1 I know I am girt by the bitter hatred of my people.
2 I am resolved to face Aeneas, resolved to bear what bitterness there is in death; nor shalt thou longer see me shamed, sister of mine.
3 How Aeneas thy brother is driven about all the sea-coasts by bitter Juno's malignity, this thou knowest, and hast often grieved in our grief.
4 But since bitter doom is upon her, up, glide from heaven, O Nymph, and seek the Latin borders, where under evil omen they join in baleful battle.
5 Why the broad blaze is lit lies unknown; but the bitter pain of a great love trampled, and the knowledge of what woman can do in madness, draw the Teucrians' hearts to gloomy guesses.
6 Nor in my madness was I silent: and, should any chance offer, did I ever return a conqueror to my native Argos, I vowed myself his avenger, and with my words I stirred his bitter hatred.
7 Immediately wailing voices are loud in their ears, the souls of babies crying on the doorway sill, whom, torn from the breast and portionless in life's sweetness, a dark day cut off and drowned in bitter death.
8 But lord Aeneas, dismayed by the bitter mischance, revolved at heart this way and that his shifting weight of care, whether, forgetting fate, he should rest in Sicilian fields, or reach forth to the borders of Italy.
9 The house resounds with lamentation and sobbing and bitter crying of women; heaven echoes their loud wails; even as though all Carthage or ancient Tyre went down as the foe poured in, and the flames rolled furious over the roofs of house and temple.
10 Even as an arrow through a cloud, darting from the string when Parthian hath poisoned it with bitter gall, Parthian or Cydonian, and sped the immedicable shaft, leaps through the swift shadow whistling and unknown; so sprung and swept to earth the daughter of Night.
11 Then gasping, she thus accosts Acca, one of her birthmates, who alone before all was true to Camilla, with whom her cares were divided; and even so she speaks: 'Thus far, Acca my sister, have I availed; now the bitter wound overmasters me, and all about me darkens in haze.'
12 A race of hardy breed, we carry our newborn children to the streams and harden them in the bitter icy water; as boys they spend wakeful nights over the chase, and tire out the woodland; but in manhood, unwearied by toil and trained to poverty, they subdue the soil with their mattocks, or shake towns in war.
13 After hunger is driven away and the desire of food stayed, King Evander speaks: 'No idle superstition that knows not the gods of old hath ordered these our solemn rites, this customary feast, this altar of august sanctity; saved from bitter perils, O Trojan guest, do we worship, and most due are the rites we inaugurate.'
14 But Venus meanwhile, wrought upon with distress, accosts Neptune, and thus pours forth her heart's complaint: 'Juno's bitter wrath and heart insatiable compel me, O Neptune, to sink to the uttermost of entreaty: neither length of days nor any goodness softens her, nor doth Jove's command and fate itself break her to desistence.'