No More Learning

Meanwhile Aeneas sees deep withdrawn in the covert of the vale a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? why this their strange sad longing for
the light? ' 'I will tell,' rejoins Anchises, 'nor will I hold thee in
suspense, my son. ' And he unfolds all things in order one by one.

'First of all, heaven and earth and the liquid fields, the shining orb
of the moon and the Titanian star, doth a spirit sustain inly, and a
soul shed abroad in them sways all their members and mingles in the
mighty frame. Thence is the generation of man and beast, the life of
winged things, and the monstrous forms that ocean breeds under his
glittering floor. Those seeds have fiery force and divine birth, so far
as they are not clogged by taint of the body and dulled by earthy frames
and limbs ready to die. Hence is it they fear and desire, sorrow and
rejoice; nor can they pierce the air while barred in the blind darkness
of their prison-house. Nay, and when the last ray of life is gone, not
yet, alas! does all their woe, nor do all the plagues of the body wholly
leave them free; and needs must be that many a long ingrained evil
should take root marvellously deep.
Therefore they are schooled in
punishment, and pay all the forfeit of a lifelong ill; some are hung
stretched to the viewless winds; some have the taint of guilt washed out
beneath the dreary deep, or burned away in fire. We [743-777]suffer,
each a several ghost; thereafter we are sent to the broad spaces of
Elysium, some few of us to possess the happy fields; till length of days
completing time's circle takes out the ingrained soilure and leaves
untainted the ethereal sense and pure spiritual flame. All these before
thee, when the wheel of a thousand years hath come fully round, a God
summons in vast train to the river of Lethe, that so they may regain in
forgetfulness the slopes of upper earth, and begin to desire to return
again into the body. '

Anchises ceased, and leads his son and the Sibyl likewise amid the
assembled murmurous throng, and mounts a hillock whence he might scan
all the long ranks and learn their countenances as they came.

'Now come, the glory hereafter to follow our Dardanian progeny, the
posterity to abide in our Italian people, illustrious souls and
inheritors of our name to be, these will I rehearse, and instruct thee
of thy destinies. He yonder, seest thou? the warrior leaning on his
pointless spear, holds the nearest place allotted in our groves, and
shall rise first into the air of heaven from the mingling blood of
Italy, Silvius of Alban name, the child of thine age, whom late in thy
length of days thy wife Lavinia shall nurture in the woodland, king and
father of kings; from him in Alba the Long shall our house have
dominion. He next him is Procas, glory of the Trojan race; and Capys and
Numitor; and he who shall renew thy name, Silvius Aeneas, eminent alike
in goodness or in arms, if ever he shall receive his kingdom in Alba.
Men of men! see what strength they display, and wear the civic oak
shading their brows. They shall establish Nomentum and Gabii and Fidena
city, they the Collatine hill-fortress, Pometii and the Fort of Inuus,
Bola and Cora: these shall be names that are now nameless lands. Nay,
Romulus likewise, seed of Mavors, shall join [778-810]his grandsire's
company, from his mother Ilia's nurture and Assaracus' blood. Seest thou
how the twin plumes straighten on his crest, and his father's own
emblazonment already marks him for upper air? Behold, O son! by his
augury shall Rome the renowned fill earth with her empire and heaven
with her pride, and gird about seven fortresses with her single wall,
prosperous mother of men; even as our lady of Berecyntus rides in her
chariot turret-crowned through the Phrygian cities, glad in the gods she
hath borne, clasping an hundred of her children's children, all
habitants of heaven, all dwellers on the upper heights. Hither now bend
thy twin-eyed gaze; behold this people, the Romans that are thine.