erebus, ere I soil thee, mine honour, or unloose thy laws. He
took my love away who made me one with him long ago; he shall keep it
with him, and guard it in the tomb. ' She spoke, and welling tears filled
the bosom of her gown.

Anna replies: 'O dearer than the daylight to thy sister, wilt thou
waste, sad and alone, all thy length of youth, and know not the
sweetness of motherhood, nor love's bounty? Deemest thou the ashes care
for that, or the ghost within the tomb? Be it so: in days gone by no
wooers bent thy sorrow, not in Libya, not ere then in Tyre; Iarbas was
slighted, and other princes nurtured by the triumphal land of Africa;
wilt thou contend so with a love to thy liking? nor does it cross thy
mind whose are these fields about thy dwelling? On this side are the
Gaetulian towns, a race unconquerable in war; the reinless Numidian
riders and the grim Syrtis hem thee in; on this lies a thirsty tract of
desert, swept by the raiders of Barca.
Why speak of the war gathering
from Tyre, and thy brother's menaces? . . . With gods' auspices to my
thinking, and with Juno's favour, hath the Ilian fleet held on hither
before the gale. What a city wilt thou discern here, O sister! what a
realm will rise on such a union! the arms of Troy ranged with ours, what
glory will exalt the Punic state! Do thou only, asking divine favour
with peace-offerings, be bounteous in welcome and draw out reasons for
delay, while the storm rages at sea and Orion is wet, and his ships are
shattered and the sky unvoyageable. ' With these words she made the fire
of love flame up in her spirit, put hope in her wavering soul, and let
honour slip away.

[56-90]First they visit the shrines, and desire grace from altar to
altar; they sacrifice sheep fitly chosen to Ceres the Lawgiver, to
Phoebus and lord Lyaeus, to Juno before all, guardian of the marriage
bond. Dido herself, excellent in beauty, holds the cup in her hand, and
pours libation between the horns of a milk-white cow, or moves in state
to the rich altars before the gods' presences, day by day renewing her
gifts, and gazing athirst into the breasts of cattle laid open to take
counsel from the throbbing entrails. Ah, witless souls of soothsayers!
how may vows or shrines help her madness? all the while the subtle flame
consumes her inly, and deep in her breast the wound is silent and alive.
Stung to misery, Dido wanders in frenzy all down the city, even as an
arrow-stricken deer, whom, far and heedless amid the Cretan woodland, a
shepherd archer hath pierced and left the flying steel in her unaware;
she ranges in flight the Dictaean forest lawns; fast in her side clings
the deadly reed.