From a Big Boost for Obama to a Sharp Blow. By JEFF ZELENY; Carl Hulse contributed reporting from Washington.. NASHUA, N.H..

On the eve of the New Hampshire primary, Senator Barack Obama delivered a message to supporters: 'Do not take this race for granted. I know we had a nice boost over the last couple of days, but elections are a funny business.
It was a prescient warning.
Mr. Obama, who arrived here five days ago after a commanding triumph in the Iowa caucuses, had planned to leave New Hampshire on a similar high. But a defeat by Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton here on Tuesday evening startled Mr. Obama and ensured that the fight for the Democratic presidential nomination remained fully engaged.
We know the battle ahead will be long, but always remember that no matter what obstacles stand in our way, nothing can stand in the way of the power of millions of voices calling for change,' Mr. Obama said, speaking at a rally of crestfallen supporters. We have been told we cannot do this by a chorus of cynics that will only grow louder and more dissonant in the days and weeks to come.
For the last five days here, Mr. Obama made one appeal above all to the legions of voters who turned out at rallies from dawn to dusk to see him: Prove that Iowa was not a fluke. He made that pitch again and again to audiences, which spilled from gymnasiums into side rooms and from opera houses onto snow-covered sidewalks, a tableau of young and old pressed closely together as they cheered his historic candidacy.
In the end, though, it was another historic candidacy -- that of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton -- that appealed to more voters in New Hampshire, particularly women who broke with Mr. Obama in significant numbers in the closing hours of an accelerated campaign here.
Mr. Obama was counting on a New Hampshire victory to serve as a permission slip for Democratic leaders across the country to step forward to support his candidacy. He was hoping to trade the title of insurgent candidate for the perilous crown of front-runner. But the race is now a draw between the two rivals -- with John Edwards of North Carolina, who came in a distant third, vowing to continue -- and a furious scramble lies ahead.
With a confidence buoyed by a series of polls that consistently showed Mr. Obama leading Mrs. Clinton by as many as 10 percentage points, the Obama campaign was shaken by the loss as the final ballots were tabulated from a primary election held on a glorious springlike day where a record number of Democrats turned out.
If Mr. Obama had hoped to leave New Hampshire as a soaring victor, on his way to seizing the air of inevitability that had belonged for months to Mrs. Clinton, his narrow loss underscored the challenges that lie ahead for turning a political movement into an electoral success. As he addressed his supporters in a gymnasium at Nashua High School on Tuesday evening, he showed no signs of relinquishing his fight.
When we've been told we're not ready or we shouldn't try or we can't, generations of Americans have responded with a simple creed that sums up the spirit of a people,' Mr. Obama said. Yes, we can. Yes, we can. Throughout the evening, the confidence of Mr. Obama's campaign gradually fell as returns poured in from across the state, which never put him over Mrs. Clinton. Aides said they believe that women rallied behind Mrs. Clinton in the final hours of the race, when news coverage was dominated by accounts of her nearly breaking into tears as she answered a voter's question.
With Mr. Obama winning in Iowa and Mrs. Clinton winning in New Hampshire, a fresh dose of uncertainty was injected into the race as it moves to Nevada and South Carolina before contests in 22 states take place on Feb. 5. Mr. Obama was still hoping to win a crucial union endorsement in Nevada, where he dispatched his top aides from Iowa to organize the state.
Since Mr. Obama's victory in Iowa, the volume of calls and inquiries into his campaign had more than doubled, with financial contributors, policy supporters and volunteers eager to join the campaign. He is flying on Wednesday to New York, in the heart of Mrs. Clinton's territory, to hold a fund-raiser and to stage a campaign rally in New Jersey. Both states are among those with contests on Feb. 5.
I am still fired up and ready to go,' Mr. Obama said. First of all, I want to congratulate Senator Clinton on a hard-fought victory here in New Hampshire. She did an outstanding job.
Those words seemed to be the only kind ones spoken between the two on Tuesday evening. In the final days of the race, Mrs. Clinton and former President Bill Clinton raised sharp questions about the viability of Mr. Obama's candidacy, and Democrats were bracing for a combative race to come, with two well-financed campaigns and a series of primaries and caucuses ahead.
A victory for Mr. Obama, which even most of Mrs. Clinton's advisers were predicting, would have opened the door for many Democratic leaders to coalesce around his candidacy.
As supporters filed out of the rally on Tuesday evening, Mr. Obama's advisers declined to discuss the election results. They said they were moving on to the races ahead.
But Mr. Obama's words from a rally on Monday, perhaps, provided the best explanation.
It is very important for us all to be clear,' Mr. Obama said, 'that we have not won anything yet.

Retooled Campaign and Loyal Voters Add Up. By MICHAEL POWELL. MANCHESTER, N.H.. The Clintons rarely make the same mistake twice.

In Iowa, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton stood defeated and surrounded herself with graying politicians and Clinton administration veterans, including former Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright and a former presidential buddy, Terry McAuliffe.
But at the cavernous gymnasium where Mrs. Clinton claimed victory on Tuesday night, the scene was a do-over, a chance to show a re-energized campaign.
Aides carefully packed the aluminum stands with children, teenagers and young adults, along with just the faintest sprinkling of elders. Hardly a veteran politician was to be seen.
She waded through the crowd and climbed a small stage where she stood alone -- President Bill Clinton and their daughter, Chelsea, were seated nearby -- and laid out her new campaign message. It said she had found words that were true to herself and that she would use that to represent the voiceless.
Over the last week, I listened to you and, in the process, found my own voice,' she said.
We came back tonight because we spoke loudly and clearly,' Mrs. Clinton said. So tomorrow we are going to get up, roll up our sleeves and get going.
The Democratic campaign has been all about rhetorical borrowings on all sides, and Mrs. Clinton sounded lines echoing those of Senator Barack Obama and John Edwards.
Her teary eyes on Monday in Portsmouth added to the power of her new narrative, as aides told it. As the television networks sounded her victory, Mr. McAuliffe, former head of the Democratic National Committee, declared that moment a signal of Mrs. Clinton's lifelong passions.
The victory fires new life into her campaign and leaves the Democratic Party with the tightest of horse races. A recent USA Today/Gallup poll showed her and Mr. Obama neck and neck nationally.
For supporters waiting in the gymnasium at Southern New Hampshire University here, it was a night of flipping stomachs and sweaty palms.
God, God, God,' said Nick Draws, a college student who stared at the vast television screens when 2,000 votes separated the candidates at 9 p.m. 'This is painful.
A few days ago, a moment so tense seemed unlikely. Mr. Obama came out of the Midwest at a gallop after winning the Iowa caucuses with a swath of the youth vote. His rallies here had a festive feel, and the moment seemed dim for Mrs. Clinton.
The unexpected closeness of the vote also suggested the depth of support for Mrs. Clinton, particularly among older and working-class voters. At her headquarters at the university here, many supporters spoke of rooting for one Clinton or another for a decade and a half.
I haven't stopped rooting for her a very long time,' Mary Maggette of Nashua said. I wasn't going to leave her in a time of trouble.
Caroline Florom, 38; her husband, Vaughn Tamzarian, 48; and their five children -- the youngest in a double-wide stroller -- arrived next, after voting.
The most dramatic moment of their day was at 8 a.m., when they decided whom they were going to vote for.
We went to hear both of them speak this weekend, and we stayed up until 3 a.m. last night listening to their speeches again on C-Span,' Ms. Florom said of Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama. We like them both.
But in the end, she was the one bringing up the real issues about the middle class like college loans. His speeches felt like pep rallies.
She added that the couple had let their older boys help decide and that all chose Mrs. Clinton.
The strain of the primary slog was clearly visible lately. Mrs. Clinton struggled to find a way to counterpunch at her younger rival, who has acquired rock-star status with his followers, without being seen as too negative.
It is a measure of the Obama wave that several of Mrs. Clinton's supporters said Tuesday that they had nearly faltered. In Concord, Mark Anderson waved a 'Hillary' sign as Mrs. Clinton shook hands outside a school. Mr. Anderson said he could have been waving an Obama sign.
I have gone back and forth almost every day,' he said. I would feel very comfortable with either candidate.
Mrs. Clinton kept moving, trying to break through the invisible wall that sometimes seems to separate this private woman from her supporters. She began giving voters long hugs -- startling some -- and discussing carefully her feelings.
When she grew teary-eyed, television played the moment as a faux pas. But in New Hampshire, some supporters say they saw those tears and softened. In the gym here, backers said they saw in her teary eyes a reason to embrace this sometimes formal candidate.
I was moved,' said Barbara Arning, a retired teacher from Milford. I thought it was very sincere. She was in control and speaking with emotion. That's fine with me.
Some people said that Mrs. Clinton is what she is and that she had campaigned in the earnest, non-electric, fashion that is faithful to her persona.
I don't know where the negativity comes from,' Jim Neilsen, a retired sociology professor, said as he waved a small flag. This is the place where the real candidates get their act together.

An Epic Undertaking.

(By William Spiegelman The Wall Street Journal Asia.) Alan Bennett said that a classic is "a book everyone is assumed to have read and often thinks they have. Better still: It's the book you want to have read but don't want to suffer through again or even for the first time. You want points for sophistication, education and possession of cultural capital as compensation for long-ago pain and boredom. The "Aeneid" is Europe's most important written epic. Schoolboys have cursed it for more than two millennia. Thomas Jefferson's copy was the most scanned, indeed dog-eared, book in Monticello's library. Robert Lowell entitled a poem "Falling Asleep Over the Aeneid. Many readers have known similar somnolence. But no one has denied its importance. Translators, dramatists and opera composers have adapted it. Poets in many languages have imitated it. Dante took Virgil for his guide through two-thirds of "The Divine Comedy. Lowell, a summa cum laude classics major and a man of soaring ambition from adolescence on, knew what he was doing: Virgil represented for him -- and every other Western writer of epics -- the model of The Poet. Virgil's predecessor Homer is much easier to absorb, especially in the "Odyssey," but Homer, whoever he was (we know nothing about him), sang his poems. Virgil wrote a book. The Book. It is not boring. Although everyone also acknowledges the longueurs of part two, the first half -- what many of us read in school -- is gripping, and even the second contains plenty to admire. Much of the epic's enduring importance resulted from a famous misreading of the fourth of Virgil's "Eclogues" (37 B.C.). The author, writing about the newborn son of the Consul Pollio, said that the child would initiate a new golden age in which lion would lie down with lamb and peace and plenty come again. Bravo! Early Christians got a look and found a prediction of Christ. They took Virgil for a Christian in all but name, a magic prophet, all of whose works deserved close attention. And that's why Dante could use him as a guide, the repository of classical, pagan wisdom whose rationality suffices to get Dante through Hell and then up to the top of the mountain of Purgatory where reason must be succeeded by Christian faith. Dante turns around and finds that Virgil has vanished, replaced by Beatrice, the embodiment of love. It is one of world literature's saddest moments. On its own, even without our sense of its cultural heritage or literary primacy, the "Aeneid" continues to astonish; it is as much a book for our millennium as it was for Dante's and for Virgil's contemporaries. Ezra Pound called his own epic "Cantos" "a poem containing history," and Virgil's epic is, as every Latin student remembers, the roll call of Roman, especially Augustan, glory. Following decades of civil war, after the death of Julius Caesar and the takeover by his great-nephew Octavius, whom the Roman Senate subsequently rechristened the August One, Rome began to develop and solidify its empire and also to establish peace at home. Home, of course, came to include most of the known world, which Rome had conquered. The "Aeneid" is patriotic propaganda, written at the request and for the pleasure of the emperor, but it's also much more. It acknowledges the price and sadness of empire as well as the glory. Its characters have free will, but they also operate under the will of the gods. People are both accountable for their actions and exonerated. Destiny controls everything, except when it doesn't. Sunt lacrimae rerum et mentem mortalia tangunt" -- "Here are the tears of things, and the facts of mortality touch our minds": The famous line distills Virgilian sorrow. The first book of the poem begins, as an epic is supposed to, in the middle of things. Aeneas and his tempest-tossed ragtag band of survivors from Troy have washed up on the shores of Carthage in North Africa. The remnants of one empire are looking for the land they have been fated to settle, where their new kingdom, the second Troy, will arise. In Carthage another new kingdom is rising, that of Dido of Sidon, another refugee. The Trojans look at the pictures on the walls of her city and they find . . . themselves! Their story, the whole tragedy of Troy, has preceded them, has entered the realm of history and myth. They are looking at their past, the source of their tears. Virgil's epigrammatic concision -- "lacrimae rerum" -- neatly, dispassionately embodies a stoic wisdom about history and human life. Mortality and its touches get to us all. Ever since St. Augustine said that he wasted too many tears as a young man crying over Dido, readers have been most drawn to Book 4, the love story of two national leaders, each widowed, each resistant to and finally succumbing to the force of Eros. Venus and Juno concoct a trick to make them fall in love, but we know that Virgil's gods are merely part of his epic machinery; the love affair can be understood perfectly in human terms alone. It's the heart of Virgil's tragic vision, and it still leaves us wondering: Is the hero a dutiful, perhaps priggish man who must go off to Italy? Italiam non sponte sequor," he says to Dido when commanded by Mercury to lift anchor and raise sails. I'm not seeking Italy out of my own choice. Both falling in love, and then relinquishing it, the motto is the same: Don't blame me. Or is he just like any other fellow, taking his caddish pleasure and then heading into the sunrise? Enjoying a roll in the Carthaginian hay before sailing off to the as-yet-undiscovered land where the gods have guaranteed him a new bride and a new legacy. What's a guy to do? And what's a woman to do? Unlike that other spurned heroine, Medea, Dido has no children to kill. She can't get back at her man in that way. As an early desperate housewife -- a raging queen, rather -- she has but one choice, the classic one. Seduced and abandoned, Dido places a curse on Aeneas, asks for eternal enmity between their two nations, mounts her funeral pyre and kills herself as the Trojans sail away. She asks for an avenger to arise. Roman readers would know him: Hannibal, who tried to cross the Alps hundreds of years after Dido's demise and would suffer defeat as well. The same first readers would have also been alert to a more contemporary parallel. A noble leader seduced and detained by an African (read: foreign, untrustworthy) woman? They would remember Cleopatra, the serpent of the Nile who led a noble Roman named Anthony off course and destroyed his manhood. Such struggles -- between love and duty, commitment to self and to nation -- have echoed down history's, and literature's, corridors ever since. Virgil had an impossible task, which he succeeded in performing. He wrote a great political and historical poem that transcends propaganda and remains new and fresh because of its humanity. Also because of its style: Virgil took Homer's fluid hexameter lines and hammered them into Latin, an uncongenial language. In so doing he set the standard for any artist who tries to do the impossible. Like his hero, Virgil was fated to establish a new empire, in this case a literary one. His excellent modern translators, from John Dryden, at the end of the 17th century, to Robert Fagles, two years ago, have all tried to "English" the original Latin, to represent their poet in a way that does justice to both the past and the present, to the original and to contemporary audiences. Every generation retranslates the masterpieces of the ancient world. Such efforts prove that a classic is something that is perennially young. Mr. Spiegelman first read Virgil at Cheltenham High School in Wyncote, Pennsylvania..