Let him challenge then The winds for swiftness, and through open plains Flying, as loosen'd from the rein, scarce leave Marks of his feet upon the level sands.
As when from Hyperborean coasts hath rush'd In all his mightiness the northern wind, Driving, on each side round him, Scythian storms And arid clouds; then the high fields of corn And waving plains with gentler motion first Quiver, while forests rustle in their tops, And lengthen'd waves are pressing to the shore: Onward he comes, and in his swift career He sweeps at once the lands and rolling seas. 707. Lo, too, as at the heavy plough he smokes,
The bull sinks down; he vomits from his mouth
Blood mix'd with foam, and utters his last groans.
The melancholy ploughman moves away
From half-completed task, with coulter left
Fix'd in the ground, when he has first unyok'd
The steer that sorrows at a brother's fate.
Him can no meadow soft, no deepen'd shade
Of groves delight, no rill that down the rock
Slips, and more pure than amber, cleaves the plain.
His flanks grow flabby; stupor hath oppress'd
His languid eyes; and dropping to the ground
With its own weight, hangs his unwieldy neck.
So saying, in air
His mortal figure melted and was gone:
The Dardan leaders knew him, heard the arms
Divine, and quiver rattling as he flew :
They in Apollo's name th' impetuous youth
Force to retire; but undismay'd themselves
Stand to their post, and all the peril brave.
Their bold shouts ring along the battlements:
Now the stout bow is bended, whirl'd the sling,
Strewn all the ground with weapons, loud the din
Of batter'd helm and shield; fierce combat swells:
As in the west when rise the showery kids,
Rain beats the earth; or hail upon the floods
Tempestuous falls, when Jove with south winds
arm'd
Drives winter storm, and bursts the clouds in
heaven.
709. The wide sea trembled. Panic terror shook Hesperia's inner lands, and Etna sent
From winding caverns a responsive roar.
Quick rous'd from wood and mountain, to the port
Rush the Cyclopian race, and line the shores.
We see th' Etnean brothers vainly stand
Upon us louring with a savage eye,
And lifting up their foreheads to the heavens,
A dire assemblage, like aërial oaks
Or cypresses that with cone-bearing tops
Aloft have grown, the wood of Jupiter,
Or Cynthia's grove. Keen terror us impels
To shift our cables wheresoe'er we can,
Or give our canvas to the fav'ring breeze,
Precipitate.
710. Now night invests the pole; wrapt is the earth
In awful silence; not a voice is heard,
Nor din of arms, nor sound of distant foot,
Through the still gloom. Euphrates lulls his waves,
Which sparkle to the moon's reflected beam;
Nor does one sage from Babylon's high towers
Descry the planets, or the fixed, and mark
Their distance or their number.
With all her horror of the morrow's doom,
Lies Sion's captive daughter: sleep, soft sleep,
His dusky mantle draws o'er every eye.
But not on Daniel's unpillowed head
One opiate dew-drop falls; much he revolves
Dark sentences of old; much pious zeal
For great Jehovah's honour fires his soul;
And thus, with lifted hands, the prophet cries.
711. Meanwhile the south wind rose, and, with black
Wide-hovering, all the clouds together drove
From under heaven; the hills to their supply
Vapour, and exhalation, dusk and moist,
Sent up amain. And now the thicken'd sky
Like a dark ceiling stood; down rush'd the rain
Impetuous; and continued, till the earth
No more was seen; the floating vessel swum
Uplifted, and secure with beaked prow
Rode tilting o'er the waves; all dwellings else
Flood overwhelm'd, and them with all their pomp
Deep under water roll'd; sea cover'd sea,
Sea without shore; and in their palaces
Where luxury late reign'd, sea-monsters whelp'd
And stabled; of mankind, so numerous late,
All left in one small bottom swum imbark'd.
So steers the prudent crane
Her annual voyage, borne on winds; the air
Floats as they pass, fann'd with unnumber'd
plumes:
From branch to branch the smaller birds with song
Solaced the woods, and spread their painted wings
Till even; nor then the solemn nightingale
Ceased warbling, but all night tuned her soft lays.
Others, on silver lakes and rivers, bathed
Their downy breast; the swan, with arched neck
Between her white wings mantling proudly, rows
Her state with oary feet; yet oft they quit
The dank, and rising on stiff pennons, tower
The mid aerial sky. Others on ground
Walk'd firm; the crested cock whose clarion sounds
The silent hours; and the other, whose gay train
Adorns him, colour'd with the florid hue
Of rainbows and starry eyes.
713. So spake the grisly terror, and in shape,
So speaking and so threatening, grew tenfold
More dreadful and deform. On the other side,
Incensed with indignation, Satan stood
Unterrified, and like a comet burn'd,
That fires the length of Ophiuchus huge
In the arctic sky, and from his horrid hair
Shakes pestilence and war. Each at the head
Levell❜d his deadly aim; their fatal hands
No second stroke intend; and such a frown
Each cast at the other, as when two black clouds,
With heaven's artillery fraught, come rattling on
Over the Caspian, then stand front to front,
Hovering a space, till winds the signal blow
To join their dark encounter in mid-air.
So frown'd the mighty combatants, that hell
Grew darker at their frown; so match'd they stood.
714. Right in the middest of that paradise
There stood a stately mount, on whose round top
A gloomy grove of myrtle trees did rise,
Whose shadie boughs sharp steele did never lop,
Nor wicked beasts their tender buds did crop :
But, like a girlond compassed the hight,
And from their fruitfull sides sweet gumes did drop,
That all the ground, with precious dew bedight,
Threw forth most dainty odours, and most sweet de-
And, in the thickest covert in that shade,
There was a pleasant arbour, not by art,
But of the trees own inclination made,
Which knitting their ranke branches part to part,
With wanton ivie-twine entail'd athwart,
And eglantine and caprisfole emong,
Fashion'd above within her inmost part,
That neither Phoebus' beams could through them throng,
Nor Eolus' sharp blasts could work them any wrong.
715. He call'd so loud, that all the hollow deep
Of hell resounded. "Princes, potentates,
Warriors, the flower of heaven, once yours, now lost,
If such astonishment as this can seize
Eternal spirits; or have ye chosen this place
After the toil of battle to repose
Your wearied virtue, for the ease you
To slumber here, as in the vales of heaven?
Or in this abject posture have ye sworn
To adore the Conqueror? who now beholds
Cherub and seraph rolling in the flood
With scatter'd arms and ensigns, till anon
His swift pursuers from heaven-gates discern
The advantage, and descending, tread us down
Thus drooping, or with linked thunderbolts
Transfix us to the bottom of this gulf?
Awake, arise, or be for ever fall'n!"
716. First in his east the glorious lamp was seen,
Regent of day, and all the horizon round
Invested with bright rays, jocund to run
His longitude through heaven's high road; the gray
Dawn, and the Pleiades, before him danced,
Shedding sweet influence: less bright the moon,
But opposite in levell'd west was set,
His mirror, with full face borrowing her light
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