Complete Works of William Morris, page 700
“Latins, that ye had counselled you hereon before today
Was both my will, and had been good: no time is this to fall
To counsel now, when as we speak the foe besets the wall.
With folk of God ill war we wage, lords of the Latin town,
With all-unconquerable folk; no battles wear them down;
Yea, beaten never have they heart to cast the sword away.
Lay down the hope ye had to gain Ætolian war-array;
Let each man be his proper hope. Lo ye, the straits are sore.
How all things lie about us now by ruin all toppled o’er, 310
Witness of this the eyes of you, the hands of you have won.
No man I blame, what valour could hath verily been done:
With all the manhood of our land the battle hath been fought:
But now what better way herein my doubtful mind hath thought
Will I set forth, and shortly tell the rede that is in me:
Hearken! beside the Tuscan stream I own an ancient lea,
Which, toward the sunset stretching far, yea o’er Sicanian bounds,
Aruncans and Rutulians sow, working the rough hill grounds
With draught of plough, but feeding down the roughest with their sheep.
Let all this land, and piny place upon the mountain-steep, 320
Be yielded for the Teucrian peace: the laws let us declare
For plighted troth, and bid the men as friends our realm to share.
There let them settle and build walls, if thitherward they yearn;
But if unto another land their minds are set to turn,
And other folk, and all they ask is from our shore to flee,
Then let us build them twice ten ships from oak of Italy,
Or more if they have men thereto: good store of ship-stuff lies
Hard by the waves; and they shall show their number and their guise;
But toil of men, and brass and gear we for their needs will find.
And now to carry these our words, and fast the troth-plight bind, 330
Send we an hundred speech-masters, the best of Latin land,
To seek them thither, stretching forth the peace-bough in the hand,
And bearing gifts; a talent’s weight of gold and ivory,
The throne therewith and welted gown, signs of my lordship high.
Take open counsel; stay the State so faint and weary grown.”
Then Drances, ever full of hate, whom Turnus’ great renown
With bitter stings of envy thwart goaded for evermore;
Lavish of wealth and fair of speech, but cold-hand in the war;
Held for no unwise man of redes, a make-bate keen enow;
The lordship of whose life, forsooth, from well-born dam did flow, 340
His father being of no account — upriseth now this man,
And piles a grievous weight of words with all the wrath he can.
“A matter dark to none, and which no voice of mine doth need,
Thou counsellest on, sweet King: for all confess in very deed
They wot whereto our fortune drives; but fear their speech doth hide:
Let him give liberty of speech, and sink his windy pride,
Because of whose unhappy fate, and evil life and will —
Yea, I will speak, despite his threats to smite me and to kill —
So many days of dukes are done, and all the city lies 349
O’erwhelmed with grief, the while his luck round camps of Troy he tries,
Trusting to flight, and scaring heaven with clashing of his sword.
One gift meseems thou shouldest add, most gracious king and lord,
Unto the many gifts thou bid’st bear to the Dardan folk,
Nor bow thyself to violence, nor lie beneath its yoke.
Father, thy daughter nobly wed unto a glorious son,
And knit the bonds of peace thereby in troth-plight never done.
Or if such terror and so great upon our hearts doth lie,
Let us adjure the man himself, and pray him earnestly
To yield up this his proper right to country and to king: —
— O why into the jaws of death wilt thou so often fling 360
Thine hapless folk, O head and fount of all the Latin ill?
No safety is in war; all we, for peace we pray thee still,
O Turnus, — for the only pledge of peace that may abide.
I first, whom thou call’st foe (and nought that name I thrust aside),
Lo, suppliant to thy feet I come! Pity thy people then!
Sink thine high heart, and, beaten, yield; surely we broken men
Have seen enough of deaths, laid waste enough of field and fold.
But if fame stir thee, if thine heart such dauntless valour hold,
If such a longing of thy soul a kingly dowry be,
Dare then, and trust thee in thy might, and breast the enemy. 370
Forsooth all we, that Turnus here a queenly wife might gain —
We common souls — a heap unwept, unburied, strew the plain.
And now for thy part, if in thee some valour hath a place
Or memory of the ancient wars, go look him in the face
Who calleth thee to come afield.”
But Turnus’ fury at the word outbrake in sudden flame.
He groaned, and from his inmost soul this speech of his outpoured:
“O Drances, when the battle-day calleth for hand and sword,
Great words good store thou givest still, and first thou comest still
When so the Sires are called: but why with words the council fill? 380
Big words aflying from thee safe, while yet the walls hold good
Against the foe, nor yet the ditch is swimming with our blood.
Go, thunder out thy wonted words! lay craven fear on me,
O Drances, thou, whose hand has heaped the Teucrian enemy
Dead all about, and everywhere has glorified the meads
With war-spoil! Thou thyself may’st try how lively valour speeds!
’Tis well the time: forsooth the road lieth no long way out
To find the foe! on every side they hedge the wall about
Go we against them! — tarriest thou? and is thy Mars indeed
A dweller in the windy tongue and feet well learned in speed, 390
The same today as yesterday?
— I beaten! who of right, O beast! shall brand me beaten man,
That seeth the stream of Ilian blood swelling the Tiber’s flow,
Who seeth all Evander’s house uprooted, laid alow;
Who seeth those Arcadian men stripped of their battle-gear?
Big Pandarus, stout Bitias, found me no craven there,
Or all the thousand whom that day to Tartarus I sent,
When I was hedged by foeman’s wall and mound’s beleaguerment
No health in war? Fool, sing such song to that Dardanian head, 399
And thine own day! cease not to fright all things with mighty dread.
Cease not to puff up with thy pride the poor twice-conquered folk,
And lay upon the Latin arms the weight of wordy yoke.
Yea, sure the chiefs of Myrmidons quake at the Phrygian sword,
Tydides and Achilles great, the Larissæan lord;
And Aufidus the flood flees back unto the Hadriac sea.
But now whereas this guile-smith fains to dread mine enmity,
And whetteth with a fashioned fear the bitter point of strife —
Nay, quake no more! for this mine hand shall spill no such a life;
But it shall dwell within thy breast and have thee for a mate. —
Now, Father, unto thee I turn, and all thy words of weight; 410
If every hope of mending war thou verily lay’st down;
If we are utterly laid waste, and, being once overthrown,
Have fallen dead; if Fate no more may turn her feet about,
Then pray we peace, and deedless hands, e’en as we may, stretch out.
Yet if of all our ancient worth some little yet abide,
I deem him excellent of men, craftsmaster of his tide,
A noble heart, who, lest his eyes should see such things befall,
Hath laid him down in death, and bit the earth’s face once for all.
And if we still have store of force, and crop of youth unlaid,
And many a town, and many a folk of Italy to aid; 420
And if across a sea of blood the Trojan glory came,
And they too died, and over all with one blast and the same
The tempest swept; why shameless thus do our first footsteps fail?
Why quake our limbs, yea e’en before they feel the trumpet’s gale?
A many things the shifting time, the long laborious days,
Have mended oft: a many men hath Fortune’s wavering ways
Made sport of, and brought back again to set on moveless rock.
The Ætolian and his Arpi host help not our battle-shock.
Yet is Messapus ours, and ours Tolumnius fortunate,
And many a duke and many a folk; nor yet shall tarry late 430
The glory of our Latin lords and this Laurentian lea.
Here too Camilla, nobly born of Volscian stock, shall be,
Leading her companies of horse that blossom brass all o’er.
But if the Teucrians me alone are calling to the war,
And thus ’tis doomed, and I so much the common good withstand —
Well, victory hath not heretofore so fled my hated hand
That I should falter from the play with such a prize in sight:
Fain shall I face him, yea, though he outgo Achilles’ might,
And carry battle-gear as good of Vulcan’s fashioning,
For you, and for Latinus here, my father and my king, 440
I, Turnus, second unto none in valour of old years,
Devote my life. Æneas calls me only of the peers?
— O that he may! — not Drances here — the debt of death to pay
If God be wroth, or if Fame win, to bear the prize away.”
But while amid their doubtful fate the ball of speech they tossed,
Contending sore, Æneas moved his camp and battle-host;
And lo, amid the kingly house there runs a messenger
Mid tumult huge, who all the town to mighty dread doth stir,
With tidings how the Teucrian host and Tuscan men of war
Were marching from the Tiber flood, the meadows covering o’er. 450
Amazèd are the minds of men; their hearts with tremor shake,
And anger stirred by bitter stings is presently awake:
In haste and heat they crave for arms; the youth cries on the sword,
The Fathers mutter sad and weep: with many a wrangling word
A mighty tumult goeth up, and toward the sky doth sweep:
Not otherwise than when the fowl amid the thicket deep
Sit down in hosts; or when the swans send forth their shrilling song
About Padusa’s fishy flood, the noisy pools among.
“Come, fellow-folk,” cries Turnus then, for he the time doth seize,
“Call ye to council even now, and sit and praise the peace, 460
And let the armed foe wrack the realm!”
Nor more he said withal,
But turned about and went his ways from that high-builded hall.
Said he: “Volusus, lead away the Volscian ranks to fight,
And Rutuli! Messapus, thou, afield with horse and knight!
Thou, Coras, with thy brother duke sweep down the level mead.
Let some make breaches good, and some man the high towers with heed;
And let the rest bear arms with me whereso my bidding sends.”
Then straightway, running in all haste, to wall the city wends.
Sore shaken in his very heart, by that ill tide undone,
His council Sire Latinus leaves and those great redes begun: 470
Blaming himself that he took not Æneas of free will,
Nor gave the town that Dardan lord the place of son to fill.
Now some dig dykes before the gate, or carry stones and stakes,
And bloody token of the war the shattering trump awakes.
Mothers and lads, a motley guard, they crown the threatened wall,
For this last tide of grief and care hath voice to cry for all.
Moreover to the temple-stead, to Pallas’ house on high,
The Queen goes forth hedged all about by matron company,
And bearing gifts: next unto whom, the cause of all this woe,
With lovely eyes cast down to earth, doth maid Lavinia go. 480
They enter and with frankincense becloud the temple o’er,
And cast their woeful voices forth from out the high-built door:
“O Weapon-great Tritonian Maid, O front of war-array,
Break thou the Phrygian robber’s sword, and prone his body lay
On this our earth; cast him adown beneath our gates high-reared!”
Now eager Turnus for the war his body did begird:
The ruddy-gleaming coat of mail upon his breast he did,
And roughened him with brazen scales; with gold his legs he hid;
With brow yet bare, unto his side he girt the sword of fight,
And all a glittering golden man ran down the castle’s height. 490
High leaps his heart, his hope runs forth the foeman’s host to face:
As steed, when broken are the bonds, fleeth the stabling place,
Set free at last, and, having won the unfenced open mead,
Now runneth to the grassy grounds wherein the mare-kind feed;
Or, wont to water, speedeth him in well-known stream to wash,
And, wantoning, with uptossed head about the world doth dash,
While wave his mane-locks o’er his neck, and o’er his shoulders play.
But, leading on the Volscian host, there comes across his way
Camilla now, who by the gate leapt from her steed adown,
And in likewise her company, who left their horses lone, 500
And earthward streamed: therewith the Queen such words as this gave forth:
“Turnus, if any heart may trust in manly might and worth,
I dare to promise I will meet Æneas’ war array,
And face the Tyrrhene knights alone, and deal them battle-play.
Let my hand be the first to try the perils of the fight,
The while the foot-men townward bide, and hold the walls aright.”
Then Turnus answered, with his eyes fixed on the awful maid:
“O glory of Italian land, how shall the thanks be paid
Worthy thy part? but since all this thy great soul overflies,
To portion out our work today with me indeed it lies. 510
Æneas, as our spies sent out and rumour saith for sure,
The guileful one, his light-armed horse hath now sent on before
To sweep the lea-land, while himself, high on the hilly ground,
Across the desert mountain-necks on for our walls is bound.
But I a snare now dight for him in woodland hollow way
Besetting so the straitened pass with weaponed war-array.
But bear thy banners forth afield to meet the Tyrrhene horse,
With fierce Messapus joined to thee, the Latin battle-force,
Yea, and Tiburtus: thou thyself the leader’s care shalt take.”
So saith he, and with such-like words unto the war doth wake 520
Messapus and his brother-lords; then ‘gainst the foeman fares.
There was a dale of winding ways, most meet for warlike snares
And lurking swords: with press of leaves the mountain bent is black
That shutteth it on either side: thence leads a scanty track;
By strait-jawed pass men come thereto, a very evil road:
But thereabove, upon the height, lieth a plain abode,
A mountain-heath scarce known of men, a most safe lurking-place,
Whether to right hand or to left the battle ye will face,
Or hold the heights, and roll a storm of mighty rocks adown.
Thither the war-lord wends his way by country road well known, 530
And takes the place, and bideth there within the wood accursed.
Meanwhile within the heavenly house Diana speaketh first
To Opis of the holy band, the maiden fellowship,
And words of grief most sorrowful Latonia’s mouth let slip:
“Unto the bitter-cruel war the maid Camilla wends,
O maid: and all for nought indeed that dearest of my friends
Is girding her with arms of mine.”
Nought new-born was the love
Diana owned, nor sudden-sweet the soul in her did move:
When Metabus, by hatred driven, and his o’erweening pride,
Fled from Privernum’s ancient town, his fathers’ country-side, 540
Companion of his exile there, amid the weapon-game,
A babe he had with him, whom he called from her mother’s name
Casmilla, but a little changed, and now Camilla grown.
He, bearing her upon his breast, the woody ridges lone
Went seeking, while on every side the sword-edge was about,
And all around were scouring wide the weaponed Volscian rout.
But big lay Amasenus now athwart his very road,
Foaming bank-high, such mighty rain from out of heaven had flowed.
There, as he dight him to swim o’er, love of his babe, and fear
For burden borne so well-beloved, his footsteps back did bear. 550
At last, as all things o’er he turned, this sudden rede he took:
The huge spear that in mighty hand by hap the warrior shook,
A close-knit shaft of seasoned oak with many a knot therein,
Thereto did he his daughter bind, wrapped in the cork-tree’s skin,
And to the middle of the beam he tied her craftily;
Then, shaking it in mighty hand, thus spoke unto the sky:
“O kind, O dweller in the woods, Latonian Virgin fair,
A father giveth thee a maid, who holds thine arms in air
As from the foe she flees to thee: O Goddess, take thine own,
That now upon the doubtful winds by this mine arm is thrown!” 560
