And sailed on, With some misgiving, past the homes of Greeks; Saw, next, a bay, Tarentum, and a town That rumor said was Hercules’; against it, The towers of Caulon rose, and Scylaceum, Most dangerous to ships, and a temple of Juno. Far off, Sicilian Etna rose from the waves, And we heard the loud sea roar, and the rocks resounding, And voices broken on the coast; the shoals Leaped at us, and the tide boiled sand. My father Cried in alarm:--‘This must be that Charybdis Helenus warned us of. Rise to the oars, O comrades, pull from the danger!’ They responded As they did, always, Palinurus swinging The prow to the waves on the left, and all our effort Strained to the left, with oars and sail. One moment We were in the clouds, the next in the gulf of Hell; Three times the hollow rocks and reefs roared at us, Three times we saw spray shower the very stars, And the wind went down at sunset; we were weary, Drifting, in ignorance, to the Cyclops shores.
There is a harbor, safe enough from wind, But Etna thunders near it, crashing and roaring, Throwing black clouds up to the sky, and smoking With swirling pitchy color, and white-hot ashes, With balls of flame puffed to the stars, and boulders, The mountain’s guts, belched out, or molten rock Boiling below the ground, roaring above it. The story goes that Enceladus, a giant, Struck by a bolt of lightning, lies here buried Beneath all Etna’s weight, with the flames pouring Through the broken furnace-flues; he shifts his body, Every so often, to rest his weariness, And then all Sicily seems to moan and tremble And fill the sky with smoke. We spent the night here, Hiding in woods, enduring monstrous portents, Unable to learn the cause. There were no stars, No light or fire in the sky; the dead of the night, The thick of the cloud, obscured the moon.
And day Arrived, at last, and the shadows left the heaven, And a man came out of the woods, a sorry figure, In hunger’s final stages, reaching toward us His outstretched hands. We looked again. His beard Unshorn, his rags pinned up with thorns, and dirty, He was, beyond all doubt of it, a Greek, And one of those who had been at Troy in the fighting. He saw, far off, the Trojan dress and armor, Stopped short, for a moment, almost started back In panic, then, with a wild rush, came on, Pleading and crying:--‘By the stars I beg you, By the gods above, the air we breathe, ah Trojans, Take me away from here, carry me off To any land whatever; that will be plenty. I know I am one of the Greeks, I know I sailed With them, I warred against the gods of Ilium, I admit all that; drown me for evil-doing, Cut me to pieces, scatter me over the waves. Kill me. If I must die, it will be a pleasure To perish at the hands of men.’ He held Our knees and clung there, grovelling before us. We urged him tell his story, his race, his fortune. My father gave him his hand, a pledge of safety, And his fear died down a little.