It has saved my life many a time. It is the most I can give.
Dido
Be gone, be gone. I cannot bear to look upon your faithless face any longer. My sorrow is strangling me. My throat is dry. I can speak no more.
Aeneas
Fair well my queen. I will never love another as I have loved you. On the day that I die, I will think of you. I will go to the next world with your face before my eyes. Fair-well.
Dido
Be gone. It is time for Warlike Aeneas to run.
Narrator
And Aeneas went directly to his ship.
Dido
Fair sister Anna. Command the priests build a pyre. I will make a sacrifice to the gods. I will pray to Neptune and Juno to calm the winds and keep him here, or better, to send a storm and wreck him once more. Let the faithless wretch swim to Italy !
Narrator
And while the priests built a pyre in the courtyard of the temple, Dido stood on her balcony and watched the ships set sail.
Dido
The winds blew my love to me, and now they take him away. The nymphs of the sea carry him from me. Chains of gold could not anchor him here. What have I done to offend the gods that they separate me from happiness? If only I had the wings of Icarus I could fly out to him? Where is the friendly dolphin that will carry me on his back behind the ship of Aeneas? Or if I could swim like Neptune’s niece.
Oh how I am raving. Love has poisoned me with lunacy. See how Aeneas is rejoicing with his sailors as cross the waves away from me. He has forgotten his Dido already.
Ah the priests have set the fire. The flames are consuming the coals. I see in their light, a future full of destruction.
Oh Juno, protector of our city, I pray to you, let him build his precious Rome, for Jupiter wills it so, and let the city grow to be great and powerful, but let Carthage send a general to destroy it. May an African army ride elephants across the seas and over the mountains right up to the walls of Troy, and may Rome’s dust blow on the winds and mingle with Troy’s.
And now where is that sword of Aeneas? It protected his life but now it takes away mine. No, his frown has already destroyed the Dido who lived but a few short months ago before she set eyes upon the faithless Trojan. The woman whose sparkling eyes drew a 100 suitors from all Africa, Europe and Asia is gone. All that is left for me now is lunacy. I shall not go mad. Better die.
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