BOOK I. Arms and the man I sing, who first, By Fate of Ilian realm amerced, To fair Italia onward bore, And landed on Lavinium’s shore:— Long tossing earth and ocean o’er, By violence of heaven, to sate Fell Juno’s unforgetting hate: Much laboured too in battle-field, Striving his city’s walls to build, And give his Gods a home: Thence come the hardy Latin brood, The ancient sires of Alba’s blood, And lofty-rampired Rome. Say, Muse, for godhead how disdained, Or wherefore wroth, Heaven’s queen constrained That soul of piety so long To turn the wheel, to cope with wrong. Can heavenly natures nourish hate So fierce, so blindly passionate? There stood a city on the sea Manned by a Tyrian colony, Named Carthage, fronting far to south Italia’s coast and Tiber’s mouth, Rich in all wealth, all means of rule, And hardened in war’s sternest school. Men say the place was Juno's pride More than all lands on earth beside; E'en Samos' self not half so dear: Here were her arms, her chariot here: Here, goddess-like, to fix one day The seat of universal sway, Might Fate be wrung to yield assent, E'en then her schemes, her cares were bent. Yet had she heard that sons of Troy Were born her Carthage to destroy; From those majestic loins should spring A nation like a warrior king, Ordained for Libya's overthrow: The web of Fate was woven so. This was her fear: and fear renewed The memory of that earlier feud, The war at Troy she erst had waged In darling Argos' cause engaged: Nor yet had faded from her view The insults whence those angers grew, Deep in remembrance lives engrained The judgment which her charms disdained, The offspring of adulterous seed, The rape of minion Ganymede: With such resentments brimming o'er She tossed and tossed from shore to shore The Trojan bands, poor relics these Of Achillean victories, Away from Latium: many a year, Fate-driven, they wandered far and near: So vast the labour to create The fabric of the Roman state! Scarce out of sight of Sicily Troy's crews were spreading sail to sea, Pleased o'er the foam to run, When Juno, feeding ever more The vulture at her bosom's core, Thus to herself begun: 'I to give way? has Juno willed, And must her will he unfulfilled? Too weak from Latium's coast to fling Back to the sea this Trojan king? Restrained by Fate? Could Pallas fire The Argive fleet to wreak her ire, And drown the crews, for one offence, Mad Ajax' curst incontinence? She from the clouds Jove's lightning cast, Dispersed the ships, the billows massed, Caught the scathed wretch, whose breast exhaled Fierce flames, and on a rock impaled: I who through heaven its mistress move, The sister and the wife of Jove, With one poor tribe of earth contend Long years revolving without end. Will any Juno's power adore Henceforth, or crown her altars more?' Such fiery tumult in her mind, She seeks the birthplace of the wind, Æolia, realm for ever rife With turbid elemental life: Here Æolus in a cavern vast With bolt and barrier fetters fast Rebellious storm and howling blast. They with the rock's reverberant roar Chafe blustering round their prison-door: He, throned on high, the sceptre sways, Controls their moods, their wrath allays. Break but that sceptre, sea and land And heaven's etherial deep Before them they would whirl like sand, And through the void air sweep.