19I was offering sacrifice to my mother, Dione's daughter, and to the gods who favour work begun, and on the shore I was slaughtering a gleaming bull to the high king of the heaven-dwellers. 22By chance there was a mound close by, on whose top grew cornel shoots and a myrtle bristling with dense spear-like stems. 24I went up to it, and, trying to tear the green growth from the ground so that I might cover the altars with leafy boughs, I see a dreadful portent, wondrous to tell. 27For from the first tree that is torn from the soil, its roots broken, drops of black blood trickle and stain the earth with gore.
29A cold shudder shakes my limbs, and my chilled blood congeals with terror. 31Again I go on to tear a pliant shoot from a second, and to probe deep into the hidden causes: and black blood follows from the bark of the second too. 34Pondering much in my mind, I prayed to the nymphs of the countryside and to father Gradivus, who presides over the Getic fields, that they would duly bless the vision and lighten the omen. 37But when I attack the third set of stems with greater effort, and wrestle with my knees against the resisting sand — should I speak, or keep silent? — a tearful groan is heard from deep in the mound, and a voice comes back to my ears: 'Why do you mangle a wretched man, Aeneas?
41Spare me now that I am buried; 42spare your dutiful hands from crime. 42Troy did not bear me a stranger to you, nor is it from a mere stem that this blood oozes. 44Ah, flee these cruel lands, flee this greedy shore: for I am Polydorus; 45here an iron crop of weapons covered me, pierced through, and grew up into sharp javelins.' 47Then indeed, my mind gripped by doubtful fear, I was stunned; my hair stood on end and my voice stuck in my throat.