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
