If Jove demand such fixèd fate and every change doth bar, Yet let him faint mid weapon-strife and hardy folk of war! And let him, exiled from his house, torn from Iulus, wend, Beseeching help mid wretched death of many and many a friend. And when at last he yieldeth him to pact of grinding peace, Then short-lived let his lordship be, and lovèd life's increase. And let him fall before his day, unburied on the shore! 620 Lo this I pray, this last of words forth with my blood I pour. And ye, O Tyrians, 'gainst his race that is, and is to be, Feed full your hate! When I am dead send down this gift to me: No love betwixt the peoples twain, no troth for anything! And thou, Avenger of my wrongs, from my dead bones outspring, To bear the fire and the sword o'er Dardan-peopled earth Now or hereafter; whensoe'er the day brings might to birth. I pray the shore against the shore, the sea against the sea, The sword 'gainst sword--fight ye that are, and ye that are to be!" So sayeth she, and everywise she turns about her mind 630 How ending of the loathèd light she speediest now may find. And few words unto Barce spake, Sychæus' nurse of yore; For the black ashes held her own upon the ancient shore: "Dear nurse, my sister Anna now bring hither to my need, And bid her for my sprinkling-tide the running water speed; And bid her have the hosts with her, and due atoning things: So let her come; but thou, thine head bind with the holy strings; For I am minded now to end what I have set afoot, And worship duly Stygian Jove and all my cares uproot; Setting the flame beneath the bale of that Dardanian head." 640 She spake; with hurrying of eld the nurse her footsteps sped. But Dido, trembling, wild at heart with her most dread intent, Rolling her blood-shot eyes about, her quivering cheeks besprent With burning flecks, and otherwhere dead white with death drawn nigh Burst through the inner doorways there and clomb the bale on high, Fulfilled with utter madness now, and bared the Dardan blade, Gift given not for such a work, for no such ending made. There, when upon the Ilian gear her eyen had been set, And bed well known, 'twixt tears and thoughts awhile she lingered yet; Then brooding low upon the bed her latest word she spake: 650 "O raiment dear to me while Gods and fate allowed, now take This soul of mine and let me loose from all my woes at last! I, I have lived, and down the way fate showed to me have passed; And now a mighty shade of me shall go beneath the earth! A glorious city have I raised, and brought my walls to birth, Avenged my husband, made my foe, my brother, pay the pain: Happy, ah, happy overmuch were all my life-days' gain, If never those Dardanian keels had drawn our shores anigh."