Читать книгу Authors and Writers Associated with Morristown - Julia Keese Colles - Страница 27

The destinies now are for Lausus the last threads

Gathering in; for Æneas his powerful scimitar ruthless815

Drives through the midst of the youth, and buries it wholly within him,

Right through the menacer's targe, and his delicate armor, the keen blade

Passed through the tunic his mother had woven in tissue of gold thread

For him, and blood filled all of his bosom; then life on the breezes

Mournful withdrew to the shades, and abandoned his body untimely.820

But as the son of Anchises in truth on the visage and features

Gazed of the dying—the features, becoming amazingly pallid—

Pitying deeply he sighed and instinctively tendered his right hand,

Fresh as the image recurred to his mind of regard for a father:

"What to thee now, O pitiable boy, for these laudable efforts,825

What shall the pious Æneas, befitting such nobleness render?

Keep it—thine armor, in which thou rejoicest, and I to thy parents'

Shades and their ashes, if this could be any requital, remit thee;

Yet thou in this, though unlucky, canst solace thy sorrowful exit,

That by the hand of the mighty Æneas thou fallest." Abruptly830

Chides he his faltering comrades, as gently from earth he uplifts him,

Soiling his ringlets with blood, that were combed in the comeliest fashion.

Meanwhile, his father was down by the wave of the stream of the Tiber

Staunching his wound with its waters, and resting his body, reclining

Close by the trunk of a tree. At a distance his coppery helmet825

Hangs on its boughs, and at rest on the sod is his cumbersome armor:

Standing around are his warriors chosen; he sickly and panting

Eases his neck, as his out-combed beard streamed down on his bosom;

Often he asks after Lausus, and many a messenger sends he

Back to recall him, and bear him his sorrowful parent's injunctions:840

But on his armor his comrades were weepingly bearing the lifeless

Lausus away—a hero o'ercome by the wound of a hero.