"Alas! what meed, to match such worth divine, Can good AEneas give thee?
Take to-day The arms wherein thou joyed'st; they are thine.
Thy corpse--if aught can please the senseless clay-- Back to thy parents' ashes I repay.
Poor youth! thy solace be it to be slain By great AEneas." Then his friends' delay He chides, and lifts young Lausus from the plain, Dead, and with dainty locks fouled by the crimson stain.
CXII.

Meanwhile the sire Mezentius, faint with pain, In Tiber's waters bathes the bleeding wound.
Against a trunk he leans; the boughs sustain His brazen helm; his arms upon the ground Rest idly, and his comrades stand around.
Sick, gasping, spent, his weary neck he tends; Loose o'er his bosom floats the beard unbound.
Oft of his son he questions, oft he sends To bid him quit the field, and seek his sire and friends.
CXIII.

But, sad and sorrowful, the Tuscan train Bear back the lifeless Lausus from the field, Weeping--the mighty by a mightier slain, And laid in death upon the warrior's shield.
Far off, their wailing to the sire revealed The grief, that made his boding heart mistrust.
In agony of vanquish, down he kneeled, His hoary hairs disfiguring with the dust, And, grovelling, clasped the corpse, and both his hands outthrust.
CXIV.

"Dear son, was life so tempting to the sire, To let thee face the foemen in my room, Whom I begot?
Shalt thou, my son, expire, And I live on, my darling in the tomb, Saved by thy wounds, and living by thy doom?
Ah! woe is me; too well at length I own The pangs of exile, and the wound strikes home.
'Twas I, thy name who tarnished, I alone, Whom just resentment thrust from sceptre and from throne.
CXV.

"Due to my country was the forfeit; yea, All deaths Mezentius had deserved to die.
Yet still I leave, and leave not man and day, But leave I will,--the fatal hour is nigh." Then, slowly leaning on his crippled thigh (Deep was the wound, but dauntless was his breast), He rose, and calling for his steed hard by, The steed, that oft in victory's hour he pressed, His solace and his pride, the sorrowing beast addressed: CXVI.