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Sending up bursts of black clouds in the air,
With rolling smoke of pitch, and flashing sparks,
And globes of flame that lick the very stars.
Then, from the bowels of the mountain torn,
Huge stones are hurled, and melted rocks heaped up,
A roaring flood of fire. 'Tis said that here
Enceladus, half blasted by the bolts

Of heaven, was thrust beneath the mountainous mass;
And mighty Etna, piled above, sends forth
His fiery breathings from the broken flues;
And every time he turns his weary sides,
All Sicily groans and trembles, and the sky
Is wreathed in smoke.

ETNA.

Virgil. Tr. C. P. Cranch.

TEAR Sicily and Æolian Lipari

NEAR

An island rises steep, with smoking rocks.
Beneath, by huge Cyclopean forges scooped
And eaten out, the vast Etnean caves
Thunder, and mighty anvil-strokes are heard;
And all the caverns roar and hiss, with blasts
Of fiery steel, from panting furnaces.
The abode of Vulcan this, lending its name
To the surrounding soil. Here from on high
The fire-god lights. Below, the Cyclops toil
Over their forges: Brontes, Steropes,

And naked-limbed Pyracmon.

Virgil. Tr. C. P. Cranch.

MOUNT ETNA.

OW gracious is the mountain at this hour!

How

A thousand times have I been here alone
Or with the revellers from the mountain towns,
But never on so fair a morn; - the sun
Is shining on the brilliant mountain-crests,
And on the highest pines; but further down
Here in the valley is in shade; the sward

Is dark, and on the stream the mist still hangs;
One sees one's footprints crushed in the wet grass,
One's breath curls in the air; and on these pines
That climb from the stream's edge, the long gray tufts,
Which the goats love, are jewelled thick with dew.

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The noon is hot; when we have crossed the stream We shall have left the woody tract, and come Upon the open shoulder of the hill.

See how the giant spires of yellow bloom

Of the sun-loving gentian, in the heat,

Are shining on those naked slopes like flame!
Let us rest here.

*

The track winds down to the clear stream
To cross the sparkling shallows; there
The cattle love to gather, on their way
To the high mountain pastures, and to stay
Till the rough cow-herds drive them past,
Knee-deep in the cool ford; for 't is the last

Of all the woody, high, well-watered dells
On Etna; and the beam

Of noon is broken there by chestnut boughs
Down its steep verdant sides; the air

Is freshened by the leaping stream, which throws
Eternal showers of spray on the mossed roots
Of trees, and veins of turf, and long dark shoots
Of ivy-plants, and fragrant hanging bells
Of hyacinths, and on late anemones,
That muffle its wet banks; but glade
And stream and sward and chestnut-trees
End here; Etna beyond, in the broad glare
Of the hot noon, without a shade,

Slope behind slope, up to the peak, lies bare;
The peak round which the white clouds play.

Matthew Arnold.

ENCELADUS.

UNDER Mount Etna he lies,

It is slumber, it is not death;

For he struggles at times to arise,
And above him the lurid skies
Are hot with his fiery breath.

The crags are piled on his breast,
The earth is heaped on his head;
But the groans of his wild unrest,
Though smothered and half suppressed,
Are heard, and he is not dead.

And the nations far away

Are watching with eager eyes;
They talk together and say,
"To-morrow, perhaps to-day,
Enceladus will arise!"

And the old gods, the austere
Oppressors in their strength,
Stand aghast and white with fear
At the ominous sounds they hear,
And tremble, and mutter, "At length!"

Ah me! for the land that is sown
With the harvest of despair!
Where the burning cinders, blown
From the lips of the overthrown
Enceladus, fill the air.

Where ashes are heaped in drifts
Over vineyard and field and town,
Whenever he starts and lifts

His head through the blackened rifts
Of the crags that keep him down.

See, see the red light shines!

'Tis the glare of his awful eyes!

And the storm-wind shouts through the pines Of Alps and of Apennines,

"Enceladus, arise!"

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

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Euganean Hills.

THE EUGANEAN HILLS.

the mountains Euganean,

I stood listening to the pæan

With which the legioned rooks did hail
The sun's uprise majestical;

Gathering round with wings all hoar,
Through the dewy mist they soar

Like gray shades, till the eastern heaven
Bursts, and then, as clouds of even,
Flecked with fire and azure, lie
In the unfathomable sky,

So their plumes of purple grain,
Starred with drops of golden rain,
Gleam above the sunlight woods,
As in silent multitudes

On the morning's fitful gale
Through the broken mist they sail;
And the vapors cloven and gleaming
Follow down the dark steep streaming,
Till all is bright and clear and still
Round the solitary hill.

Beneath is spread like a green sea
The waveless plain of Lombardy,
Bounded by the vaporous air,
Islanded by cities fair.

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