"Prepared to plunge, he pauses, sore assailed By love, and terror for a charge so dear.
All means revolving, this at last prevailed.
Fire-dried and knotted, an enormous spear Of seasoned oak the warrior chanced to bear.
To the mid shaft the tender babe he ties, Swathed in the covering of a cork-tree near, Then lifts the load, and, poising, ere it flies, The ponderous lance, looks up, and thus invokes the skies: LXXII.

"'O Queen of woods, Latonia, virgin fair! To thee my daughter I devote this day, Thy handmaid.

See, thus early through the air She bears thy weapons.

Make her thine, I pray, And safely through the doubtful air convey.' So prayed the sire, and nerved him for the throw, Then aimed, and launched the missile on its way.
The babe forlorn, while roars the stream below, Link'd to the shaft, is borne across the current's flow.
LXXIII.

"In plunges Metabus, the foemen near, And Trivia's gift, safe landing from the wave, Plucks from the grass,--the maiden and the spear.
No town is his, to shelter and to save, His savage mood no shelter deigns to crave.
A shepherd's life on lonely hills he leads, In tangled covert, or in woodland cave.
The milk of beasts supplies his daughter's needs, And from the wild-mare's teats her tender lips he feeds.
LXXIV.