But wild, aghast at what her soul decreed; Shuddering, yet rushing to the dreadful deed; With sanguine eyes that roll, and cheeks that glow With spots of red, emerging from the snow Shed by approaching death, with frantic haste The court's interior threshold Dido pass'd. Then, mounting on the pyre, by fury driven She drew-ah! not for this sad purpose given, The Dardan sword: but, faltering as she view'd On the known bed the Trojan vestments strew'd, Her soul relented,-into tears she broke ; And, thrown upon the couch, her last she spoke : Sweet, precious trophies of my happy state,

While Jove was kind, and smiled indulgent Fate!
Receive my streaming life, and aid the blow
That greatly rids me of incumbent woe.
Yet have I lived!—and lived for noble ends!
My shade in glory to the shades descends.
Rear'd by my care a monarch-city stands:
My eyes have seen this triumph of my hands.
My brother, who could bid my consort bleed,
Has felt my vengeance for the direful deed.
Happy!-too happy! had disastrous gales
Not wafted to my shores the Trojan sails!' [bed;
She paused, and press'd with frenzied lip the
"And shall I die? and unrevenged?' she said:
"Yes! let me die! thus-thus I plunge in night:
This flame shall reach the cruel Dardan's sight;
And be the withering omen of his flight.'

While yet the attendants listen'd as she spoke, They saw her sink beneath the fatal stroke; Beheld the sword with gushing lifeblood warm, Her hands distain'd;—and all is loud alarm,

VOL. VI.

The dismal clamour through the court resounds:
Then, spreading, rages through the city's bounds.
With female cries and howlings of lament
The streets reecho, and the skies are rent.
Not less than if, beneath the storming foe,
Carthage or venerable Tyre should bow:
O'er towers and temples roll the tide of fire;
And a whole people in one blaze expire.

6

Half dead and horror-struck, the sister caught The dreadful tidings by the tumult brought. Raving she beats her breast and tears her cheeks; And, wildly as the obstructing crowd she breaks, Calls on the dying: Couldst thou this intend? Ah! Sister! couldst thou thus betray thy friend? Were then these altars, fires, and pyre design'd To cheat my feelings and mislead my mind? Deserted as I am,-undone and lost,

Of what shall I complain the first and most?
Hast thou then scorn'd me with thy latest breath?
Denied me e'en the partnership of death?
Ah! equal, surely, should have been our doom;
And the same pang have sent us to the tomb.
And did I then this fatal-pile prepare,
Invoke my gods with mockery of prayer,
To find thee thus?-Ah me! this frantic blow
Has laid thy sister, senate, people, low-
Has overturn'd thy state!-Haste! let me lave
Her gory bosom with the living wave:
If yet she breathe, my lips to hers apply,
And catch the etherial spirit ere it fly.'

Speaking, the summit of the pyre she press'd; And warm'd her dying sister in her breast: Groan'd, and with softest hand her robe applied To dry the black drops trickling down her side.

The expiring queen essays to lift with pain
Her heavy lids, but soon they fall again.
Deep in her bosom stream'd the inflicted wound;
And the torn vessels yield a bubbling sound.
Thrice, on her elbow raised, she heaves her head;
And, fainting, thrice relapses on the bed:
With wandering vision strives to gain the light;
Finds it at length, and sighs, and loathes the sight.

But heaven's great Empress saw her labouring
Detain❜d in anguish by suspended death; [breath
And, pitying, sent fleet Iris from the skies,
To free the soul that struggled with its ties.
For, since not Nature's death, or struck for crime
She died, but fell by frenzy ere her time,
Proserpina had yet not shorn her head

Of the due lock, and doom'd her to the dead.
Now therefore, radiant with a thousand dyes
Drawn from the sun, the dewy Iris flies;
And, o'er her head-This I, as Heaven commands,
To Pluto bear, and loose thy mortal bands;'
Says, and divides the lock. At once expires
Life's spark; and into air the unbodied soul re-
tires.

SYMMONS.

THE ENTRANCE TO THE SHADES.

FROM THE LATIN OF VIRGIL.

YE Gods, who rule the shades with awful might! Chaos! and Phlegethon! and silent Night! Grant me unblamed to speak what Fame has told; And your deep world of darkness to unfold.

O'er shadowy realms,controll'd by Pluto's sway, Through the dun gloom they press their lonely way:

Like him who traverses the forest shade,

By the false moon not lighted, but betray'd: When Jove in clouds withdraws the heavens from And Night robes Nature in one sable hue. [view;

On hell's black threshold, by its yawning gate, Sorrows and vengeful Cares reclining wait. There wan Diseases dwell and mournful Age: There Fear and Want and ghastly Famine rage; Forms dire to sight! and there, of kindred race, Pale Death and Sleep, with Labor, hold their place: There too the Joys of mind that spring from guilt; And War, all borrid in the blood he spilt. There stand the Furies' iron beds, and there Discord with gory bands compels her snaky hair. High in the midst an elm expands its arms, Old, dark, immense; beneath whose boughs in

swarms

Cluster light dreams, the mockeries of sleep;
And by each leaf their fluttering station keep.
The region teems with monsters huge and foul:
There Centaurs stable; twofold Scyllas howl;
Vast Briareus his hundred-arm'd assault
Threats; and fell Hydra's hisses shake the vault:
Chimæra pours her flames: dire Gorgons glare:
The wings of Harpyies rend the lurid air;
And, grandly in his pomp of might display'd,
Scowls, with dark rage, the fierce tricorporate
shade*.

Here, suddenly alarm'd, the hero's hand

Shook his broad falchion at the monstrous band:
And, unadmonish'd by his sapient guide
That the vain lives in forms of shadow glide,

* Geryon.

Madly his rage had dealt its blows around;
And at impassive phantoms aim'd the wound.
Hence leads their path to Acheron's dark waves.
Turbid and foul the flood in eddies raves;
And with fierce influx on Cocytus pours.
Guard of the stream and master of the shores,
In squalid horror Charon here attends.
Clustering in tangled hoariness, descends
His mass of beard: his eyes are fix'd in flame :
A rusty garb hangs foully on his frame.
With a protruded pole and canvass spread,
He works the sable bark that wafts the dead.
Old, but without decay, the god is seen,
In age's winter, vivid still and green.

Here rush to gain the bank, a bloodless throng,
Matrons, men, boys, and chiefs in battle strong;
Maidens, and youths, the prey of funeral fires
In the sad view of their distracted sires:
As numerous as the leaves in forest glades,
When boisterous autumn shatters first their shades:
Or thick as birds, when their assembled host
In fluttering myriads settle on the coast;
O'er seas prepared for sunny realms to steer,
And fly the rigors of the wintry year.

The crowds, with longing for the further shore,
Press for their passage, and with prayers implore.
Now these, now those the surly boatman takes;
But drives the rest to distance from the lake.

SYMMONS.