1 She ended; he by counsel of Jove held his gaze unstirred, and kept his distress hard down in his heart.
2 These, when he required a fleet, I gave gladly to the Dardanian; now fear wrings me with sharp distress.
3 Yield not thou to distresses, but all the bolder go forth to meet them, as thy fortune shall allow thee way.
4 But the Queen, long ere now pierced with sore distress, feeds the wound with her life-blood, and catches the fire unseen.
5 Such words he utters, and sick with deep distress he feigns hope on his face, and keeps his anguish hidden deep in his breast.
6 The words soothed away his distress, and for a while drove grief away from his sorrowing heart; he is glad in the land of his name.
7 But thee, O mother, overworn old age, exhausted and untrue, frets with vain distress, and amid embattled kings mocks thy presage with false dismay.
8 At length she started, and fled wrathfully into the shadowy woodland, where Sychaeus, her ancient husband, responds to her distresses and equals her affection.
9 Here they whom pitiless love hath wasted in cruel decay hide among untrodden ways, shrouded in embosoming myrtle thickets; not death itself ends their distresses.
10 If an unhappy parent's distress may at all touch thee, this I pray; even such a father was Anchises to thee; pity Daunus' old age, and restore to my kindred which thou wilt, me or my body bereft of day.
11 But good Aeneas, though he would fain soothe and comfort her grief, and talk away her distress, with many a sigh, and melted in soul by his great love, yet fulfils the divine commands and returns to his fleet.
12 But not so the distressed Phoenician, nor does she ever sink asleep or take the night upon eyes or breast; her pain redoubles, and her love swells to renewed madness, as she tosses on the strong tide of wrath.
13 Those within, in hurry and confusion, desire retreat from their distress; in vain; while they cluster together and fall back to the side free from the destroyer, the tower sinks prone under the sudden weight with a crash that thunders through all the sky.
14 Thereon Allecto, steeped in Gorgonian venom, first seeks Latium and the high house of the Laurentine monarch, and silently sits down before Amata's doors, whom a woman's distress and anger heated to frenzy over the Teucrians' coming and the marriage of Turnus.
15 Sun, whose fires lighten all the works of the world, and thou, Juno, mediatress and witness of these my distresses, and Hecate, cried on by night in crossways of cities, and you, fatal avenging sisters and gods of dying Elissa, hear me now; bend your just deity to my woes, and listen to our prayers.
16 But Venus meanwhile, wrought upon with distress, accosts Neptune, and thus pours forth her heart's complaint: 'Juno's bitter wrath and heart insatiable compel me, O Neptune, to sink to the uttermost of entreaty: neither length of days nor any goodness softens her, nor doth Jove's command and fate itself break her to desistence.'