1 Nor did gentle Eurytion, though he alone struck the bird down from the lofty sky, grudge him to be preferred in honour.
2 Dismay not my terrors, disastrous birds; I know these beating wings, and the sound of death, nor do I miss high-hearted Jove's haughty ordinance.
3 There stood a sharp rock of flint with sides cut sheer away, rising over the cavern's ridge a vast height to see, fit haunt for foul birds to build on.
4 Nor would one think these vast streaming masses were ranks clad in brass; rather that, high in air, a cloud of hoarse birds from the deep gulf was pressing to the shore.
5 While the lord of Lemnos is busied thus in the borders of Aeolia, Evander is roused from his low dwelling by the gracious daylight and the matin songs of birds from the eaves.
6 With that a great noise rises aloft in diverse contention, even as when flocks of birds haply settle on a lofty grove, or swans utter their hoarse cry among the vocal pools on the fish-filled river of Padusa.
7 For on the crimsoned sky Jove's tawny bird flew chasing, in a screaming crowd, fowl of the shore that winged their column; then suddenly stooping to the water, pounces on a noble swan with merciless crooked talons.
8 Like a bird that flies low, skirting the sea about the craggy shores of its fishery, even thus the brood of Cyllene left his mother's father, and flew, cutting the winds between sky and land, along the sandy Libyan shore.
9 Behold these twelve swans in joyous line, whom, stooping from the tract of heaven, the bird of Jove fluttered over the open sky; now in long train they seem either to take the ground or already to look down on the ground they took.
10 And Tolumnius the augur cries before them all: 'This it was, this, that my vows often have sought; I welcome and know a deity; follow me, follow, snatch up the sword, O hapless people whom the greedy alien frightens with his arms like silly birds, and with strong hand ravages your shores.'
11 And first the arrow of the son of Hyrtacus, flying through heaven from the sounding string, whistles through the fleet breezes, and reaches and sticks fast full in the mast's wood: the mast quivered, and the bird fluttered her feathers in affright, and the whole ground rang with loud clapping.
12 Third Asilas, interpreter between men and gods, master of the entrails of beasts and the stars in heaven, of speech of birds and ominous lightning flashes, draws a thousand men after him in serried lines bristling with spears, bidden to his command from Pisa city, of Alphaean birth on Etruscan soil.
13 He too sat there, with the divining-rod of Quirinus, girt in the short augural gown, and carrying on his left arm the sacred shield, Picus the tamer of horses; he whom Circe, desperate with amorous desire, smote with her golden rod and turned by her poisons into a bird with patches of colour on his wings.
14 Night fell; weary creatures took quiet slumber all over earth, and woodland and wild waters had sunk to rest; now the stars wheel midway on their gliding path, now all the country is silent, and beasts and gay birds that haunt liquid levels of lake or thorny rustic thicket lay couched asleep under the still night.
15 The startled Italians watch, while all the birds together clamorously wheel round from flight, wonderful to see, and dim the sky with their pinions, and in thickening cloud urge their foe through air, till, conquered by their attack and his heavy prey, he yielded and dropped it from his talons into the river, and winged his way deep into the clouds.
16 So speaks the maiden, and with running feet swift as fire crosses his horse, and catching the bridle, meets him in front and takes her vengeance in her enemy's blood: as lightly as the falcon, bird of bale, swoops down from aloft on a pigeon high in a cloud, and pounces on and holds her, and disembowels her with taloned feet, while blood and torn feathers flutter down the sky.
17 Hither all crowded, and rushed streaming to the bank, matrons and men and high-hearted heroes dead and done with life, boys and unwedded girls, and children laid young on the bier before their parents' eyes, multitudinous as leaves fall dropping in the forests at autumn's earliest frost, or birds swarm landward from the deep gulf, when the chill of the year routs them overseas and drives them to sunny lands.
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