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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.)

(From Pythian I)
Translated by Henry Francis Cary

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.