The Poetical Works of Anna Seward :: :: University of Virginia Library

Imagination, while thy kindling eyes
Flame o'er the climes these faithful pages trace,
O may'st thou paint them, as sublime they rise,
In novel beauty, and horrific grace!

Swell the rich treasures of poetic fanes
With all the pomps that mighty Etna boasts,
As, glaring o'er the affrighted deep, she reigns
The pride, and terror, of Ausonian coasts!

With thy keen glance the veils of distance pierce,
With thy firm step conduct my venturous way,
And on the texture of my proudest verse
The changeful glories of those heights display!

210

Now the proud steep climbing with toilsome tread,
We mark the wonders of its triple zone;
Round the broad base see sultry Summer lead
The stores luxuriant of his glowing throne.

While, on the rising edges of his clime,
Emergent Spring her leafy mantle spreads,
Woods, waving wide, in hues of vernal prime,
Blue trickling rills and flower-embroider'd meads;

Till Winter, o'er each blooming plain and grove,
Draws the chill circle of his pallid line;
Dim fields of ice, and gelid rocks above,
And sleety gales, and dreary lakes combine.

Then while, amaz'd, we lift exploring eyes
To the vast Cone, high in the lurid air,
We mark, in one eternal union, rise
The elements, that wage eternal war.

Deep in the snows, it has no power to melt,
View the dread gulph, in all its boiling ire,

211

Where sleet, and ice, and wintry waves, have felt
How weak their force to quench its raging fire.

Terrific Pinnacle! thy sides inclose
The unfathom'd Gulph, coeval with the world;
And by thy flames, that burst 'mid circling snows,
Up sightless heights the blazing rocks are hurl'd.

Their dire explosion rends the frozen mound,
Shakes the firm earth, and thunders o'er the deep;
While issuing deathful, from the fierce profound,
Rolls the red Lava down the icy steep!—

But we, in hours less terrible, prepare,
Adventurous, to pursue our faithless way,
And, though the drifted snows our steps ensnare,
Reach the extremest point, ere dawns the day.

Now long, pale gleams shoot thro' the sky, and warn
Retreating darkness of the Solar glance;
And hills, rocks, plains, and seas, and night, and morn,
Blend, undivided, through the vast expanse.

But morning, by degrees, exerts her power;
The stars are quench'd!—the shadows melt away!
Forests, that late seem'd like black gulphs to lour,
Rise, in faint green, beneath the glimmering ray.

212

Wide spread the skirts of strength'ning light around;
And from the orient waves, that stretch serene,
And with their silver line th' horizon bound,
While states and nations dimly intervene,

On plains, rocks, mountains, rivers, seas, and isles
Bursts the gay Sun!—his plastic beams are hurl'd!
And to our strain'd and startled senses, smiles,
New to our gaze, a whole illumin'd World!

While high exalted in the trackless air,
Alarm'd, and doubting if on earth we stand,
Scarce knows our sight to separate and compare
The countless objects of its vast command.

As on a map, o'er Sicily we look,
Trace all her rivers through their mazy sweep,
From their first source, a little gurgling brook,
Till, breadth'ning soon, they mingle with the deep;

But, rising at his spring a current wide,
Devoted Acis hurries through the plain,
Speeds from the Giant's voice with frighted tide,
And throws his icy waters in the main.

213

Here vine-clad Lipari, with her lucid streams,
Gay Alicudi, and Panari there,
While Strombola, a lesser Etna, gleams,
And wreaths with spiral smoke the fields of air.

These, as by magic, in the visual rays,
Close drawn around the mountain skirts are shown,
Seeming as lifted up to meet our gaze,
Like medals in a watry bason thrown.

Then o'er the space immense weak vision strains,
And feels its aching powers confus'd and lost,
Else, that might view hot Barca's sandy plains,
And verdant Thessaly's remoter coast.

214

Now turn we, sighing, from the boundless scene,
Mocking the feeble sight's eluded ray,
While wonder mellows into thought serene,
As sinks, in evening shades, the garish day.

Here, while we rove beneath thy wayward skies,
Green Albion, zoned by Ocean's azure wave,
To Nature let our heart's thanksgivings rise
For all she banish'd, as for all she gave;

That not on our cold mountain-heights reside,
On Snowdon or Helvellyn's peak sublime,
The Etnean graces;—in their ardent pride,
And baleful charms, exil'd this happier clime.

Faithful if here their lineaments shall flow,
O, Brydone! may the praise be thine alone!
Since in thy traits arise, thy colours glow
The bright Destroyers, on their Burning Throne!

Mr Brydone tells us, that the three distinct seasons, Summer, Spring, and Winter, in inverted order, form the torrid, the temperate, and the frigid zone, round the ascending heights of Mount Etna.

Mr Brydone mentions the pecuhar coldness of this river, hence often called in Sicily, il fiume Freddo; also, that it rises out of the earth at once, a large stream. It is the river celebrated by the poets, into which the nymph Galatea transformed the shepherd Acis, her lover, after he had been killed by the giant, Polypheme. Mr Brydone ingeniously observes, that the extreme velocity of the current, seems, from our recollection of the fable, to be inspired by terror.

This is Mr Brydone's own simile, and beyond any other which could have been chosen, brings to the mind's eye these peculiar effects of vision. Poets and orators often find themselves obliged to accommodate great things to our perception, by comparing them to small ones. These comparisons are often happy, and sometimes sublime.

“Thou spreadest out the heavens like a curtain.”

Milton compares the fallen angels in Pandemonium to bees, and Homer, Menelaus, guarding the dead body of Patroclus, to a fly. Instances of this sort in the noblest writers are innumerable.