Click to Subscribe
‘Twelve Swans’
The Aeneid of Virgil, Book 1, Part 11
© 2020 James LaFond
MAR/1/20
[Love in disguise speaks to her orphan son]
You Heaven does not hate
Your ships driven on good a shore
Have courage in the face of Fate
Have faith and fear no more
.
Your scattered fleet is rejoined
Behold twelve swans above
Who have shepherded your ships
The birds of almighty Jove
.
My augury has come true
Now the path to Carthage pursue
.
The goddess turned in grace
Her scent ambrosial
Her hair a sweeping trace
To men queen Love is known
.
[the hero speaks]
You leave unkind and cruel
Your son you deceive and shun
In borrowed form and voice
Where do you run
.
They took the path
Her commands obeyed
Obscured in a misty shroud
The kindly goddess made
.
The goddess flew sublime
To her evergreen garden
In Paphos her holy shrine
Where a hundred altars smoke
And a thousand prayers chime
Aching hearts her powers invoke
Where garlands greenly vine
End 11
Notes
Both translations I am working from are extensively wordy, particularly where the doings and minutia of the deities were concerned, in much the way that modern comic superhero backstory and artifice are a never-ending object of fascination and focus. Please regard all such passages as those above as severely truncated. I do not consider this inauthentic according to the use of poetics as translucent portals upon events ancestral to the ancients, with such texts weighted doubly, in their original language and in English, with artistic accretions and poetic artifice.
Do note that the number of ships [7] making initial anchorage, the 12 swans and the 12 ships they guided, are assigned numbers of mythic significance, one being the days of the week and the other the months of the year as well as the number of greater deities of the Olympian pantheon. Also note that in Beowulf, “the swan road” is the name given to the sea lanes followed by seafaring men.  
‘Seven Ships’
destiny's exile
‘Bees in Summer’
eBook
logic of force
eBook
ranger?
eBook
fate
eBook
sons of aryas
eBook
within leviathan’s craw
eBook
hate
eBook
broken dance
eBook
honor among men
eBook
night city
eBook
the sunset saga complete
eBook
under the god of things
eBook
when you're food
eBook
the greatest lie ever sold
eBook
winter of a fighting life
eBook
all-power-fighting
eBook
fanatic
eBook
by the wine dark sea
eBook
predation
eBook
masculine axis
eBook
orphan nation
eBook
wife—
eBook
thriving in bad places
eBook
let the world fend for itself
eBook
on combat
eBook
sorcerer!
eBook
the greatest boxer
eBook
america the brutal
eBook
songs of aryas
eBook
dark, distant futures
eBook
your trojan whorse
eBook
cracker-boy
eBook
beasts of aryas
eBook
the fighting edge
eBook
the year the world took the z-pill
eBook
the gods of boxing
eBook
barbarism versus civilization
eBook
logic of steel
eBook
book of nightmares
eBook
fiction anthology one
eBook
on the overton railroad
eBook
solo boxing
eBook
menthol rampage
eBook
the first boxers
eBook
into leviathan’s maw
eBook
the combat space
eBook
the lesser angels of our nature
eBook
blue eyed daughter of zeus
eBook
z-pill forever
eBook
song of the secret gardener
eBook
triumph
eBook
uncle satan
eBook
taboo you
eBook
time & cosmos
eBook
advent america
eBook
son of a lesser god
  Add a new comment below:
Name
Email
Message