Direct your course; nor where the altar shines:
Shun both extremes; the rest let Fortune guide,
And better for thee than thyself provide!
See, while I speak, the shades disperse away,
Aurora gives the promise of a day;
I’m call’d, nor can I make a longer stay.
Snatch up the reins, or still the attempt forsake,
And not my chariot, but my counsel, take,
While yet securely on the earth you stand,
Nor touch the horses with too rash a hand.
Let me alone to light the world, while you
Enjoy those beams which you may safely view.”
He spoke in vain: the youth, with active heat
And sprightly vigour, vaults into the seat,
And joys to hold the reins, and fondly gives
Those thanks his father with remorse receives.
Meanwhile the restless horses neigh’d aloud,
Breathing out fire, and pawing where they stood.
Tethys, not knowing what had pass’d, gave way,
And all the waste of heaven before them lay.
They spring together out, and swiftly bear
The flying youth through clouds and yielding air;
With wingy speed outstrip the eastern wind,
And leave the breezes of the morn behind.
The youth was light, nor could he fill the seat,
Or poise the chariot with its wonted weight:
But as at sea the unballasted vessel rides,
Cast to and fro, the sport of winds and tides,
So in the bounding chariot, toss’d on high,
The youth is hurried headlong through the sky.
Soon as the steeds perceive it, they forsake
Their stated course, and leave the beaten track.
The youth was in a maze, nor did he know
Which way to turn the reins, or where to go:
Nor would the horses, had he known, obey.
Then the seven stars first felt Apollo’s ray,
And wish’d to dip in the forbidden sea.
The folded serpent, next the frozen pole,
Stiff and benumb’d before, began to roll,
And raged with inward heat, and threaten’d war,
And shot a redder light from every star;
Nay, and ’tis said, Bootes, too, that fain
Thou wouldst have fled, though cumber’d with thy wain.
The unhappy youth then, bending down his head,
Saw earth and ocean far beneath him spread.
His colour changed, he startled at the sight,
And his eyes darken’d by too great a light.
Now could he wish the fiery steeds untried,
His birth obscure, and his request denied:
Now would he Merops for his father own,
And quit his boasted kindred to the Sun.
So fares the pilot, when his ship is toss’d
In troubled seas, and all its steerage lost;
He gives her to the winds, and, in despair,
Seeks his last refuge in the gods and prayer.
What could he do? his eyes, if backward cast,
Find a long path he had already pass’d;
If forward, still a longer path they find:
Both he compares, and measures in his mind;
And sometimes casts an eye upon the east,
And sometimes looks on the forbidden west.
The horses’ names he knew not in the fright;
Nor would he loose the reins, nor could he hold them right.
Now all the horrors of the heavens he spies,
And monstrous shadows of prodigious size,
That, deck’d with stars, lie scatter’d o’er the skies.
There is a place above, where Scorpio bent
In tail and arms surrounds a vast extent;
In a wide circuit of the heavens he shines,
And fills the space of two celestial signs.
Soon as the youth beheld him, vex’d with heat,
Brandish his sting, and in his poison sweat,
Half dead with sudden fear, he dropp’d the reins;
The horses felt them loose upon their manes,
And, flying out through all the plains above,
Ran, uncontroll’d, where’er their fury drove;
Rush’d on the stars, and, through a pathless way
Of unknown regions, hurried on the day.
And now above and now below they flew,
And near the earth the burning chariot drew.
The clouds disperse in fumes, the wond’ring moon
Beholds her brother’s steeds beneath her own:
The high lands smoke, cleft by the piercing rays,
Or, clad with woods, in their own fuel blaze.
Next o’er the plains, where ripen’d harvests grow,
The running conflagration spreads below.
But these are trivial ills: whole cities burn,
And peopled kingdoms into ashes turn.
The mountains kindle as the car draws near;
Athos and Tmolus red with fires appear;
Oeagrian Haemus (then a single name)
And virgin Helicon increase the flame:
Taurus and Oete glare amid the sky;
And Ida, spite of all her fountains, dry:
Eryx, and Othrys, and Cithaeron, glow;
And Rhodope, no longer clothed in snow:
High Pindus, Mimas, and Parnassus, sweat;
And Aetna rages with redoubled heat:
Ev’n Scythia, through her hoary regions warm’d,
In vain with all her native frost was arm’d:
Cover’d with flames, the towering Apennine,
And Caucasus, and proud Olympus, shine;
And where the long-extended Alps aspire
Now stands a huge continued range of fire.
The astonish’d youth, where’er his eyes could turn,
Beheld the universe around him burn:
The world was in a blaze; nor could he bear
The sultry vapours and the scorching air,
Which from below, as from a furnace, flow’d:
And now the axletree beneath him glow’d.
Lost in the whirling clouds that round him broke,
And white with ashes, hovering in the smoke,
He flew where’er the horses drove, nor knew
Whither the horses drove, or where he flew.
’Twas then, they say, the swarthy Moor begun
To change his hue, and blacken in the sun;
Then Libya first, of all her moisture drain’d,
Became a barren waste, a wild of sand;
The water-nymphs lament their empty urns;
Boeotia, robb’d of silver Dirce, mourns;
Corinth Pyrene’s wasted spring bewails;
And Argos grieves while Amymone fails.
The foods are drain’d from every distant coast;
Ev’n Tanais, though fix’d in ice, was lost:
Enraged Caicus and Lycormas roar,
And Xanthus, fated to be burnt once more:
The famed Maeander, that unwearied strays
Through many windings, smokes in every maze:
From his loved Babylon Euphrates flies:
The big-swoln Ganges and the Danube rise
In thick’ning fumes, and darken half the skies:
In flames Ismenos and the Phasis roll’d,
And Tagus, floating in his melted gold:
The swans, that on Cayster often tried
Their tuneful songs, now sung their last, and died:
The frighted Nile ran off, and under ground
Conceal’d his head, nor can it yet be found;
His seven divided currents all are dry,
And, where they roll’d, seven gaping trenches lie:
No more the Rhine or Rhone their course maintain,
Nor Tiber, of his promised empire vain.
The ground, deep cleft, admits the dazzling ray,
And startles Pluto with the flash of day:
The seas shrink in, and to the sight disclose
Wide naked plains, where once their billows rose;
Their rocks are all discover’d, and increase
The number of the
