Falling Asleep Over The Aeneid

An old man in Concord forgets to go to morning service. He falls asleep, while reading Vergil, and dreams that he is Aeneas at the funeral of Pallas, an Italian prince.

The sun is blue and scarlet on my page,

And yuck-a, yuck-a, yuck-a, yuck-a, rage

The yellowhammers mating. Yellow fire

Blankets the captives dancing on their pyre,

And the scorched lictor screams and drops his rod.

Trojans are singing to their drunken God,

Ares. Their helmets catch on fire. Their files

Clank by the body of my comrade—miles

Of filings! Now the scythe-wheeled chariot rolls

Before their lances long as vaulting poles,

And I stand up and heil the thousand men,

Who carry Pallas to the bird-priest. Then

The bird-priest groans, and as his birds foretold,

I greet the body, lip to lip. I hold

The sword that Dido used. It tries to speak,

A bird with Dido’s sworded breast. Its beak

Clangs and ejaculates the Punic word

I hear the bird-priest chirping like a bird.

I groan a little. “Who am I, and why?”

It asks, a boy’s face, though its arrow-eye

Is working from its socket. “Brother, try,

O Child of Aphrodite, try to die:

To die is life.” His harlots hang his bed

With feathers of his long-tailed birds. His head

Is yawning like a person. The plumes blow;

The beard and eyebrows ruffle. Face of snow,

You are the flower that country girls have caught,

A wild bee-pillaged honey-suckle brought

To the returning bridegroom—the design

Has not yet left it, and the petals shine;

The earth, its mother, has, at last, no help:

It is itself. The broken-winded yelp

Of my Phoenician hounds, that fills the brush

With snapping twigs and flying, cannot flush

The ghost of Pallas. But I take his pall,

Stiff with its gold and purple, and recall

How Dido hugged it to her, while she toiled,

Laughing—her golden threads, a serpent coiled

In cypress. Now I lay it like a sheet;

It clinks and settles down upon his feet,

The careless yellow hair that seemed to burn

Beforehand. Left foot, right foot—as they turn,

More pyres are rising: armored horses, bronze,

And gagged Italians, who must file by ones

Across the bitter river, when my thumb

Tightens into their wind-pipes. The beaks drum;

Their headman’s cow-horned death’s-head bites its tongue,

And stiffens, as it eyes the hero slung

Inside his feathered hammock on the crossed

Staves of the eagles that we winged. Our cost

Is nothing to the lovers, whoring Mars

And Venus, father’s lover. Now his car’s

Plumage is ready, and my marshals fetch

His squire, Acoctes, white with age, to hitch

Aethon, the hero’s charger, and its ears

Prick, and it steps and steps, and stately tears

Lather its teeth; and then the harlots bring

The hero’s charms and baton—but the King,

Vain-glorious Turnus, carried off the rest.

“I was myself, but Ares thought it best

The way it happened.” At the end of time,

He sets his spear, as my descendants climb

The knees of Father Time, his beard of scalps,

His scythe, the arc of steel that crowns the Alps.

The elephants of Carthage hold those snows,

Turms of Numidian horse unsling their bows,

The flaming turkey-feathered arrows swarm

Beyond the Alps. “Pallas,” I raise my arm

And shout, “Brother, eternal health. Farewell

Forever.” Church is over, and its bell

Frightens the yellowhammers, as I wake

And watch the whitecaps wrinkle up the lake.

Mother’s great-aunt, who died when I was eight,

Stands by our parlor sabre. “Boy, it’s late.

Vergil must keep the Sabbath.” Eighty years!

It all comes back. My Uncle Charles appears.

Blue-capped and bird-like. Phillips Brooks and Grant

Are frowning at his coffin, and my aunt,

Hearing his colored volunteers parade

Through Concord, laughs, and tells her English maid

To clip his yellow nostril hairs, and fold

His colors on him. . . . It is I. I hold

His sword to keep from falling, for the dust

On the stuffed birds is breathless, for the bust

Of young Augustus weighs on Vergil’s shelf:

It scowls into my glasses at itself.