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Support the Monkey! Tell All your Friends and Teachers |
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Support the Monkey! Tell All your Friends and Teachers |
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And Trojan games on Actian shores renew. Our youth their naked limbs besmear with oil, And exercise the wrastlers' noble toil; Pleas'd to have sail'd so long before the wind, And left so many Grecian towns behind. The sun had now fulfill'd his annual course, And Boreas on the seas display'd his force: I fix'd upon the temple's lofty door The brazen shield which vanquish'd Abas bore; The verse beneath my name and action speaks: 'These arms Aeneas took from conqu'ring Greeks.' Then I command to weigh; the seamen ply Their sweeping oars; the smoking billows fly. The sight of high Phaeacia soon we lost, And skimm'd along Epirus' rocky coast. "Then to Chaonia's port our course we bend, And, landed, to Buthrotus' heights ascend. Here wondrous things were loudly blaz'd fame: How Helenus reviv'd the Trojan name, And reign'd in Greece; that Priam's captive son Succeeded Pyrrhus in his bed and throne; And fair Andromache, restor'd by fate, Once more was happy in a Trojan mate. I leave my galleys riding in the port, And long to see the new Dardanian court. By chance, the mournful queen, before the gate, Then solemniz'd her former husband's fate. Green altars, rais'd of turf, with gifts she crown'd, And sacred priests in order stand around, And thrice the name of hapless Hector sound. The grove itself resembles Ida's wood; And Simois seem'd the well-dissembled flood. But when at nearer distance she beheld My shining armor and my Trojan shield, Astonish'd at the sight, the vital heat Forsakes her limbs; her veins no longer beat: She faints, she falls, and scarce recov'ring strength, Thus, with a falt'ring tongue, she speaks at length: "'Are you alive, O goddess-born ?' she said, 'Or if a ghost, then where is Hector's shade?' At this, she cast a loud and frightful cry. With broken words I made this brief reply: 'All of me that remains appears in sight; |
