Page:Statius (Mozley 1928) v1.djvu/577

it mingles with the deep, and makes purgation all around with the torn entrails of sheep and the strong smell of sulphur, and with fresh herbs and the long mutterings of prayers.

There stands a wood, enduring of time, and strong and erect in age, with foliage aye unshorn nor pierced by any suns; no cold of winter has injured it, nor has the South wind power thereon nor Boreas swooping down from the Getic Bear. Beneath is sheltered quiet, and a vague shuddering awe guards the silence, and the phantom of the banished light gleams pale and ominous. Nor do the shadows lack a divine power: Latonia’s haunting presence is added to the grove; her effigies wrought in pine or cedar and wood of every tree are hidden in the hallowed gloom of the forest. Her arrows whistle unseen through the wood, her hounds bay nightly, when she flies from her uncle’s threshold and resumes afresh Diana’s kindlier shape. Or when she is weary from her ranging on the hills, and the sun high in heaven invites sweet slumber, here doth she rest with head flung back carelessly on her quiver, while all her spears stand fixed in the earth around. Outside, of vast extent, stretches the Martian plain, the field that bore its harvest to Cadmus. Hardy was he who first after the kindred warfare and the crime of those same furrows dared with the ploughshare till the soil and upturned the blood-soaked meads; even yet the accursed earth breathes mighty tumults at midday and in the lonely night’s dim shadows, when the black sons of earth arise to phantom combat: with trembling limbs the husbandman flees and leaves the field unfinished, and his oxen hie them to their stalls, distraught.