This text is part of:
Search the Perseus Catalog for:
When from this Rocke the Trojane fleete by force of Ores had wonne,
And from Charybdis greedye gulf, and were in manner readye
To have arryvde in Italy, the wynd did ryse so heady,
And that it drave them backe uppon the coast of Affricke. There
The Tyrian Queene (whoo afterward unpaciently should beare
The going of this Trojane prince away) did enterteine
Aenaeas in her house, and was ryght glad of him and fayne.
Uppon a Pyle made underneathe pretence of sacrifyse
Shee goard herself upon a swoord, and in most wofull wyse
As shee herself had beene beguyld: so shee beguyled all.
Eftsoone Aenaeas flying from the newly reered wall
Of Carthage in that sandy land, retyred backe agen
To Sicill, where his faythfull freend Acestes reignd. And when
He there had doone his sacrifyse, and kept an Obit at
His fathers tumb, he out of hand did mend his Gallyes that
Dame Iris, Junos messenger, had burned up almost.
And sayling thence he kept his course aloof along the coast
Of Aeolye and of Vulcanes lies the which of brimston smol
And passing by the Meremayds rocks, (His Pilot by a stroke
Of tempest being drownd in sea) he sayld by Prochite, and
Inarime, and (which uppon a barreine hill dooth stand)
The land of Ape Ile, which dooth take that name of people s'ie
There dwelling. For the Syre of Goddes abhorring utterly
The leawdnesse of the Cercops, and theyr wilfull perjurye,
And eeke theyr guylefull dealing did transforme them everyclone
Into an evillfavored kynd of beast: that beeing none
They myght yit still resemble men. He knit in lesser space
Theyr members, and he beate mee flat theyr noses to theyr face,
The which he filled furrowlike with wrinckles every where.
He clad theyr bodyes over all with fallow coulourd heare,
And put them into this same Ile to dwell forever there.
But first he did bereeve them of the use of speeche and toong,
Which they to cursed perjurye did use bothe old and yoong.
To chatter hoarcely, and to shreeke, to jabber, and to squeake,
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.