Anchises Holds the Babe Aeneas

by Mark Anthony Signorelli (June 2010)

Some unreflective prescience seems to gleam
In your new eyes, and guess the oracle,
That your days will be hard. Still I rejoice –
More than I ever gladdened over gold
And glory gained in battle, I rejoice
At this your quiet birth. How hard it is
To say what happiness it is to bear
A child to burdens, and give flesh a form
To endure the swords and iron of the foe,
And all the oceanic god can do
When goaded by his spiteful sister Hera,
Unless the truth of things lies not in strife,
Or tears, or chaos – any of fortune’s works –
But in the strange deep influence that wells
Within man’s heart, and overcomes all strife,
All tears, all chaos – all of fortune’s works;
And maybe love, that seems to be as frail
As a week-old stalk, is after all more fierce
Than sea-spewed tempests, stronger even than war.

 
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