Aeneid III: A Translation in Alliterative Verse

Aeneid III: 548-587

Without wait, at once, our promises pledged in position,

We turn the top of our sail-hung spar

And depart from the distrusted domains and abodes of the Argives.

Hence the home of Hercules Tarentus, if tale be true,

Lies, and Lacina's altar arises across,

The citadel of Caulon and ship-shattering Scylaceum.

Then distant from the deeps Etna volcano is viewed.

And a great groan from the sea and shaking stones

Remotely we hear roars broken on the beaches

The shallows seethe and the sand is stirred by the sea-tide

And Ancient Anchises exclaims: "Certainly this is Charybdis:

These are the cliffs and cruel crags the prophet predicted

O flee, friends, and rise together to the rowlocks!"

They obey the order, and Palinurus pulls

The bellowing bowsprit to the sinistral swell.

All the lads seek the left with rows and rigging.

We are hoisted to the heavens by the arching abyss

And drop to the deepest depths as the wave withdraws.

Thrice thunder the rocks amid the ringing reef,

And frothing foam we see, and sea-sprayed stars.

Meanwhile wearied by wind and sinking sun,

Witless of the way we sail to the Cyclops' shores.

A harbour, itself huge and calm of coming currents,

But Etna close by clashes with dreadful destruction,

And sometimes spews to the skies black billows,

Smoking with a sooty storm and flashing firebrands,

It builds up blazing balls and smacks the stars

Sometimes stones and severed volcanic viscera

Belching it bombards, to the breezes liquid lava

It globules with a groan, and boils up from its bottommost base.

The story says Enceladus's lightning-lashed limbs

Are crushed by this colossus, and the vast volcano above

Flings fire from its burst boilers,

And when he shifts his sapped side, all Trinacrium trembles

With a murmur and mantles the sky with smoke.

That night, covered by a copse, we suffer shocking spectres,

But do not discern the source of the sound,

For there are no fires in the firmament, no clear canopy

Of starry skies, but a film in the foggy air,

And a deep darkness mantles the moon in mist.