Two days we pass'd in mirth, till friendly gales,
Blown from the supplied our swelling sails.
Then to the royal seer I thus began:
‘O thou, who know'st, beyond the reach of man,
The laws of heav'n, and what the stars decree;
Whom Phoebus taught unerring prophecy,
From his own tripod, and his holy tree;
Skill'd in the wing'd inhabitants of air,
What auspices their notes and flights declare:
O say—for all religious rites portend
A happy voyage, and a prosp'rous end;
And ev'ry power and omen of the sky
Direct my course for destin'd Italy;
But only dire Celaeno, from the gods,
A dismal famine fatally forebodes—/L>
O say what dangers I am first to shun,
What toils vanquish, and what course to run.’
The prophet first with sacrifice adores
The greater gods; their pardon then implores;
Unbinds the fillet from his holy head;
To Phoebus, next, my trembling steps he led,
Full of religious doubts and awful dread.
Then, with his god possess'd, before the shrine,
These words proceeded from his mouth divine:
Vergil. Aeneid. John Dryden. trans. XXX. XXX. XXX.
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