Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
Italy: Vols. XI–XIII. 1876–79.

Etna (Ætna), the Mountain

Etna

By Pindar (c. 522–433 B.C.)

BUT whomsoever Jove

Hath looked on without love,

Are anguished when they hear the voiceful sound;

Whether on land they be,

Or in the raging sea;

With him, outstretched on dread Tartarian bound,

Hundred-headed Typhon; erst

In famed Cilicia’s cavern nurst;

Foe of the gods; whose shaggy breast,

By Cuma’s sea-beat mound, is prest;

Pent by plains of Sicily,

And that snowed pillar heavenly high,

Ætna, nurse of ceaseless frost;

From whose caverned depths aspire,

In purest folds upwreathing, tost,

Fountains of approachless fire.

By day, a flood of smouldering smoke,

With sullen gleam the torrents pour;

But in darkness, many a rock,

Crimson flame, along the shore,

Hurls to the deep with deafening roar.

From that worm aloft are thrown

The wells of Vulcan, full of fear;

A marvel strange to look upon,

And, for the passing mariner,

As marvellous to hear;

How Ætna’s tops with umbrage black,

And soil do hold him bound,

And by that pallet all his back

Is scored with many a wound.