Forthwith upright he rears from off the pool His mighty stature; on each hand the flames Driven backward slope their pointing spires, and, rolled In billows, leave i’ the midst a horrid vale. Then with expanded wings he steers his flight Aloft, incumbent on the dusky air That felt unusual weight; till on dry land He lights⁠—if it were land that ever burned With solid, as the lake with liquid fire, And such appeared in hue, as when the force Of subterranean wind transports a hill Torn from Pelorus, or the shattered side Of thundering Aetna, whose combustible And fuelled entrails thence conceiving fire, Sublimed with mineral fury, aid the winds, And leave a singed bottom all involved With stench and smoke: such resting found the sole Of unblest feet. Him followed his next mate, Both glorying to have scaped the Stygian flood As gods, and by their own recovered strength, Not by the sufferance of supernal power.