It does not rise with the moist Hyades, or
ride with cloudy Orion in the Mediterranean night; it does not pass like
Atlantic tempests on great world-currents: it remains. Its home is upon
Etna; thence it comes and thither it returns; it gathers and disperses,
lightens and darkens, blows and is silent, and though it suffer the
clear north wind, or the west, to divide its veils with heaven, again it
draws the folds together about its abode. It obeys only Etna, who sends
it forth; then with clouds and thick darkness the mountain hides its
face: it is the Sicilian winter.
II
But Etna does not withdraw continuously from its children even in this
season. On the third day, at farthest, I was told it would bring back
the sun; and I was not deceived. Two days it was closely wrapped in
impenetrable gray; but the third morning, as I threw open my casement
and stepped out upon the terrace, I saw it, like my native winter,
expanding its broad flanks under the double radiance of dazzling clouds
spreading from its extreme summit far out and upward, and of the
snow-fields whose long fair drifts shone far down the sides.
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