With hospitable rites relieve the poor; Associate in your town a wand'ring train, And strangers in your palace entertain: What thanks can wretched fugitives return, Who, scatter'd thro' the world, in exile mourn?

The gods, if gods to goodness are inclin'd; If acts of mercy touch their heav'nly mind, And, more than all the gods, your gen'rous heart, 850 Conscious of worth, requite its own desert! In you this age is happy, and this earth, And parents more than mortal gave you birth.

While rolling rivers into seas shall run, And round the space of heav'n the radiant sun;

While trees the mountain tops with shades supply,

Your honor, name, and praise shall never die.

Whate'er abode my fortune has assign'd, Your image shall be present in my mind." Thus having said, he turn'd with pious haste,

860

It calls into my mind, tho' then a child, When Teucer came, from Salamis exil'd, And sought my father's aid, to be restor❜d: My father Belus then with fire and sword Invaded Cyprus, made the region bare, 880 And, conqu'ring, finish'd the successful

war.

From him the Trojan siege I understood, The Grecian chiefs, and your illustrious blood.

Your foe himself the Dardan valor prais'd,
And his own ancestry from Trojans rais'd.
Enter, my noble guest, and you shall find,
If not a costly welcome, yet a kind:
For I myself, like you, have been dis-
tress'd,

Till Heav'n afforded me this place of rest;
Like you, an alien in a land unknown, 890
I learn to pity woes so like my own."
She said, and to the palace led her guest;
Then offer'd incense, and proclaim'd a feast.
Nor yet less careful for her absent friends,
Twice ten fat oxen to the ships she sends;
Besides a hundred boars, a hundred lambs,
With bleating cries, attend their milky
dams;

And jars of gen'rous wine and spacious bowls

She gives, to cheer the sailors' drooping souls.

Now purple hangings clothe the palace walls,

900

Your men have been distress'd, your navy toss'd,

Sev'n times the sun has either tropic view'd, The winter banish'd, and the spring renew'd."

THE SECOND BOOK OF THE ENEIS

THE ARGUMENT

Eneas relates how the city of Troy was taken, after a ten years' siege, by the treachery of Sinon, and the stratagem of a wooden horse. He declares the fix'd resolution he had taken not to survive the ruins of his country, and the various adventures he met with in the defense of it. At last, having been before advis'd by Hector's ghost, and now by the appearance of his mother Venus, he is prevail'd upon to leave the town, and settle his household gods in another country. In order to this, he carries off his father on his shoulders, and leads his little son by the hand, his wife following him behind. When he comes to the place appointed for the general rendezvouze, he finds a great confluence of people, but misses his wife, whose ghost afterwards appears to him, and tells him the land which was design'd for him.

ALL were attentive to the godlike man, When from his lofty couch he thus began: "Great queen, what you command me to

relate

The pile by Pallas rais'd to ruin Troy. Thymates first ('tis doubtful whether hir'd,

Or so the Trojan destiny requir'd)
Mov'd that the ramparts might be broken

down,

To lodge the monster fabric in the town.
But Capys, and the rest of sounder mind,
The fatal present to the flames design'd,
Or to the wat'ry deep; at least to bore
The hollow sides, and hidden frauds ex-
plore.

The giddy vulgar, as their fancies guide, 50
With noise say nothing, and in parts divide.
Laocoon, follow'd by a num'rous crowd,
Ran from the fort, and cried, from far,
aloud:

'O wretched countrymen! what fury reigns? What more than madness has possess'd your brains?

Think you the Grecians from your coasts are gone?

And freely tell us what he was, and whence: What news he could impart, we long to know,

And what to credit from a captive foe.

"His fear at length dismiss'd, he said: 'Whate'er

My fate ordains, my words shall be sincere:
I neither can nor dare my birth disclaim;
Greece is my country, Sinon is my name. 100
Tho' plung'd by Fortune's pow'r in misery,
'Tis not in Fortune's pow'r to make me lie.
If any chance has hither brought the name
Of Palamedes, not unknown to fame,
Who suffer'd from the malice of the times,
Accus'd and sentenc'd for pretended crimes,
Because these fatal wars he would prevent;
Whose death the wretched Greeks too late
lament