A pause of grief, an interval from woe, Till my soft soul be temper’d to sustain Accustom’d sorrows, and inur’d to pain. If you in pity grant this one request, My death shall glut the hatred of his breast.” This mournful message pious Anna bears, And seconds with her own her sister’s tears: But all her arts are still employ’d in vain; Again she comes, and is refus’d again. His harden’d heart nor pray’rs nor threat’nings move; Fate, and the god, had stopp’d his ears to love. As, when the winds their airy quarrel try, Justling from ev’ry quarter of the sky, This way and that the mountain oak they bend, His boughs they shatter, and his branches rend; With leaves and falling mast they spread the ground; The hollow valleys echo to the sound: Unmov’d, the royal plant their fury mocks, Or, shaken, clings more closely to the rocks; Far as he shoots his tow’ring head on high, So deep in earth his fix’d foundations lie. No less a storm the Trojan hero bears; Thick messages and loud complaints he hears, And bandied words, still beating on his ears. Sighs, groans, and tears proclaim his inward pains; But the firm purpose of his heart remains. The wretched queen, pursued by cruel fate, Begins at length the light of heav’n to hate, And loathes to live. Then dire portents she sees, To hasten on the death her soul decrees: Strange to relate! for when, before the shrine, She pours in sacrifice the purple wine, The purple wine is turn’d to putrid blood, And the white offer’d milk converts to mud. This dire presage, to her alone reveal’d, From all, and ev’n her sister, she conceal’d. A marble temple stood within the grove, Sacred to death, and to her murder’d love; That honour’d chapel she had hung around With snowy fleeces, and with garlands crown’d: Oft, when she visited this lonely dome, Strange voices issued from her husband’s tomb; She thought she heard him summon her away, Invite her to his grave, and chide her stay. Hourly ’tis heard, when with a boding note The solitary screech owl strains her throat, And, on a chimney’s top, or turret’s height, With songs obscene disturbs the silence of the night. Besides, old prophecies augment her fears; And stern Aeneas in her dreams appears, Disdainful as by day: she seems, alone, To wander in her sleep, thro’ ways unknown, Guideless and dark; or, in a desert plain, To seek her subjects, and to seek in vain: Like Pentheus, when, distracted with his fear, He saw two suns, and double Thebes, appear; Or mad Orestes, when his mother’s ghost Full in his face infernal torches toss’d, And shook her snaky locks: he shuns the sight,