No More Learning

Now at length, this fully done, and the service of the goddess
perfected, they came to the happy place, the green pleasances and
blissful seats of the Fortunate Woodlands. Here an ampler air clothes
the meadows in lustrous sheen, and they know their own sun and a
starlight of their own. Some exercise their limbs in tournament on the
greensward, contend in games, and wrestle on the yellow sand. Some
[644-676]dance with beating footfall and lips that sing; with them is
the Thracian priest in sweeping robe, and makes music to their measures
with the notes' sevenfold interval, the notes struck now with his
fingers, now with his ivory rod. Here is Teucer's ancient brood, a
generation excellent in beauty, high-hearted heroes born in happier
years, Ilus and Assaracus, and Dardanus, founder of Troy. Afar he
marvels at the armour and chariots empty of their lords: their spears
stand fixed in the ground, and their unyoked horses pasture at large
over the plain: their life's delight in chariot and armour, their care
in pasturing their sleek horses, follows them in like wise low under
earth. Others, lo! he beholds feasting on the sward to right and left,
and singing in chorus the glad Paean-cry, within a scented laurel-grove
whence Eridanus river surges upward full-volumed through the wood. Here
is the band of them who bore wounds in fighting for their country, and
they who were pure in priesthood while life endured, and the good poets
whose speech abased not Apollo; and they who made life beautiful by the
arts of their invention, and who won by service a memory among men, the
brows of all girt with the snow-white fillet. To their encircling throng
the Sibyl spoke thus, and to Musaeus before them all; for he is midmost
of all the multitude, and stands out head and shoulders among their
upward gaze:

'Tell, O blissful souls, and thou, poet most gracious, what region, what
place hath Anchises for his own? For his sake are we come, and have
sailed across the wide rivers of Erebus. '

And to her the hero thus made brief reply: 'None hath a fixed dwelling;
we live in the shady woodlands; soft-swelling banks and meadows fresh
with streams are our habitation. But you, if this be your heart's
desire, scale this ridge, and I will even now set you on an easy
[677-708]pathway. ' He spoke, and paced on before them, and from above
shews the shining plains; thereafter they leave the mountain heights.

But lord Anchises, deep in the green valley, was musing in earnest
survey over the imprisoned souls destined to the daylight above, and
haply reviewing his beloved children and all the tale of his people,
them and their fates and fortunes, their works and ways.
And he, when he
saw Aeneas advancing to meet him over the greensward, stretched forth
both hands eagerly, while tears rolled over his cheeks, and his lips
parted in a cry: 'Art thou come at last, and hath thy love, O child of
my desire, conquered the difficult road? Is it granted, O my son, to
gaze on thy face and hear and answer in familiar tones? Thus indeed I
forecast in spirit, counting the days between; nor hath my care misled
me. What lands, what space of seas hast thou traversed to reach me,
through what surge of perils, O my son! How I dreaded the realm of Libya
might work thee harm! '

And he: 'Thy melancholy phantom, thine, O my father, came before me
often and often, and drove me to steer to these portals. My fleet is
anchored on the Tyrrhenian brine. Give thine hand to clasp, O my father,
give it, and withdraw not from our embrace. '

So spoke he, his face wet with abundant weeping. Thrice there did he
essay to fling his arms about his neck; thrice the phantom vainly
grasped fled out of his hands even as light wind, and most like to
fluttering sleep.

Meanwhile Aeneas sees deep withdrawn in the covert of the vale a
woodland and rustling forest thickets, and the river of Lethe that
floats past their peaceful dwellings. Around it flitted nations and
peoples innumerable; even as in the meadows when in clear summer weather
bees settle on the variegated flowers and stream round the snow-white
[709-742]lilies, all the plain is murmurous with their humming. Aeneas
starts at the sudden view, and asks the reason he knows not; what are
those spreading streams, or who are they whose vast train fills the
banks? Then lord Anchises: 'Souls, for whom second bodies are destined
and due, drink at the wave of the Lethean stream the heedless water of
long forgetfulness. These of a truth have I long desired to tell and
shew thee face to face, and number all the generation of thy children,
that so thou mayest the more rejoice with me in finding Italy. '--'O
father, must we think that any souls travel hence into upper air, and
return again to bodily fetters?