Not far hence the traveller’s eye sees stretching on every side the Mourning Fields: such the name they bear. Here dwell those whom cruel Love’s consuming tooth has eaten to the heart, in the privacy of hidden walks and an enshrouding myrtle wood: their tender sorrows 25 quit them not even in death. In this region he sees Phædra and Procris, and sad Eriphyle, pointing to the wounds of her ruthless son, and Evadne, and Pasiphaë: along with them moves Laodamia, and Cæneus, once a man, now a woman, brought back by the turn of fate to 30 her former self. Among these was Phœnicia’s daughter, Dido, fresh from her death-wound, wandering in that mighty wood: soon as the Trojan hero stood at her side, and knew her, looming dimly through the dusk—as a man sees or thinks he sees through the clouds, when the 35 month is young, the rising moon—his tears broke forth, and he addressed her tenderly and lovingly. “Unhappy Dido! and was it then a true messenger that reached me with the tale that you were dead: that the sword had done its worst? Was it, alas, to a grave that I brought you? By the stars of heaven I swear, by the powers above, by all that is most sacred here underground, against my will, fair queen, I quitted your coast. 5 No; it was the command of the gods; the same stern force which compels me now to pass through this realm of shade, this wilderness of squalor and abysmal night; it was that which drove me by its uttered will: nor could I have thought that my departure would bring on you 10 such violence of grief. Stay your step, and withdraw not from the look I bend on you. Whom would you shun? the last word which fate suffers me to address you is this.” With words like these, Æneas kept soothing the soul that blazed forth through those scowling eyes, and moving 15 himself to tears. She stood with averted head and eyes on the ground, her features as little moved by the speech he essayed as if she held the station of a stubborn flint, or a crag of Marpessa.[221] At length she flung herself away, and, unforgiving still, fled into the shadow of the 20 wood, where her former lord, Sychæus, answers her sorrows with his, and gives her full measure for her love. Yet, none the less, Æneas, thrilled through and through by her cruel fate, follows far on her track with tears, and sends his pity along with her. 25