Thus Achaemenides: “With thanks I name
Aeneas, and his piety proclaim.
I ’scaped the cyclop through the hero’s aid,
Else in his maw my mangled limbs had laid.
When first your navy under sail he found,
He raved till Aetna labour’d with the sound;
Raging, he stalk’d along the mountain’s side,
And vented clouds of breath at every stride;
His staff a mountain ash, and in the clouds,
Oft as he walks, his grisly front he shrowds;
Eyeless he groped about with vengeful haste,
And justled promontories as he pass’d:
Then heaved a rock’s high summit to the main,
And bellow’d like some bursting hurricane:
“ ‘Oh! could I seize Ulysses in his flight,
How unlamented were my loss of sight!
These jaws should piecemeal tear each panting vein,
Grind every crackling bone, and pound his brain.’
“As thus he raved my joints with horror shook;
The tide of blood my chilling heart forsook;
I saw him once disgorge huge morsels, raw,
Of wretches undigested in his maw.
From the pale breathless trunks whole limbs he tore,
His beard all clotted with o’erflowing gore.
My anxious hours I pass’d in caves, my food
Was forest fruits and wildings of the wood;
At length a sail I wafted, and aboard
My fortune found a hospitable lord.
“Now, in return, your own adventures tell,
And what, since first you put to sea, befell.”