Now when these souls have trodden the full circle of a thousand years, God call’s all of them forth in long procession to the Lethe River, and this he does so that when they again visit the sky’s vault they may be without memory, and a wish to re-enter bodily life may dawn.
It is for men to make wage war and make peace; for that task is theirs.
I am that poet who in times past made the light melody of pastoral poetry. In my next poem I left the woods for the adjacent farmlands, teaching them to obey even the most exacting tillers of the soil; and the farmers liked my work. But now I turn to the terrible strife of Mars.
I will carry you on my back. This labor of love will never wear me down. Whatever falls to us now, we both will share one peril, one path to safety.
How fortunate were you, thrice fortunate and more, whose luck it was to die under the high walls of Troy before your parents’ eyes!
O Achates, where in the world is there a country, or any place in it, unreached by our suffering? Look; there is Priam. Even here high merit has its due; there is pity for a world’s distress, and a sympathy for short lived humanity.
Some of us looked in awed wonder at that massive horse, the gift for Minerva, the never-wed, which was to be our destruction.
We, poor fools, spent this our last day decorating with festal greenery every temple in our town.
Here is the toil of that house, and the inextricable wandering.
Sweet relics, sweet so long as God and Destiny allowed, now receive my life-breath, and set me free from this suffering. I have lived my life and finished the course which Fortune allotted me.
Ah, Palinurus, you were too trustful of the calm sky and sea. So you will lie, a shroudless form, on an unknown strand.
Each man has his day, and the time of life is brief for all, and never comes again.
Sic nos in sceptra reponis?
Et iam prima novo spargebat lumine terras.
When once thou shalt be able to now read the glories of heroes and thy father’s deeds, and to know virtue as she is, slowly the plain shall grow golden with the soft corn-spike, and the reddening grape trail from the wild briar, and hard oaks drip of honey.
Believe one who hath proved it, how mightily he rises over his shield, in what a whirlwind he hurls his spear.
A joy it will be one day, perhaps, to remember even this.
His looks, his words, they pierce her heart and cling – no peace, no rest for her body, love will give her none.
Hic pietatis honos?
But of course – so Turnus can fetch his royal bride – our lives are cheap, scattered in piles across the field, unburied and unwept.