Metamorphoses

Of bodies changed to various forms I sing:
Ye gods, from whom these miracles did spring,
Inspire my numbers with celestial heat,
Till I my long laborious work complete;
And add perpetual tenor to my rhymes,
Deduced from Nature’s birth to Caesar’s times.

Before the seas, and this terrestrial ball,
And heaven’s high canopy that covers all,
One was the face of Nature; if a face:
Rather a rude and indigested mass:
A lifeless lump, unfashion’d and unframed,
Of jarring seeds, and justly Chaos named.
No sun was lighted up the world to view,
No moon did yet her blunted horns renew,
Nor yet was earth suspended in the sky,
Nor poised, did on her own foundations lie,
Nor seas about the shores their arms had thrown;
But earth, and air, and water were in one.
Thus air was void of light, and earth unstable,
And water’s dark abyss unnavigable.
No certain form on any was impress’d;
All were confused, and each disturb’d the rest.
For hot and cold were in one body fix’d,
And soft with hard, and light with heavy, mix’d.

But God, or Nature, while they thus contend,
To these intestine discords put an end.
Then earth from air, and seas from earth, were driven,
And grosser air sunk from ethereal heaven.
Thus disembroil’d, they take their proper place;
The next of kin contiguously embrace;
And foes are sunder’d by a larger space.
The force of fire ascended first on high,
And took its dwelling in the vaulted sky:
Then air succeeds, in lightness next to fire,
Whose atoms from unactive earth retire;
Earth sinks beneath, and draws a numerous throng
Of ponderous, thick, unwieldy, seeds along.
About her coasts unruly waters roar,
And, rising on a ridge, insult the shore.
Thus when the god, whatever god was he,
Had form’d the whole, and made the parts agree,
That no unequal portions might be found,
He moulded earth into a spacious round:
Then, with a breath, he gave the winds to blow,
And bade the congregated waters flow.
He adds the running springs, and standing lakes;
And bounding banks for winding rivers makes.
Some part, in earth are swallow’d up, the most
In ample oceans disembogued, are lost.
He shades the woods, the valleys he restrains
With rocky mountains, and extends the plains.

And as five zones the ethereal regions bind,
Five, correspondent, are to earth assign’d:
The sun, with rays directly darting down,
Fires all beneath, and fries the middle zone;
The two beneath the distant poles complain
Of endless winter, and perpetual rain.
Betwixt the extremes, two happier climates hold
The temper that partakes of hot and cold.
The fields of liquid air, enclosing all,
Surround the compass of this earthly ball:
The lighter parts lie next the fires above,
The grosser near the watery surface move:
Thick clouds are spread, and storms engender there,
And thunder’s voice, which wretched mortals fear,
And winds, that on their wings cold winter bear.
Nor were those blust’ring brethren left at large,
On seas and shores their fury to discharge:
Bound as they are, and circumscribed in place,
They rend the world, resistless, where they pass,
And mighty marks of mischief leave behind;
Such is the rage of their tempestuous kind.
First Eurus to the rising morn is sent
(The regions of the balmy continent),
And eastern realms, where, early, Persians run
To greet the bless’d appearance of the sun.
Westward, the wanton zephyr wings his flight,
Pleased with the remnants of departing light.
Fierce Boreas, with his offspring issues forth
To invade the frozen wagon of the north;
While frowning Auster seeks the southern sphere,
And rots, with endless rain, the unwholesome year.

High o’er the clouds, and empty realms of wind,
The god a clearer space for heaven design’d;
Where fields of light, and liquid ether flow,
Purged from the ponderous dregs of earth below.

Scarce had the power distinguish’d these, when straight
The stars, no longer overlaid with weight,
Exert their heads from underneath the mass,
And upward shoot, and kindle as they pass,
And with diffusive light adorn their heavenly place.
Then, every void of nature to supply,
With forms of gods he fills the vacant sky;
New herds of beasts he sends the plains to share;
New colonies of birds to people air;
And to their oozy beds the finny fish repair.

A creature of a more exalted kind
Was wanting yet, and then was man design’d;
Conscious of thought, of more capacious breast,
For empire form’d, and fit to rule the rest:
Whether with particles of heavenly fire
The God of nature did his soul inspire,
Or earth, but new divided from the sky,
And pliant, still retained the ethereal energy,
Which wise Prometheus temper’d into paste,
And, mix’d with living streams, the godlike image cast.
Thus, while the mute creation downward bend
Their sight, and to their earthly mother tend,
Man looks aloft, and with erected eyes
Beholds his own hereditary skies.
From such rude principles our form began,
And earth was metamorphosed into man.

The golden age was first, when man, yet new,
No rule but uncorrupted reason knew,
And, with a native bent did good pursue.
Unforced by punishment, unawed by fear,
His words were simple, and his soul sincere;
Needless was written law where none oppress’d;
The law of man was written in his breast:
No suppliant crowds before the judge appear’d,
No court erected yet, nor cause was heard,
But all was safe; for conscience was their guard.
The mountain trees in distant prospect please,
Ere yet the pine descended to the seas;
Ere sails were spread new oceans to explore,
And happy mortals, unconcern’d for more,
Confined their wishes to their native shore.
No walls were yet, nor fence, nor moat, nor mound,
Nor drum was heard, nor trumpet’s angry sound,
Nor swords were forged; but, void of care and crime,
The soft creation slept away their time.
The teeming earth, yet guiltless of the plough,
And unprovoked, did fruitful stores allow:
Content with food which Nature freely bred,
On wildings and on strawberries they fed;
Cornels and brambleberries gave the rest,
And falling acorns furnish’d out a feast.
The flowers unsown, in fields and meadows reign’d;
And western winds immortal spring maintain’d.
In following years the bearded corn ensued
From earth unask’d, nor was that earth renew’d.
From veins of valleys milk and nectar broke,
And honey sweating through the pores of oak.

But when good Saturn, banish’d from above,
Was driven to hell, the world was under Jove.
Succeeding times a silver age behold,
Excelling brass, but more excell’d by gold.
Then summer, autumn, winter, did appear,
And spring was but a season of the year;
The sun his annual course obliquely made,
Good days contracted, and enlarged the bad.
Then air with sultry heats began to glow,
The wings of winds were clogg’d with ice and snow;
And shivering mortals, into houses driven,
Sought shelter from the inclemency of heaven.
Those houses, then, were caves or homely sheds,
With twining osiers fenced, and moss their beds.
Then ploughs, for seed, the fruitful furrows broke,
And oxen labour’d first beneath the yoke.

To this came next in course the brazen age;
A warlike offspring, prompt to bloody rage,
Not impious yet.

Hard steel succeeded then,
And stubborn as the metal were the men.
Truth, modesty, and shame, the world forsook;
Fraud, avarice, and force, their places took.
Then sails were spread to every wind that blew,
Raw were the sailors and the depths were new;
Trees, rudely hollow’d did the waves sustain,
Ere ships in triumph plough’d the watery plain.

Then landmarks limited to each his right;
For all before was common as the light.
Nor was the ground alone required to bear
Her annual income to the crooked share,
But greedy mortals, rummaging her store,
Digg’d from her entrails first the precious ore
(Which next to hell the prudent gods had laid),
And that alluring ill to sight display’d.
Thus cursed steel, and more accursed gold,
Gave mischief birth, and made that mischief bold;
And double death did wretched man invade,
By steel assaulted, and by gold betray’d.
Now (brandish’d weapons glittering in their hands)
Mankind is broken loose from moral bands;
No rights of hospitality remain;
The guest, by him who harbour’d him, is slain;
The son-in-law pursues the father’s life;
The wife her husband murders, he the wife;
The stepdame poison for the son prepares;
The son inquires into his father’s years;
Faith flies, and piety in exile mourns;
And justice, here oppress’d, to heaven returns.

Nor were the gods themselves more safe above,
Against beleaguer’d heaven the giants move,
Hills piled on hills, on mountains mountains lie,
To make their mad approaches to the sky;
Till Jove, no longer patient, took his time
To avenge with thunder their audacious crime.
Red lightning play’d along the firmament,
And their demolish’d works to pieces rent.
Singed with the flames, and with the bolts transfix’d.
With native earth their blood the monsters mix’d.
The blood, indued with animating heat,
Did, in the impregnant earth, new sons beget.
They, like the seed from which they sprung, accursed,
Against the gods immortal hatred nursed;
An impious, arrogant, and cruel brood,
Expressing their original from blood.

Which, when the king of gods beheld from high
(Withal revolving in his memory
What he himself had found on earth of late,
Lycaon’s guilt, and his inhuman treat),
He sigh’d, nor longer with his pity strove,
But kindled to a wrath becoming Jove.

Then call’d a general council of the gods,
Who, summon’d, issue from their bless’d abodes,
And fill the assembly with a shining train.
A way there is in heaven’s expanded plain,
Which, when the skies are clear, is seen below,
And mortals by the name of milky know;
The groundwork is of stars; through which the road
Lies open to the Thunderer’s abode;
The gods of greater nations dwell around,
And, on the right and left, the palace bound;
The commons where they can; the nobler sort,
With winding doors wide open, front the court.
This place, as far as earth with heaven may vie,
I dare to call the Louvre of the sky.
When all were placed in seats distinctly known,
And he, their father, had assumed the throne,
Upon his ivory sceptre first he lean’d,
Then shook his head, that shook the firmament:
Air, earth, and seas, obey’d the almighty nod,
And, with a general fear, confess’d the god;
At length, with indignation, thus he broke
His awful silence, and the powers bespoke:

“I was not more concern’d in that debate
Of empire, when our universal state
Was put to hazard, and the giant race
Our captive skies were ready to embrace;
For though the foe was fierce, the seeds of all
Rebellion sprung from one original;
Now, wheresoever ambient waters glide,
All are corrupt, and all must be destroy’d.
Let me this holy protestation make;
By hell, and hell’s inviolable lake,
I tried whatever in the godhead lay;
But gangrened members must be lopp’d away,
Before the nobler parts are tainted to decay.
There dwells below a race of demi-gods,
Of nymphs in waters, and of fauns in woods,
Who though not worthy yet in heaven to live,
Let them, at least, enjoy that earth we give.
Can these be thought securely lodged below,
When I myself, who no superior know,
I, who have heaven and earth at my command,
Have been attempted by Lycaon’s hand?”

At this a murmur through the synod went,
And, with one voice, they vote his punishment.
Thus, when conspiring traitors dared to doom
The fall of Caesar, and in him of Rome,
The nations trembled with a pious fear,
Ail anxious for their earthly Thunderer;
Nor was their care, O Caesar, less esteem’d
By thee, than that of heaven for Jove was deem’d:
Who, with his hand and voice, did first restrain
Their murmurs, then resumed his speech again.
The gods to silence were composed, and sate
With reverence, due to his superior state.

“Cancel your pious cares; already he
Has paid his debt to justice and to me;
Yet what his crimes, and what my judgments were,
Remains for me thus briefly to declare.
The clamours of this vile degenerate age,
The cries of orphans, and the oppressor’s rage,
Had reach’d the stars: ‘I will descend,’ said I,
‘In hope to prove this loud complaint a lie.’
Disguised in human shape I travell’d round
The world, and more than what I heard I found.
O’er Maenalus I took my steepy way,
By caverns infamous for beasts of prey;
Then cross’d Syllene, and the piny shade
More infamous, by cursed Lycaon made:
Dark night had cover’d heaven and earth before
I enter’d his inhospitable door.
Just at my entrance, I display’d the sign
That somewhat was approaching of divine:
The prostrate people pray, the tyrant grins,
And adding profanation to his sins,
‘I’ll try,’ said he, ‘and if a god appear,
To prove his deity shall cost him dear.’
’Twas late, the graceless wretch my death prepares,
When I should soundly sleep, oppress’d with cares:
This dire experiment he chose to prove
If I were mortal, or undoubted Jove:
But first he had resolved to taste my power.
Not long before, but in a luckless hour,
Some legates, sent from the Molossian state,
Were on a peaceful errand come to treat;
Of these he murders one, he boils the flesh,
And lays the mangled morsels in a dish;
Some part he roasts, then serves it up, so dress’d,
And bids me welcome to this human feast.
Moved with disdain, the table I o’erturn’d,
And with avenging flames the palace burn’d.
The tyrant, in a fright, for shelter gains
The neighb’ring fields, and scours along the plains;
Howling he fled, and fain he would have spoke,
But human voice his brutal tongue forsook;
About his lips the gather’d foam he churns,
And, breathing slaughters, still with rage he burns,
But on the bleating flock his fury turns.
His mantle, now his hide, with rugged hairs
Cleaves to his back, a famish’d face he bears,
His arms descend, his shoulders sink away
To multiply his legs for chase of prey;
He grows a wolf, his hoariness remains,
And the same rage in other members reigns,
His eyes still sparkle in a narrower space,
His jaws retain the grin and violence of his face.

“This was a single ruin, but not one
Deserves so just a punishment alone.
Mankind’s a monster, and the ungodly times
Confederate into guilt are sworn to crimes;
All are alike involved in ill, and all
Must by the same relentless fury fall.”
Thus ended he; the greater gods assent,
By clamours urging his severe intent,
The less fill up the cry for punishment:
Yet still with pity they remember man,
And mourn as much as heavenly spirits can.
They ask, when those were lost of human birth,
What he would do with all this waste of earth;
If his dispeopled world he would resign
To beasts, a mute and more ignoble line;
Neglected altars must no longer smoke,
If none were left to worship and invoke.
To whom the father of the gods replied:
“Lay that unnecessary fear aside,
Mine be the care new people to provide;
A race unlike the first, and try my skill again.”

Already had he toss’d the flaming brand,
And roll’d the thunder in his spacious hand,
Preparing to discharge on seas and land;
But stopp’d, for fear, thus violently driven,
The sparks should catch his axletree of heaven;
Remembering in the Fates, a time when fire
Should to the battlements of heaven aspire,
And all his blazing worlds above should burn,
And all the inferior globe to cinders turn.
His dire artillery thus dismiss’d, he bent
His thoughts to some securer punishment;
Concludes to pour a watery deluge down,
And what he durst not burn, resolves to drown.

The northern breath, that freezes floods, he binds,
With all the race of cloud-dispelling winds;
The south he loosed, who night and horror brings,
And fogs are shaken from his flaggy wings;
From his divided heard two streams he pours,
His head and rheumy eyes distil in showers.
With rain his robe and heavy mantle flow,
And lazy mists are lowering on his brow;
Still as he swept along with his clench’d fist
He squeezed the clouds, the imprison’d clouds resisit;
The skies, from pole to pole, with peals resound,
And showers enlarged, come pouring on the ground;
Then, clad in colours of a various dye,
Junonian Iris breeds a new supply
To feed the clouds; impetuous rain descends,
The bearded corn beneath the burden bends,
Defrauded clowns deplore their perish’d grain,
And the long labours of the year are vain.

Nor from his patrimonial heaven alone
Is Jove content to pour his vengeance down;
Aid from his brother of the seas he craves,
To help him with auxiliary waves.
The watery tyrant calls his brooks and floods,
Who roll from mossy caves, their moist abodes,
And with perpetual urns his palace fill,
To whom, in brief, he thus imparts his will:

“Small exhortation needs; your powers employ,
And this bad world, so Jove requires, destroy,
Let loose the reins to all your watery store,
Bear down the dams, and open every door.”

The floods, by nature enemies to land,
And proudly swelling with their new command,
Remove the living stones that stopp’d their way,
And, gushing from their source, augment the sea.
Then, with his mace, their monarch struck the ground,
With inward trembling earth received the wound,
And rising streams a ready passage found.
The expanded waters gather on the plain,
They float the fields, and overtop the grain;
Then rushing onwards, with a sweepy sway,
Bear flocks, and folds, and labouring hinds, away.
Nor safe their dwellings were, for, sapp’d by floods,
Their houses fell upon their household gods.
The solid piles, too strongly built to fall,
High o’er their heads behold a watery wall.
Now seas and earth were in confusion lost;
A world of waters, and without a coast.

One climbs a cliff; one in his boat is borne,
And ploughs above where late he sow’d his corn;
Others o’er chimney-tops and turrets row,
And drop their anchors on the meads below,
Or downward driven, they bruise the tender vine,
Or toss’d aloft, are knock’d against a pine.
And where, of late, the kids had cropp’d the grass,
The monsters of the deep now take their place;
Insulting Nereids on the cities ride,
And wondering dolphins o’er the palace glide;
On leaves and masts of mighty oaks they browse,
And their broad fins entangle in the boughs;
The frighted wolf now swims among the sheep;
The yellow lion wanders in the deep;
His rapid force no longer helps the boar;
The stag swims faster than he ran before;
The fowls, long beating on their wings in vain,
Despair of land, and drop into the main;
Now hills and vales no more distinction know,
And levell’d nature lies oppress’d below;
The most of mortals perish in the flood,
The small remainder dies for want of food.

A mountain of stupendous height there stands
Betwixt the Athenian and Boeotian lands,
The bound of fruitful fields, while fields they were,
But then a field of waters did appear,
Parnassus is its name, whose forky rise
Mounts through the clouds and mates the lofty skies;
High on the summit of this dubious cliff,
Deucalion wafting, moor’d his little skiff;
He with his wife were only left behind
Of perish’d man; they two were human kind.
The mountain nymphs and Themis they adore,
And from her oracles relief implore.
The most upright of mortal men was he;
The most sincere and holy woman, she.

When Jupiter, surveying earth from high,
Beheld it in a lake of water lie,
That where so many millions lately lived,
But two, the best of either sex, survived;
He loosed the northern wind, fierce Boreas flies,
To puff away the clouds and purge the skies;
Serenely while he blows, the vapours driven,
Discover heaven to earth, and earth to heaven.
The billows fall, while Neptune lays his mace
On the rough sea, and smooths its furrow’d face.
Already Triton, at his call, appears
Above the waves, a Tyrian robe he wears,
And in his hand a crooked trumpet bears.
The sovereign bids him peaceful sounds inspire
And give the waves the signal to retire.
His writhen shell he takes, whose narrow vent
Grows by degrees into a large extent,
Then gives it breath; the blast with doubling sound
Runs the wide circuit of the world around;
The sun first heard it, in his early east,
And met the rattling echoes in the west;
The waters, listening to the trumpet’s roar,
Obey the summons, and forsake the shore.

A thin circumference of land appears,
And earth, but not at once, her visage rears,
And peeps upon the seas from upper grounds;
The streams, but just contain’d within their bounds,
By slow degrees into their channels crawl,
And earth increases as the waters fall;
In longer time the tops of trees appear,
Which mud on their dishonour’d branches bear.

At length the world was all restored to view,
But desolate, and of a sickly hue;
Nature beheld herself, and stood aghast,
A dismal desert and a silent waste.

Which when Deucalion, with a piteous look,
Beheld, he wept, and thus to Pyrrha spoke:
“O wife! O sister! O of all thy kind
The best, and only creature left behind,
By kindred, love, and now by dangers join’d;
Of multitudes, who breathed the common air,
We two remain; a species in a pair:
The rest the seas have swallow’d; nor have we
Ev’n of this wretched life a certainty.
The clouds are still above; and while I speak,
A second deluge o’er our heads may break.
Should I be snatch’d from hence, and thou remain,
Without relief, or partner of thy pain,
How couldst thou such a wretched life sustain?
Should I be left, and thou be lost, the sea
That buried her I loved, should bury me.
O could our father his old arts inspire,
And make me heir of his informing fire,
That so I might abolish’d man retrieve,
And perish’d people in new souls might live!
But Heaven is pleased, nor ought we to complain,
That we, the examples of mankind, remain.”
He said: the careful couple join their tears,
And then invoke the gods, with pious prayers.
Thus, in devotion having eased their grief,
From sacred oracles they seek relief,
And to Cephisus’ brook their way pursue;
The stream was troubled, but the ford they knew:
With living waters, in the fountain bred,
They sprinkle first their garments and their head,
Then took the way which to the temple led.
The roofs were all defiled with moss and mire;
The desert altars void of solemn fire.
Before the gradual prostrate they adored;
The pavement kiss’d; and thus the saint implor’d:

“O, righteous Themis, if the powers above
By prayers are bent to pity, and to love;
If human miseries can move their mind;
If yet they can forgive, and yet be kind;
Tell how we may restore, by second birth,
Mankind, and people desolated earth.”
Then thus the gracious goddess, nodding, said:
“Depart, and with your vestments veil your head;
And stooping lowly down, with loosen’d zones,
Throw each behind your backs your mighty mother’s bones.”
Amazed the pair, and mute with wonder, stand,
Till Pyrrha first refused the dire command.
“Forbid it Heaven,” said she, “that I should tear
Those holy relics from the sepulchre!”
They ponder’d the mysterious words again,
For some new sense; and long they sought in vain:
At length Deucalion clear’d his cloudy brow,
And said, “the dark enigma will allow
A meaning, which, if well I understand,
From sacrilege will free the god’s command:
This Earth our mighty mother is, the stones
In her capacious body are her bones:
These we must cast behind.” With hope and fear
The woman did the new solution hear:
The man diffides in his own augury,
And doubts the gods; yet both resolve to try.
Descending from the mount, they first unbind
Their vests, and veil’d, they cast the stones behind:
The stones (a miracle to mortal view,
But long tradition makes it pass for true)
Did first the rigour of their kind expel,
And suppled into softness as they fell;
Then swell’d, and swelling by degrees, grew warm,
And took the rudiments of human form.
Imperfect shapes: in marble such are seen,
When the rude chisel does the man begin;
While yet the roughness of the stone remains,
Without the rising muscles and the veins.
The sappy parts, and next resembling juice,
Were turn’d to moisture, for the body’s use;
Supplying humours, blood, and nourishment;
The rest, too solid to receive a bent,
Converts to bones; and what was once a vein,
Its former name and nature did retain.
By help of power divine, in little space,
What the man threw assumed a manly face,
And what the wife, renew’d the female race.
Hence we derive our nature; born to bear
Laborious life, and harden’d into care.

The rest of animals, from teeming earth
Produced, in various forms received their birth.
The native moisture, in its close retreat,
Digested by the sun’s ethereal heat,
As in a kindly womb, began to breed,
Then swell’d, and quicken’d by the vital seed.
And some in less, and some in longer space,
Were ripen’d into form, and took a several face.
Thus when the Nile from Pharian fields is fled,
And seeks, with ebbing tides, his ancient bed,
The fat manure with heavenly fire is warm’d,
And crusted creatures, as in wombs, are form’d;
These, when they turn the glebe, the peasants find;
Some rude, and yet unfinish’d in their kind;
Short of their limbs, a lame imperfect birth;
One half alive, and one of lifeless earth.

For heat and moisture, when in bodies join’d,
The temper that results from either kind
Conception makes, and fighting till they mix,
Their mingled atoms in each other fix.
Thus Nature’s hand the genial bed prepares,
With friendly discord and with fruitful wars.

From hence the surface of the ground, with mud
And slime besmear’d (the feces of the flood),
Received the rays of heaven, and sucking in
The seeds of heat, new creatures did begin:
Some were of several sorts produced before;
But of new monsters earth created more.
Unwillingly, but yet she brought to light
Thee, Python too, the wond’ring world to fright,
And the new nations, with so dire a sight:
So monstrous was his bulk, so large a space
Did his vast body and long train embrace;
Whom Phoebus, basking on a bank, espied:
Ere now the god his arrows had not tried,
But on the trembling deer, or mountain goat:
At this new quarry he prepares to shoot.
Though every shaft took place, he spent the store
Of his full quiver; and ’twas long before
The expiring serpent wallow’d in his gore.
Then, to preserve the fame of such a deed,
For Python slain, he Pythian games decreed;
Where noble youths for mastership should strive
To quoit, to run, and steeds and chariots drive.
The prize was fame: in witness of renown
An oaken garland did the victor crown.
The laurel was not yet for triumphs born,
But every green, alike by Phoebus worn,
Did, with promiscuous grace, his flowing locks adorn.