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(From Æneid, Book III) Translated by C. P. Cranch
BUT when near the coasts | |
| Of Sicily, Pelorus’ narrow straits | |
| Open to view, then take the land to the left, | |
| And the left sea, with a wide circuit round, | |
| And shun the shore and sea upon the right. | 5 |
| Those lands, ’t is said, by vast convulsions once | |
| Were torn asunder (such the changes wrought | |
| By time), when both united stood as one. | |
| Between them rushed the sea, and with its waves | |
| Cut off the Italian side from Sicily, | 10 |
| And now between their fields and cities flows | |
| With narrow tide. There Scylla guards the right, | |
| Charybdis the implacable the left; | |
| And thrice its whirlpool sucks the vast waves down | |
| Into the lowest depths of its abyss, | 15 |
| And spouts them forth into the air again, | |
| Lashing the stars with waves. But Scylla lurks | |
| Within the blind recesses of a cave, | |
| Stretching her open jaws, and dragging down | |
| The ships upon the rocks. Foremost, a face, | 20 |
| Human, with comely virgin’s breast, she seems, | |
| E’en to the middle; but her lower parts | |
| A hideous monster of the sea, the tails | |
| Of dolphins mingling with the womb of wolves. | |
| Better to voyage, though delaying long, | 25 |
| Around Pachyna’s cape, with circuit wide, | |
| Than once the shapeless Scylla to behold | |
| Under her caverns vast, and hear those rocks | |
| Resounding with her dark blue ocean hounds. | |
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