a. There he growled and
groaned and shot forth flame in impotent fury; for though he
remembered the gladness of those playfellows, and sought to harm
them by tossing red-hot rocks upon the shore, yet the light sea ever
laughed, and the radiant river found its way down from the copsewood
to the waves. The throes of Etna in convulsion are the pangs of his
great giant's heart, pent up and sick with love for the bright sea
and gladsome sun; for, as an old poet sings:--

There's love when holy heaven doth wound the earth;
And love still prompts the land to yearn for bridals:
The rain that falls in rivers from the sky,
Impregnates earth: and she brings forth for men
The flocks and herds and life of teeming Ceres.

To which let us add:--

But sometimes love is barren, when broad hills,
Rent with the pangs of passion, yearn in vain,
Pouring fire tears adown their furrowed cheeks,
And heaving in the impotence of anguish.

There are few places in Europe where the poetic truth of Greek
mythology is more apparent than here upon the coast between Etna and
the sea. Of late, philosophers have been eager to tell us that the
beautiful legends of the Greeks, which contain in the coloured haze
of fancy all the thoughts afterwards expressed by that divine race
in poetry and sculpture, are but decayed phrases, dead sentences,
and words whereof the meaning was forgotten. In this theory there is
a certain truth; for mythology stands midway between the first
lispings of a nation in its language, and its full-developed
utterances in art. Yet we have only to visit the scenes which gave
birth to some Hellenic myth, and we perceive at once that, whatever
philology may affirm, the legend was a living poem, a drama of life
and passion transferred from human experience to the inanimate world
by those early myth-makers, who were the first and the most fertile
of all artists. Persephone was the patroness of Sicily, because amid
the billowy cornfields of her mother Demeter and the meadow flowers
she loved in girlhood, are ever found sulphurous ravines and chasms
breathing vapour from the pit of Hades. What were the Cyclops--that
race of one-eyed giants--but the many minor cones of Etna? Observed
from the sea by mariners, or vaguely spoken of by the natives, who
had reason to dread their rage, these hillocks became lawless and
devouring giants, each with one round burning eye. Afterwards the
tales of Titans who had warred with Ze