Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
Italy: Vols. XI–XIII. 1876–79. | | | | Monte Circello | | Circello | | Virgil (70–19 B.C.) |
| | (From Æneid) Translated by C. P. Cranch
THEY skirt the nearest shores to Circe’s land, | |
| Where she, the sumptuous daughter of the Sun, | |
| Fills her secluded forests with the sounds | |
| Of her assiduous singing, while within | |
| Her palace proud the fragrant cedar burns, | 5 |
| Her nightly torch; and through her gauzy web | |
| The whistling shuttle runs. Here, late at night, | |
| The roar of angry lions in the dark | |
| Chafing against their prison bars, was heard; | |
| And bristly boars and raging bears, pent up, | 10 |
| And howling wolves of size immense. All these, | |
| From human shapes, by means of potent herbs, | |
| The cruel goddess Circe had transformed | |
| To faces and to bodies of wild beasts. | |
| Then, lest the pious Trojans should endure | 15 |
| Such monstrous fate, when brought into the port, | |
| Nor touch a coast so dreadful, Neptune filled | |
| Their sails with favoring winds, to aid their flight, | |
| And wafted them beyond the boiling shoals. | | | | |
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