And how at length the promised shore to gain. } The rest the Fates from Helenus conceal, And Juno's angry power forbids to tell. First, then, that happy shore, that seems so nigh, } Will far from your deluded wishes fly; } Long tracts of seas divide your hopes from Italy: } For you must cruize along Sicilian shores, And stem the currents with your struggling oars; Then round the Italian coast your navy steer; And, after this, to Circe's island veer; And, last, before your new foundations rise, Must pass the Stygian lake, and view the nether skies. Now mark the signs of future ease and rest, And bear them safely treasured in thy breast. When, in the shady shelter of a wood, And near the margin of a gentle flood, Thou shalt behold a sow upon the ground, With thirty sucking young encompassed round; The dam and offspring white as falling snow-- } These on thy city shall their name bestow, } And there shall end thy labours and thy woe. } Nor let the threatened famine fright thy mind; For Phœbus will assist, and Fate the way will find. Let not thy course to that ill coast be bent, Which fronts from far the Epirian continent: Those parts are all by Grecian foes possessed. The savage Locrians here the shores infest: There fierce Idomeneus his city builds, And guards with arms the Salentinian fields; And on the mountain's brow Petilia stands, Which Philoctetes with his troops commands. Even when thy fleet is landed on the shore, And priests with holy vows the gods adore, Then with a purple veil involve your eyes, Lest hostile faces blast the sacrifice. These rites and customs to the rest commend, That to your pious race they may descend. "When, parted hence, the wind, that ready waits For Sicily, shall bear you to the straits, Where proud Pelorus opes a wider way, Tack to the larboard, and stand off to sea: Veer starboard sea and land. The Italian shore, And fair Sicilia's coast, were one, before An earthquake caused the flaw: the roaring tides } The passage broke, that land from land divides; } And, where the lands retired, the rushing ocean rides. } Distinguished by the straights, on either hand, Now rising cities in long order stand, And fruitful fields:--so much can time invade The mouldering work, that beauteous Nature made.-- Far on the right, her dogs foul Scylla hides: } Charybdis roaring on the left presides, } And in her greedy whirlpool sucks the tides; } Then spouts them from below: with fury driven, The waves mount up, and wash the face of heaven. But Scylla from her den, with open jaws, The sinking vessel in her eddy draws, Then dashes on the rocks.--A human face, And virgin bosom, hides her tail's disgrace: