The works of John Dryden :: :: University of Virginia Library

Nor were the Gods themselves more safe above;
Against beleaguered 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 played along the firmament,
And their demolished works to pieces rent.
Singed with the flames, and with the bolts transfixed,
With native earth their blood the monsters mixed;
The blood, endued with animating heat,
Did in the impregnate 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 sighed, nor longer with his pity strove,
But kindled to a wrath becoming Jove:
Then called a general council of the gods;
Who, summoned, issue from their blest 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 ground-work 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 leant,
Then shook his head, that shook the firmament;
Air, earth, and seas obeyed the almighty nod,
And with a general fear confessed the God.
At length, with indignation, thus he broke
His awful silence, and the Powers bespoke.

“I was not more concerned 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 destroyed.
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 lopt 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 Cæsar, and in him of Rome,
The nations trembled with a pious fear,
All anxious for their earthly thunderer;—
Nor was their care, O Cæsar, less esteemed
By thee, than that of heaven for Jove was deemed;
Who with his hand, and voice, did first restrain
Their murmurs, then resumed his speech again.
The Gods to silence were composed, and sat
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 reached the stars; ‘I will descend,’ said I,
‘In hope to prove this loud complaint a lie.’
Disguised in human shape, I travelled round
The world, and more than what I heard, I found.
O'er Mænalus I took my steepy way,
By caverns infamous for beasts of prey;
Then crossed Cyllene, and the piny shade,
More infamous by curst Lycaon made;
Dark night had covered heaven and earth, before
I entered his unhospitable door.
Just at my entrance, I displayed 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, opprest 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 drest,
And bids me welcome to this human feast.
Moved with disdain, the table I o'erturned,
And with avenging flames the palace burned.
The tyrant, in a fright, for shelter gains
The neighbouring 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 gathered foam he churns,
And, breathing slaughter, 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 famished 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.
I will from wondrous principles ordain
A race unlike the first, and try my skill again.”

Already had he tossed the flaming brand,
And rolled 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 axle-tree of heaven;
Rememb'ring, 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 dismissed, 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 beard two streams he pours;
His head and rheumy eyes distil in showers;
With rain his robe and heavy mantle flow,
And lazy mists are low'ring on his brow.
Still as he swept along, with his clenched fist,
He squeezed the clouds; the imprisoned clouds resist;
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 perished 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 stopped 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 sowed 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, tossed aloft, are knocked against a pine;
And where of late the kids had cropped 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 levelled nature lies oppressed 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 Bœotian 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 moored his little skiff.
He with his wife were only left behind
Of perished man; they two were humankind.
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 furrowed 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 contained 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 dishonoured 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, oh, of all thy kind,
The best and only creature left behind,
By kindred, love, and now by dangers joined;
Of multitudes, who breathed the common air,
We two remain, a species in a pair:
The rest the seas have swallowed; nor have we
E'en 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 snatched 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.

Oh could our father his old arts inspire,
And make me heir of his informing fire,
That so I might abolished man retrieve,
And perished 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 kissed, and thus the saint implored.
“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 loosened 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 pondered the mysterious words again,
For some new sense; and long they sought in vain.
At length Deucalion cleared 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, veiled, 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 swelled, 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 turned 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, renewed the female race.
Hence we derive our nature, born to bear
Laborious life, and hardened 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 swelled, and quickened by the vital seed:
And some in less, and some in longer space,
Were ripened 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 warmed,
And crusted creatures, as in wombs, are formed:
These, when they turn the glebe, the peasants find:
Some rude, and yet unfinished 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 joined,
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 besmeared, (the fæces 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 wondering 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 Phœbus 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 wallowed 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 borne;
But every green alike, by Phœbus worn,
Did, with promiscuous grace, his flowing locks adorn.