Refulgent

Th' inglorious coward soon shall press the plain: Thus vows thy queen, and thus the Fates ordain." High o'er the field there stood a hilly mound, Sacred the place, and spread with oaks around, Where, in a marble tomb, Dercennus lay, A king that once in Latium bore the sway. The beauteous Opis thither bent her flight, To mark the traitor Aruns from the height. Him in refulgent arms she soon espied, Swoln with success; and loudly thus she cried: "Thy backward steps, vain boaster, are too late; Turn like a man, at length, and meet thy fate.

The lower part of his dress was more distinctly visible by the bright rays of the moon, which, entering through the broken ceiling, shed their refulgent beams on feet cased in elegantly made boots of polished leather, over which descended fashionably cut trousers of black cloth.

Flooding with sheeny light the gray beach sand, The sibilant near sea with vistas far and foam, And tawny streaks and shades and spreading blue; O sun of noon refulgent!

There shone the image of the master-mind: There earth, there heaven, there ocean he design'd; The unwearied sun, the moon completely round; The starry lights that heaven's high convex crown'd; The Pleiads, Hyads, with the northern team; And great Orion's more refulgent beam; To which, around the axle of the sky, The Bear, revolving, points his golden eye, Still shines exalted on the ethereal plain, Nor bathes his blazing forehead in the main.

"Now when fair Morn orient in Heaven appeared, Up rose the victor Angels, and to arms The matin trumpet sung: in arms they stood Of golden panoply, refulgent host, Soon banded; others from the dawning hills Looked round, and scouts each coast light-armed scour, Each quarter, to descry the distant foe, Where lodged, or whither fled, or if for fight, In motion or in halt. Him soon they met Under spread ensigns moving nigh, in slow But firm battalion; back with speediest sail, Zophiel, of Cherubim the swiftest wing, Came flying, and in mid air aloud thus cried: " 'Arm, warriors, arm for fight!