Meantime my virtuous wife removed

⁠All weapons from the house away;
My sword, so oft in need approved,
⁠She took from where the bolster lay:
Then opes the palace-door, and calls
Her former lord within the walls,
Thinking, forsooth, so fair a prize
Would blind a dazzled lover's eyes.^{[errata 1]}
And patriot zeal might thus efface
The memory of her old disgrace.
Why lengthen out the tale? they burst
The chamber-door, that twain accurst,
Æolides his comrade, still
The ready counsellor of ill.
Ye gods, to Greece the like repay,
If pious are these lips that pray!
But you, what chance, I fain would know,
Has led you living down below?
Come you by ocean-wanderings driven,
Or sent by warning voice from heaven?
What stress of fortune brings you here
Through sunless regions, waste and drear?'

⁠Thus while they talked, day's car on high
Had passed the summit of the sky;
And so perchance had worn away
The period of the travellers' stay,
But the good Sibyl thus in brief,
As comrade might, bespoke the chief:
'Æneas, night approaches near:
While we lament, the hours career.
Here, at the spot where now we stand,
The road divides on either hand;
The right, which skirts the walls of Dis,

Conducts us to the fields of bliss: