No More Learning

When they are come to the mountain heights and pathless
coverts, lo, wild goats driven from the cliff-tops run down the ridge;
in another quarter stags speed over the open plain and gather their
flying column in a cloud of dust as they leave the hills. But the boy
Ascanius is in the valleys, exultant on his fiery horse, and gallops
past one and another, praying that among the unwarlike herds a foaming
boar may issue or a tawny lion descend the hill.

[160-194]Meanwhile the sky begins to thicken and roar aloud. A
rain-cloud comes down mingled with hail; the Tyrian train and the men of
Troy, and the Dardanian boy of Venus' son scatter in fear, and seek
shelter far over the fields. Streams pour from the hills. Dido and the
Trojan captain take refuge in the same cavern. Primeval Earth and Juno
the bridesmaid give the sign; fires flash out high in air, witnessing
the union, and Nymphs cry aloud on the mountain-top. That day opened the
gate of death and the springs of ill. For now Dido recks not of eye or
tongue, nor sets her heart on love in secret: she calls it marriage, and
with this name veils her fall.

Straightway Rumour runs through the great cities of Libya,--Rumour, than
whom none other is more swift to mischief; she thrives on restlessness
and gains strength by going: at first small and timorous; soon she lifts
herself on high and paces the ground with head hidden among the clouds.
Her, one saith, Mother Earth, when stung by wrath against the gods, bore
last sister to Coeus and Enceladus, fleet-footed and swift of wing,
ominous, awful, vast; for every feather on her body is a waking eye
beneath, wonderful to tell, and a tongue, and as many loud lips and
straining ears. By night she flits between sky and land, shrilling
through the dusk, and droops not her lids in sweet slumber; in daylight
she sits on guard upon tall towers or the ridge of the house-roof, and
makes great cities afraid; obstinate in perverseness and forgery no less
than messenger of truth. She then exultingly filled the countries with
manifold talk, and blazoned alike what was done and undone: one Aeneas
is come, born of Trojan blood; on him beautiful Dido thinks no shame to
fling herself; now they hold their winter, long-drawn through mutual
caresses, regardless of their realms and enthralled by passionate
dishonour. This the pestilent goddess [195-227]spreads abroad in the
mouths of men, and bends her course right on to King Iarbas, and with
her words fires his spirit and swells his wrath.

He, the seed of Ammon by a ravished Garamantian Nymph, had built to Jove
in his wide realms an hundred great temples, an hundred altars, and
consecrated the wakeful fire that keeps watch by night before the gods
perpetually, where the soil is fat with blood of beasts and the courts
blossom with pied garlands.
And he, distracted and on fire at the bitter
tidings, before his altars, amid the divine presences, often, it is
said, bowed in prayer to Jove with uplifted hands:

'Jupiter omnipotent, to whom from the broidered cushions of their
banqueting halls the Maurusian people now pour Lenaean offering, lookest
thou on this? or do we shudder vainly when our father hurls the
thunderbolt, and do blind fires in the clouds and idle rumblings appal
our soul? The woman who, wandering in our coasts, planted a small town
on purchased ground, to whom we gave fields by the shore and laws of
settlement, she hath spurned our alliance and taken Aeneas for lord of
her realm. And now that Paris, with his effeminate crew, his chin and
oozy hair swathed in the turban of Maeonia, takes and keeps her; since
to thy temples we bear oblation, and hallow an empty name. '

In such words he pleaded, clasping the altars; the Lord omnipotent
heard, and cast his eye on the royal city and the lovers forgetful of
their fairer fame. Then he addresses this charge to Mercury:

'Up and away, O son! call the breezes and slide down them on thy wings:
accost the Dardanian captain who now loiters in Tyrian Carthage and
casts not a look on destined cities; carry down my words through the
fleet air. Not such an one did his mother most beautiful vouch him to
[228-264]us, nor for this twice rescue him from Grecian arms; but he
was to rule an Italy teeming with empire and loud with war, to transmit
the line of Teucer's royal blood, and lay all the world beneath his law.
If such glories kindle him in nowise, and he take no trouble for his own
honour, does a father grudge his Ascanius the towers of Rome? with what
device or in what hope loiters he among a hostile race, and casts not a
glance on his Ausonian children and the fields of Lavinium? Let him set
sail: this is the sum: thereof be thou our messenger. '

He ended: his son made ready to obey his high command. And first he
laces to his feet the shoes of gold that bear him high winging over seas
or land as fleet as the gale; then takes the rod wherewith he calls wan
souls forth of Orcus, or sends them again to the sad depth of hell,
gives sleep and takes it away and unseals dead eyes; in whose strength
he courses the winds and swims across the tossing clouds. And now in
flight he descries the peak and steep sides of toiling Atlas, whose
crest sustains the sky; Atlas, whose pine-clad head is girt alway with
black clouds and beaten by wind and rain; snow is shed over his
shoulders for covering; rivers tumble over his aged chin; and his rough
beard is stiff with ice. Here the Cyllenian, poised evenly on his wings,
made a first stay; hence he shot himself sheer to the water. Like a bird
that flies low, skirting the sea about the craggy shores of its fishery,
even thus the brood of Cyllene left his mother's father, and flew,
cutting the winds between sky and land, along the sandy Libyan shore.