ARGUMENT. ÆNEAS COMETH TO THE SIBYL OF CUMÆ, AND BY HER IS LED INTO THE UNDER-WORLD, AND THERE BEHOLDETH MANY STRANGE THINGS, AND IN THE END MEETETH HIS FATHER, ANCHISES, WHO TELLETH HIM OF THE DAYS TO COME. So spake he weeping, and his host let loose from every band, Until at last they draw anigh Cumæ's Euboean strand. They turn the bows from off the main; the toothèd anchors' grip Makes fast the keels; the shore is hid by many a curvèd ship. Hot-heart the youthful company leaps on the Westland's shore; Part falleth on to seek them out the seed of fiery store That flint-veins hide; part runneth through the dwellings of the deer, The thicket steads, and each to each the hidden streams they bare. But good Æneas seeks the house where King Apollo bides, The mighty den, the secret place set far apart, that hides 10 The awful Sibyl, whose great soul and heart he seeketh home, The Seer of Delos, showing her the hidden things to come: And so the groves of Trivia and golden house they gain. Now Dædalus, as tells the tale, fleeing from Minos' reign, Durst trust himself to heaven on wings swift hastening, and swim forth Along the road ne'er tried before unto the chilly north; So light at last o'er Chalcis' towers he hung amid the air, Then, come adown to earth once more, to thee he hallowed here, O Phoebus, all his wingèd oars, and built thee mighty fane: Androgeus' death was on the doors; then paying of the pain 20 By those Cecropians; bid, alas, each year to give in turn Seven bodies of their sons;--lo there, the lots drawn from the urn. But facing this the Gnosian land draws up amid the sea: There is the cruel bull-lust wrought, and there Pasiphaë Embraced by guile: the blended babe is there, the twiformed thing, The Minotaur, that evil sign of Venus' cherishing; And there the tangled house and toil that ne'er should be undone: But ruth of Dædalus himself a queen's love-sorrow won, And he himself undid the snare and winding wilderment. Guiding the blind feet with the thread. Thou, Icarus, wert blent 30 Full oft with such a work be sure, if grief forbade it not; But twice he tried to shape in gold the picture of thy lot, And twice the father's hands fell down. Long had their eyes read o'er Such matters, but Achates, now, sent on a while before, Was come with that Deïphobe, the Glaucus' child, the maid Of Phoebus and of Trivia, and such a word she said: "The hour will have no tarrying o'er fair shows for idle eyes; 'Twere better from an unyoked herd seven steers to sacrifice, And e'en so many hosts of ewes in manner due culled out."