The Vision of Dido

There Dido stood again-

In her drenched garments, pale, among the torches

Lit by the attendant ghosts who followed her

Flickering in timid shadow, mothlike forms

(Through the dim cavelights of eternal Hades)

Half-drowsy, half-alive, but half-immortal,

There the dead live, till the true word is spoken

And there Aeneas stood.

In a low voice chilled by the underworld

She spoke again as if remembrance failed

And the armed warrior, thought of funeral pyres,

His faithless love, her anguish, his betrayal-

Pleaded with her, as if the indifferent Gods

Were speaking through him.

"Forgive, since in my sin, the Gods contrived,

The Gods whom Destiny obeys, who moulds our deeds

Beyond our will, beyond the might-have been

For only they create our lives, to be

Firm to create, or kill."

The torches flickered, the attendant shadows dimmed,

She stood alone in a mild flame of light

Cast from the sailing moon, her face was stone

An archaic image in a sinking world

Passionless, heedless, thoughtless, like the moon

Memory rose again, then flowed away

In the blind gaze that neither feels or sees.

Her silence surged from buried memory

Neither forgiveness ruled, nor outraged passion

Neither the vision of her funeral pyre

Her happy leap into embracing fire

Ascending to wild skies on Carthage hill.

Then in that calm that is not pain, or peace,

The sullen Lethe rose in darkening tide.

She slowly stared at him, then turned and fled

And left him lonely, lost, unrecognized.