No More Learning

Thereon she speaks briefly
to Barce, nurse of Sychaeus; for a heap of dusky ashes held her own, in
her country of long ago:

'Sweet nurse, bring Anna my sister hither to me. Bid her haste and
sprinkle river water over her body, and bring [636-667]with her the
beasts ordained for expiation: so let her come: and thou likewise veil
thy brows with a pure chaplet. I would fulfil the rites of Stygian Jove
that I have fitly ordered and begun, so to set the limit to my
distresses and give over to the flames the funeral pyre of the
Dardanian. '

So speaks she; the old woman went eagerly with quickened pace. But Dido,
fluttered and fierce in her awful purpose, with bloodshot restless gaze,
and spots on her quivering cheeks burning through the pallor of imminent
death, bursts into the inner courts of the house, and mounts in madness
the high funeral pyre, and unsheathes the sword of Dardania, a gift
asked for no use like this. Then after her eyes fell on the Ilian
raiment and the bed she knew, dallying a little with her purpose through
her tears, she sank on the pillow and spoke the last words of all:

'Dress he wore, sweet while doom and deity allowed! receive my spirit
now, and release me from my distresses. I have lived and fulfilled
Fortune's allotted course; and now shall I go a queenly phantom under
the earth. I have built a renowned city; I have seen my ramparts rise;
by my brother's punishment I have avenged my husband of his enemy;
happy, ah me! and over happy, had but the keels of Dardania never
touched our shores! ' She spoke; and burying her face in the pillow,
'Death it will be,' she cries, 'and unavenged; but death be it. Thus,
thus is it good to pass into the dark. Let the pitiless Dardanian's gaze
drink in this fire out at sea, and my death be the omen he carries on
his way. '

She ceased; and even as she spoke her people see her sunk on the steel,
and blood reeking on the sword and spattered on her hands. A cry rises
in the high halls; Rumour riots down the quaking city.
The house
resounds with lamentation and sobbing and bitter crying of women;
[668-700]heaven echoes their loud wails; even as though all Carthage or
ancient Tyre went down as the foe poured in, and the flames rolled
furious over the roofs of house and temple. Swooning at the sound, her
sister runs in a flutter of dismay, with torn face and smitten bosom,
and darts through them all, and calls the dying woman by her name. 'Was
it this, mine own? Was my summons a snare? Was it this thy pyre, ah me,
this thine altar fires meant? How shall I begin my desolate moan? Didst
thou disdain a sister's company in death? Thou shouldst have called me
to share thy doom; in the self-same hour, the self-same pang of steel
had been our portion. Did these very hands build it, did my voice call
on our father's gods, that with thee lying thus I should be away as one
without pity? Thou hast destroyed thyself and me together, O my sister,
and the Sidonian lords and people, and this thy city. Give her wounds
water: I will bathe them and catch on my lips the last breath that haply
yet lingers. ' So speaking she had climbed the high steps, and, wailing,
clasped and caressed her half-lifeless sister in her bosom, and stanched
the dark streams of blood with her gown. She, essaying to lift her heavy
eyes, swoons back; the deep-driven wound gurgles in her breast. Thrice
she rose, and strained to lift herself on her elbow; thrice she rolled
back on the pillow, and with wandering eyes sought the light of high
heaven, and moaned as she found it.

Then Juno omnipotent, pitying her long pain and difficult decease, sent
Iris down from heaven to unloose the struggling life from the body where
it clung. For since neither by fate did she perish, nor as one who had
earned her death, but woefully before her day, and fired by sudden
madness, not yet had Proserpine taken her lock from the golden head, nor
sentenced her to the Stygian under world.