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Adventures of Aeneas: Neptune
At this crisis, Neptune, hearing the storm raging, and knowing that he had given no orders for one, raised his head above the waves, and saw the fleet of AEneas driving before the gale. Knowing the hostility of Juno, he was at no loss to account for it, but his anger was not the less at this interference in his province. He called the winds and dismissed them with a severe reprimand. He then soothed the waves, and brushed away the clouds from before the face of the sun. Some of the ships which had got on the rocks he pried off with his own trident, while Triton and a sea-nymph, putting their shoulders under others, set them afloat again. The Trojans, when the sea became calm, sought the nearest shore, which was the coast of Carthage, where AEneas was so happy as to find that one by one the ships all arrived safe, though badly shaken. Waller, in his "Panegyric to the Lord Protector" (Cromwell), alludes to this stilling of the storm by Neptune: "Above the waves, as Neptune showed his face, To chide the winds and save the Trojan race, So has your Highness, raised above the rest, Storms of ambition tossing us repressed."