Fool, can’t you hear your guide, the West Wind, breathing?

The woman, who now knows that she will die,

Is tossed in scheming, heaving tides of rage.

While you still can, you need to run for it,

Or you’ll see storms of wreckage and the glare

Of brutal torches. Flames will fill the beach

If the dawn finds you loitering in this land.

Be quick and go! A woman is a changing

And fitful thing.” The form ebbed into black night.

The sudden vision of this chilling shade

Ripped him from sleep. He shook his comrades too.

“Wake—now!—and take your places on the benches.

Hurry! Unfurl the sails. Once more from heaven

A god’s come, driving our escape: start cutting

The twisted ropes! We follow you, whichever

God you might be—again we cheer your orders.

Be with us, guide us graciously, and bring us

Favoring stars.” He drew his flashing sword

And struck the mooring line. A single passion

Seized all of them. They ran and snatched their gear up

And quit the beach. The blue plain now was hidden

By skimming ships. The oars raised twists of foam.

Dawn, risen from her husband’s saffron bed,

Was scattering her light across the world.

The sky grew white above the queen’s high tower.

Below, the sails went forward in a row.

The port, the shore were bare, the sailors gone.

Repeatedly she struck her lovely breast

And tore her gold hair. “Jupiter! He’s leaving?

A stranger comes—and goes—and mocks my power?

Why doesn’t the whole city arm and follow

On ships torn madly from their moorings? Hurry!

Bring torches, pass out arms, ram the oars forward!

What? Where is this new madness taking me?

Poor thing. Your crimes—you feel them only now?

Not when you made him king? This is his pledged word!

They say he brought his household gods with him,

And hauled his frail old father on his shoulders.

I could have scattered the torn pieces of him

Across the waves. I could have killed his friends—

His son—and made a banquet for the father—

A struggle I might not have won—no matter:

I still would die. My torches should have swarmed

His camp and gangways till they made a pyre

For father and son, the whole race, and myself.

Come, Sun, the blazing lamp of all creation—

Juno, the witness and the go-between—

And Hecate, a name shrieked at the crossroads—

Avenging Furies—and my own death demons:

Turn heaven’s justice where it should be turned.

This is my prayer now: if that living curse

Must skim his way to harbor in that country,

If Jove and fate require this to happen,

Then let a bold and warlike people drive him

Out of his realm and tear his Iulus from him.

Make him a suppliant, let him see the death

Of blameless friends. Humiliating peace terms