Mikhael Mayim / Pexels

• Arms, and the man I sing, who, forc’d by fate, 
• And haughty Juno’s unrelenting hate, 
• Expell’d and exil’d, left the Trojan shore. 
• Long labors, both by sea and land, he bore, 
• And in the doubtful war, before he won 
• The Latian realm, and built the destin’d town; 
• His banish’d gods restor’d to rites divine, 
• And settled sure succession in his line, 
• From whence the race of Alban fathers come, 
• And the long glories of majestic Rome. 
• O Muse! the causes and the crimes relate; 
• What goddess was provok’d, and whence her hate; 
• For what offense the Queen of Heav’n began 
• To persecute so brave, so just a man; 
• Involv’d his anxious life in endless cares, 
• Expos’d to wants, and hurried into wars! 
• Can heav’nly minds such high resentment show, 
• Or exercise their spite in human woe? 
• Against the Tiber’s mouth, but far away, 
• An ancient town was seated on the sea; 
• A Tyrian colony; the people made 
• Stout for the war, and studious of their trade: 
• Carthage the name; belov’d by Juno more 
• Than her own Argos, or the Samian shore. 
• Here stood her chariot; here, if Heav’n were kind, 
• The seat of awful empire she design’d. 
• Yet she had heard an ancient rumor fly, 
• (Long cited by the people of the sky,) 
• That times to come should see the Trojan race 
• Her Carthage ruin, and her tow’rs deface; 
• Nor thus confin’d, the yoke of sov’reign sway 
• Should on the necks of all the nations lay. 
• She ponder’d this, and fear’d it was in fate; 
• Nor could forget the war she wag’d of late 
• For conqu’ring Greece against the Trojan state.

John Dryden-Virgil

Virgil (70-19 BC) was an ancient Roman poet and is considered the greatest poet of ancient Rome and one of the greatest poets in the Western canon. Three of his works survive in their entirety: the Ecologues, the Georgics, and the epic poem about the founding of Rome, the Aeneid. John Dryden (1631-1700) was an English poet, critic, translator and playwright. He was named Poet Laureate of England in 1668, and his name literally defined the literary period of Restoration England (1660-1714) – known as the Age of Dryden. Dryden was one of the first English writers to translate the Aeneid into English.