As in the Alps, the North Wind’s blasts assault

A solid, tough, and venerable oak,

Competing to uproot it; with a creak

At the blows, it strews its high leaves on the ground

But clasps the cliff with roots that go as far

Toward hell as its top reaches into heaven:

Just as relentless were the words that battered

The hero. In his noble heart he suffered,

But tears did nothing. His resolve endured.

Appalled now by her fate, poor Dido prayed

For death; she wished to see the sky no longer.

Other things also drove her from the daylight:

Her gifts on incense-burning altars rotted,

Horrible to describe: wine turned to black

And filthy gore the second that she poured it.

No one was told. Her sister did not know it.

There stood inside her home a marble shrine

To her late husband: there she worshiped him,

Spreading white fleece and hanging holy wreaths.

She thought she heard his voice there, echoing, calling.

When the night’s darkness covered all the earth,

She listened to a lone owl on the rooftree

Whose song of death kept trailing into sobs.

Many grim warnings of the long-dead seers

Panicked her too. In dreams a fierce Aeneas

Chased her. She raved in fear or was abandoned,

Friendless, forever walking a long road,

Seeking her Tyrians in a lifeless land.

It was like Pentheus seeing bands of Furies,

And a pair of Thebes, and a sun split in two;

As in a play the son of Agamemnon

Runs from his mother’s torches and black snakes

While vengeful demons lurk outside the door.

Madness and grief filled her defeated heart,

And she chose death. She had a time and method,

But hid her plan behind a face of peace

And hope, in speaking to her wretched sister.

“Anna, I’ve found a way—congratulate me!—

To bring him back or set me free from love.

Next to the setting sun and Ocean’s boundary,

In Ethiopia, where giant Atlas

Turns the star-blazing heavens on his shoulder,

Lived a Massylian priestess I’ve now found,

Who guarded the Hesperides’ temple there,

Nourished the snake, preserved the sacred branches,

And strewed sleep-bringing poppy and moist honey.

She says her spells soothe any minds she wishes

Or else bring grueling troubles into others,

Stop rivers and turn stars back in their courses,

And call out ghosts at night. The earth will roar

Beneath your feet, ash trees will rush down mountains.

Sister, I swear it by your darling life

And by the gods—I would not choose such weapons.

Build me a pyre in secret in the courtyard.

The arms that evil man hung in our bedroom—

The clothes I stripped from him, our bed of union,

My death—put it all there. I want the leavings

Of the criminal destroyed. She’s shown me how.”

Now she was silent, and her face went pale.

But Anna did not guess her sister’s funeral