“Jove on the giant fair Trinacria hurl’d, And with one bolt revenged his starry world. Beneath her burning hills Typhoeus lies, And, struggling always, strives in vain to rise. Down does Pelorus his right hand suppress Towards Latium; on the left Pachyne weighs: His legs are under Lilybaeum spread, And Aetna presses hard his horrid head: On his broad back he there extended lies, And vomits clouds of ashes to the skies: Oft labouring with his load, at last he tires, And pours out in revenge a flood of fires: Mountains he struggles to o’erwhelm, and towns; Earth’s inmost bowels quake, and Nature groans: His terrors reach the direful king of hell; He fears his throes will to the day reveal The realms of night, and fright his trembling ghosts.

“This to prevent, he quits the Stygian coasts, In his black car, by sooty horses drawn, Fair Sicily he seeks, and dreads the dawn: Around her plains he casts his eager eyes, And every mountain to the bottom tries. But when, in all the careful search, he saw No cause of fear, no ill-suspected flaw; Secure from harm, and wand’ring on at will, Venus beheld him from her flowery bill; When straight the dame her little Cupid press’d, With secret rapture, to her snowy breast, And in these words the fluttering boy address’d:

“ ‘O thou, my arms, my glory, and my power, My son, whom men and deathless gods adore, Bend thy sure bow, whose arrows never miss’d, No longer let hell’s king thy sway resist; Take him, while straggling from his dark abodes, He coasts the kingdoms of superior gods. If sovereign Jove, if gods who rule the waves, And Neptune, who rules them, have been thy slaves, Shall hell be free? The tyrant strike, my son; Enlarge thy mother’s empire, and thy own: Let not our heaven be made the mock of hell, But Pluto to confess thy power compel. Our rule is slighted in our native skies; See Pallas, see Diana too, defies Thy darts, which Ceres’ daughter would despise: She too our empire treats with awkward scorn: Such insolence no longer’s to be borne: Revenge our slighted reign, and with thy dart Transfix the virgin’s to the uncle’s heart.’

“She said; and from his quiver straight he drew A dart that surely would the business do; She guides his hand; she makes her touch the test, And of a thousand arrows chose the best: No feather better poised, a sharper head None had, and sooner none, and surer sped. He bends his how, he draws it to his ear, Through Pluto’s heart it drives, and fixes there.”

Pluto surprises Proserpine while gathering towers in the plains of Enna, and transports her to the internal regions.

Near Enna’s walls a spacious lake is spread, Famed for the sweetly-singing swans it bred; Pergusa is its name: and never more Were heard, or sweeter on Cayster’s shore. Woods crown the lake; and Phoebus ne’er invades The tufted fences, or offends the shades: Fresh fragrant breezes fan the verdant bowers, And the moist ground smiles with enamell’d flowers: The cheerful birds their airy carols sing, And the whole year is one eternal spring.

Then, stretching out her arms, she stopp’d his way: But he, impatient of the shortest stay, Throws to his dreadful steeds the slacken’d rein, And strikes his iron sceptre through the main; The depths profound through yielding waves he cleaves, And to hell’s centre a free passage leaves; Down sinks his chariot, and his realms of night The god soon reaches with a rapid flight.

The nymph Cyane, bewailing the loss of Proserpine, is changed into a fountain.