But further, while the altar-fires she feeds with virgin brands, The maid Lavinia, and beside her ancient father stands, Out! how along her length of hair the grasp of fire there came, And all the tiring of her head was caught in crackling flame. And there her royal tresses blazed, and blazed her glorious crown Gem-wrought, and she one cloud of smoke and yellow fire was grown: And wrapped therein, the fiery God she scattered through the house: And sure it seemed a dreadful thing, a story marvellous: For they fell singing she should grow glorious of fame and fate, But unto all her folk should be the seed of huge debate. 80 So troubled by this tokening dread forth fareth now the king To Faunus' fane, his father-seer, to ask him counselling 'Neath Albunea the high, whose wood, the thicket most of worth, Resoundeth with the holy well and breathes the sulphur forth. From whence the folk of Italy and all Oenotrian land Seek rede amidst of troublous time. Here, when the priest in hand Hath borne the gifts, and laid him down amidst the hush of night On the strown fells of slaughtered ewes, and sought him sleep aright, He seeth wondrous images about him flit and shift, He hearkeneth many a changing voice, of talk with Gods hath gift, 90 And holdeth speech with Acheron, from deep Avernus come. There now the sire Latinus went seeking the answers home, And there an hundred woolly ewes in order due did slay, And propped upon the fells thereof on bed of fleeces lay, Till from the thickets inner depths the sudden answer came: "Seek not thy daughter, O my son, to wed to Latin name; Unto the bridal set on foot let not thy troth be given: Thy sons are coming over sea to raise our blood to heaven, And sons of sons' sons from their stem shall see beneath their feet All things for them to shift and doom; all things the sun may meet, 100 As to and fro he wendeth way 'twixt either ocean wave." Such warnings of the silent night that father Faunus gave, Shut up betwixt his closed lips Latinus held no whit, But through Ausonia flying fame had borne the noise of it, When that Laomedontian folk at last had moored their ships Unto the grassy-mounded bank whereby the river slips. Æneas and Iulus fair, and all their most and best, Beneath a tall tree's boughs had laid their bodies down to rest: They dight the feast; about the grass on barley-cakes they lay What meat they had,--for even so Jove bade them do that day,-- 110 And on the ground that Ceres gave the woodland apples pile. And so it happed, that all being spent, they turn them in a while To Ceres' little field, and eat, egged on by very want, And dare to waste with hands and teeth the circle thin and scant Where fate lay hid, nor spare upon the trenchers wide to fall.