The Aeneid - pg. 17

"Goddess, if I should tell

Our story from the start, if you had leisure

To hear our annals of adversity,

Before I finished, the fair evening star

Would come to close Olympus and the day.

From old Troy -- if the name of Troy has fallen

Perhaps upon your ears -- we sailed the seas,

And yesterday were driven by a storm,

Of its own whim, upon this Libyan coast.

I am Aeneas, duty-bound, and known

Above high air of heaven by my fame,

Carrying with me in my ships our gods

Of hearth and home, saved from the enemy.

I look for Italy to be my fatherland,

And my descent is from all-highest Jove.

With twenty ship I mounted the Phyrgian sea,

As my immortal mother showed the way.

I followed the given fates. Now barely seven

Ships are left, bettered by wind and sea,

And I myself, unknown and unprovisioned,

Cross the Libyan wilderness, an exile

Driven from Europe and from Asia --"