Oppress’d with grief the pitying god appears, And swells the rising surges with his tears; From the detested sorceress he flies; Her art reviles, and her address denies; While hapless Scylla, changed to rocks, decrees Destruction to those barks that beat the seas.
After being detained at Carthage, Aeneas at length arrives on the coast of Naples.
Here bulged the pride of famed Ulysses’ fleet, But good Aeneas ’scaped the fate he met. As to the Latian shore the Trojan stood, And cut with well-timed oars the foaming flood, He weather’d fell Charybdis; but ere long The skies were darken’d, and the tempest strong; Then to the Libyan coast he stretches o’er, And makes at length the Carthaginian shore. Here Dido, with a hospitable care, Into her heart receives the wanderer. From her kind arms the ungrateful hero flies, The injured queen looks on with dying eyes, Then to her folly falls a sacrifice.