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Yes, in your heaven, where proud ye reign, exult;
Poor vanquish'd Ceres and her child insult!"
She spake, and sought, on Etna's woody side,
For brands, whose flame her nightly toil might guide.
By golden Acis' bank a grove arose,
Acis, whose stream fair Galatea chose
Full oft to bathe in rather than the sea:
A tangled grove—and dense with many a tree,
It climb'd up Etna's flanks—'twas there, men say,
That Jove, victorious from the mighty fray,
His blood-stain' d shield and captured trophies laid,
And clothed with Phlegra's spoils the branchy glade.
There hang the giant limbs, the grinning jaws,
The face, whose threatening scowl the gazer awes:
Huge bones of serpents into heaps are cast;
Their skins, yet rigid, roar with every blast:
No tree but boasts some name of warrior lords;
This bending bears Ægæon's hundred swords,
On that are Cœus' sable arms bestow'd,
These ponderous Mimas and Ophion load.
The smoking spoils of Earth's most royal son,
Enceladus himself, a shady pine hath on;
Which bows beneath their weight its stature tall,
Saved by its neighbour oak alone from fall.
