# The collected poems of James Elroy Flecker/Aeneid, Book 6

Flecker's translation of the sixth book of the Aeneid
Virgil's Æneid, Book VI
(ll. 1-19)
Tearful he spake: then drave the fleet along: At length to Cumæ, by Eubœans raised, They gliding came: set prows to face the sea, Struck deep the anchor’s stubborn tooth, festooned Its harbour with the sweep of curved array. Then leap the young ashore with flashing souls (Are not the sands Hesperian?): they strike Flints for their veins’ hot secret, or they stray With cleavesome axe unhoming furry beasts Or shew on what tracks water may be found. But this meanwhile god-fearing Æneas Seeks the gapped cave where high Apollo reigns And his dire Sybil murmurs truth of doom,
Mind and soul breathed on by the god-inspired To flash out prophecies. They have come near Diana’s garden and her golden fane. Dædalus once, Minoan realms to flee
–Brave with great swooping wings to swim the sky
Steered a blind journey to the windy North Till his strange shadows darkened Cumæ's rock.
He, there alighting, there to Earth returned, To Phœbus sacrificed those oars, his wings.
(ll 264-547)
Gods of the ghostly Empire and ye shades So still, Chaos and Phlegethon so still With leagues of night around you, me empower Heard tales to tell: me with high aid empower Earth’s deep—embowelled secret to betray!  They went obscure in lowering lone night Through lodges of King Dis, untenanted,– Featureless lands. Thus goes a forest pathway Beneath the curst light of the wav’ring moon, When Jove has gloomed the sky, and pitchy dark Uncoloured all the world. In Hell’s first reach
Fronting the very vestibule of Orcus Griefs and the Cares have set their couches down– The vengeful Cares. There pale Diseases dwell, Sad Eld and Fear and loathsome Poverty And Hunger, that bad counsellor,–dire shapes– And Death and Toil, and Sleep brother of Death And soul-corrupting joys. Opposed he viewed War the great murderer, and those steel bowers The Furies deck for bridal, and Discord Daft, with blood-ribbons on her serpent hair.  But straight in front a huge black knotted elm
Stood branching: here, they say, the Vain Dreams roost;— There’s not a leaf without one stuck behind! Next he saw twisted beasts of the old tales: Centaurs were stabled at the gates: Scyllas Spread their twin shapes, Briareus his hundred arms And Lerna’s beast behold hissing out fear, Chimæra too, who fights with fire, and Gorgons And Harpies, and a shade with a triple form! Such was the horror seized Æneas then He made to meet their onset with cold steel, And had th’ instructed Sybil not advised That these were gossamer vitalities Flitting in stuffless mockery of form, He’d have leapt on and lashed the empty air.  Hence leads a road to Acheron, vast flood Of thick and restless slime: all that foul ooze It belches in Cocytus. Here keeps watch That wild and filthy pilot of the marsh Charon, from whose rugged old chin trails down The hoary beard of centuries: his eyes Are Fixed, but flame. His grimy cloak hangs loose Rough-knotted at the shoulder : his own hands Pole on the boat, or tend the sail that wafts His dismal skiff and its fell freight along. Ah, he is old, but with that toughening eld That speaks his godhead! To the bank and him All a great multitude came pouring down, Brothers and husbands, and the proud-souled heroes, Life’s labour done: and boys and unwed maidens And the young men by whose flame-funeral
Parents had wept. Many as leaves that fall Gently in autumn when the sharp cold comes Or all the birds that flock at the turn o' the year Over the ocean to the lands of light. They stood and prayed each one to be first taken: They stretched their hands for love of the other side, But the grim sailor takes now these, now those:
And some he drives a distance from the shore, Æneas, moved and marvelling at this stir Cried—-" O chaste Sibyl tell me why this throng That rushes to the river? What desire Have all these phantoms? and what rule’s award Drives these back from the marge, let those go over Sweeping the livid shallows with the oar?" The old priestess replied in a few words, "Son of Anchises of true blood divine, Behold the deep Cocytus and dim Styx By whom the high gods fear to swear in vain.
This shiftless crowd all is unsepulchred: The boatman there is Charon : those who embark The buried. None may leave this beach of horror To cross the growling stream before that hour That hides their white bones in a quiet tomb. A hundred years they flutter round these shores: Then they may cross the waters long desired."  Æneas stopped and stood there heavily Thoughtful and sad for this unfair decree. Wretched for lack of sepulchre he saw Leucaspis and the Lycian convoy's chief Orontes. They left Troy with rough sea
And lost their ships and crew to the south-west wind.  There too did roam the pilot Palinurus, Who steering up from Libya by the stars Had fallen from the stern a few days since Deep in the wave. So girt with gloom stood he The hero scarce could see–but seeing, he cried:– "Thee, Palinurus, what relentless god Tore from our love to drown thee in mid main! Say, for Apollo never yet found false Deceived me here, in mystic song foretelling That safe across the waters thou shouldst come To tread Italian soil. Is this kept promise?" But he:—"Captain, the Tripod sang no lies Nor was’t a god that Hung me to the waves, But whilst I steered, the chance of a sharp shock So wrenched the gear entrusted to my hands That clinging fast I was swept overboard Tiller and all. Witness, O passionate waves, Less did I fear my peril than the ship’s Which now dismantled and its pilot gone Rode at the mercy of the bristling swell. We Three winter nights across the infinite sea; The strong South bore me, piling up the waves; But the fourth morning from a billow’s crest, I saw the cliffs of Italy and swam Landwards slowly. For now was danger past Had not a cruel folk come on with swords, As weighted by my dripping clothes I clutched A broken rock’s summit with crooked hand, And deemed me–brutes–a prize. Sport of the waves
Is Palinurus now, and the winds whirl him All up and down the shore. By the kind light And spacious air I pray thee: by thy Sire And young Iulus growing fair and tall Defeat my woes, unconquerable man! Either cast earth upon me—as thou mayst To Veline harbour steering, or maybe If there’s a way–thy mother was divine And much it needeth the god’s help to float; On such grand rivers and the Stygian mere– Hold out thy hand to one who is in sorrow, Bear me across the wave! So shall I know At least of Death the quiet and the home." He spake: the Sibyl answered: "Palinurus, What dread desire is thine? Wouldst thou attempt, Unburied, waves of Styx and that stern stream The Furies haunt? Wouldst thou approach that shore And have no mandate? Dost thou hope to melt Fate with a prayer? But listen and take heart For all the people of the cities round Driven forth by omens dire from the high heaven Shall honour thy remains and raise a tomb And on thy tomb shall all due rites perform And all that place for evermore shall keep The name of Palinurus." As she spake His trouble ceased: a while from his sad heart Grief flies. He is glad the land should beat his name. Set path pursuing they approached the stream Whom soon the sailor of the Stygian wave Saw pass the silent wood and seek the marge
And hailed censorious:–"Thou who walkest down Clashing thy armour by our streams of Hell, Speak thy intent : there on thy road stand still! Here lies the land of shadow dream and night, And no warm flesh may ride on Stygian keel, Small joy had I admitting to this mere Hercules or those victor sons of Heaven Peirithoos and Theseus. Hercules Chained with bare hands the dog of Tartarus And dragged him from the throne quaking: they came To rape our mistress from the bed of Dis." "We spin no snares," the Amphrysian sharp replied: "Be soothed, no violence these arms portend. Let the huge Janitor’s eternal cry Still from his cave confound the bloodless ghosts, And Proserpine unravished still attend Her kinsman’s threshold. Æneas of Troy, Famed dutiful and fearless, here descends" To embrace his father in your pits of gloom. If high devotion spells thee nought, this bough, (She drew it from her breast) may move thee still."  Calm sank the heart but now swoln out with rage: With no word more, eyeing that ancient bough, Doom’s symbol, after ages seen again, Turned he his cærule prow and made the shore. Thence other souls who sat along the dunes He drave, and let his gangway down, and took The huge Æneas in his patchèd punt, Which groaned o’ercargoed; and through many a crack
Oozed up the mere: yet safe across the stream
Sybil and soldier did he row, and beached
On the green formless slime of the other side.  Cerberus here sends ringing through his realm A triple-throated howling, couched, immune,
With cavern for a kennel. The Priestess, Seeing his dragon necks stiffen to strike, A cake of honey and bemusing herbs Tossed him. Three maws the ravening monster spread, Snapped it in air, and all his hugesome bulk Uncoiled and sprawled and stretched across the cave. Æneas down the brute-unwardened path Quick pace pursues. Behind him lies the stream
Whose waves whisper no whisper of return.  Now cries are heard, and thin abundant wind All down Hell’s forecourt weep the Infant Souls, Whom shareless of life’s shining dower, Doom
Tore from the breast and whelmed in Death’s sharp wave, Near, men judged out of life by false decree. They have their urn, their Umpire, these abodes: 'Tis Minos draws the lots, he who may call The council of the silent : he who reads, Grand arbiter, the histories of men. And next them flt the Sad Ones who prepared
With their rash hands their own extinction’s cup And flung their souls on dark to spite the day. Ah could they, could they back to the bright sky What years would they not bear of toil or pain! Law bars them fast: the mere’s grim loveless wave Bounds their domain : Styx nine times interfused Imprisons. Here the Broken-hearted Fields
Roll out to the horizon. Such their name. Here those whom Love remorseless and unkind Devoured by dissolution, walk in peace Down secret byways of a myrtle forest. Here Phædra, Procris and sad Eriphyle He saw, whom her fierce son had wounded sore, Pasiphæ, Evadne: in their train Laodamia, and that once a boy Now woman, Cæneus, thus reshaped by doom. Among them one love-pierced not long ago,– Dido of Carthage roamed the tall grove through Whom when Troy’s hero drawing near beheld, Gliding through murk and shadow, as one sees Or dreams to see through clouds the thin new moon, He wept, calling her with a lover’s cry:– "Dido ill-starred, but was it truth they told me, Thy fate-—the self—sought ending by the sword? To death I brought thee. O by the stars I swear By the high gods and by all faith that holds In Earth’s black core, unwilling, O my queen, Sailed I away from Carthage. But the gods They who now send me through this shadow world, These lands so far, this oceanic night, Drave me with uncharitable command Nor could I dream sorrow as sharp as that Should wait on my departure. But stay, stay!
I do not pass so soon: whom dost thou flee ? Fate grants me thus to hail thee the last time!"
So tried Æneas through his tears to assuage That shy wild spirit glancing round in fear:
But she looked, down, turning her face aside, A face as unresponsive to appeal As a hard flint or a high marble mountain. Then darting back, down the dark grove she flies
Unfriendly, where Sichæus, her old spouse, His gentleness love’s proxy, tends her still. Æneas, victim of a chance unfair Still follows, weeps, and pities as she flies.  But now, their journey’s settled path pursuing, On to the ultimate secret fields they move, Where walk the mighty Captains. Tydeus here He saw, and Parthenopæus, warrior bold, And one that seemed Adrastus, and so pale, And all the war-mown Trojans, for whose fate Such tears had been shed in the face of heaven. Rank upon rank he, sorrowful, saw them,– Glaucus and Medon and Thersilochus, Antenor’s son and Polyphuates, vowed Demeter’s, and still armed, still charioted
Idaeus. Right and left the Spirits crowd
To their eyes’ festival, to dally pleased, Or step beside, or ask him all his tale. But when the Danaan phalanx and great hosts Of Agamemnon saw a Man and Arms That flashed among the shadows, terrible fear Set them aquiver: as to the ships of old, Some turned to flee: some raised a little cry, So thin its echoes mocked their gaping mouths.  Here saw he Priam’s son, Deiphobus, With all his body rent, all his face torn
And both his hands, and ravaged earless head, And cut nostrils–dishonourable wounds. Yet could he recognize the quaking ghost That strove to veil the horror of its face And called him in the voice he could well know:– "Deiphobus, Hero of old Trojan blood, Who willed you this vile punishment? To whom Was power against you given. Rumour told me On that last night how on a tower of dead, Weary with slaughter of the Greeks, you lay Prone. It was I then raised on Rhætian shore The empty mound and thrice with a loud cry Summoned thy wraith. Arms and a name preserve That place–but thee, dear friend, I could not find To bury e'er I left my native land." But Priam’s son:—"Friend, what couldst thou do more? Thou hast paid every due to death and me. But me my destiny true the sin Of that She-murderess of Spartan brood Whelmed in these woes: these are her monuments. How in deceitful pleasure that last night We spent, well dost thou know, too well must know, When with a leap o’er steep-stoned Pergamon Pregnant with soldiery, the fatal horse Its bristling burden flung. She, she it was With traitor dance led round our Phrygian dames The wild Evoe proclaiming! A huge torch She shook above the revel, which did call The Danaans from Troy Tower. I heavily Slept the meanwhile on couch of doom, and me
Deep honied quiet, miming Death's own peace, Thralled. And my dear spouse, busy all the while Strips the house bare of arms: and my good sword's No longer at my pillow. 'Ready now! In Menelaus! Every door's ajar!' This was her great gift to her old lover, And this her scheme for hushing up old tales! Quick to the end now! They break in my door, With them Ulysses, Crime's High Advocate. Gods, load this on the Greeks,–if the good man Who cries down vengeance be a good man still! But thee alive what hap–tell in thy turn– Brought here? Dost come a plaything of the wave By traveller's chance? Or at the hest divine? What fate's oppression draws thee to these homes Where no sun shines nor any view stands clear? But while they talked, across the pole of heaven. Had swept the Charioteer who drives from Dawn, And dalliance had soon eaten up the dole Of time allotted: so the Sybil warned– "Down comes the night, Æneas: all too fast, We weep the hours away. Here splits the road, Right, to the foot of the big walls of Dis, But the left leads the damned to their deserts In impious Tartary." "But chide no more;" Replied Deiphobus: "I will return My place is in the roll-call of the Dead, Go, Splendour of our Story: grace be thine Beyond our measure." And he turned away.
1914