The BATTLE of the GODS and TITANS

From the Theogony of HESIOD; with a Defeription of Tartarus, &c.

μάχην δ ̓ ἀμέγαρτον ἔχειραν
Otoy. 666.

Πάντες, &c.

NOW founds the vault of heaven with loud alarms, And Gods by Gods embattling rush to arms;

Here stalk the Titans of portentous fize,

Burst from their dungeons, and assault the skies;
And there, unchain'd from Erebus and Night,
Auxiliar giants aid the Gods in fight:

*

An hundred arms each tower-like warrior rears,
And ftares from fifty heads amid the stars;
The dreadful brotherhood ftern-frowning stands,
And hurls an hundred rocks from hundred hands:
The Titans rufh'd with fury uncontrol'd,

Gods funk on Gods, o'er giant giant roll'd;

Then roar'd the ocean with a dreadful found,

Heaven shook with all its thrones, and groan'd the ground,
Trembled th' eternal poles at every stroke,

And frighted hell from its foundations fhook;
Noise, horrid noise, th' aerial region fills,
Rocks dash on rocks, and hills encounter hills;

* Ægeon, Cottus, Gyges..

Through

Through earth, air, heaven, tumultuous clamours rise,

And shouts of battle thunder in the skies:
Then Jove omnipotent display'd the God,
And all Olympus trembled as he trod :
He grafps ten thousand thunders in his hand,
Bares his red arm, and wields the forky brand;
Then aims the bolts, and bids his lightnings play,
They flash, and rend through heaven their flaming way:
Redoubling blow on blow, in wrath he moves,
The fing'd earth groans, and burns with all her groves ;
The floods, the billows, boiling hiss with fires,
And bickering flame, and fmouldering smoke aspires:
A night of clouds blots out the golden day;
Full in their eyes the writhen lightnings play,
Ev'n chaos burns: again earth groans, heaven roars,
As tumbling downward with its shining towers;
Or burst this earth, torn from her central place,
With dire difruption from her deepest base:
Nor flept the wind: the wind new horror forms,
Clouds dafh on clouds before th' outrageous storms;
While tearing up the fands, in drifts they rife,
And half the deferts mount th' encumber'd skies :
At once the tempeft bellows, lightnings fly,
The thunders roar, and clouds involve the sky;
Stupendous were the deeds of heavenly might;
What lefs, when Gods conflicting cope in fight?
Now heaven its foes with horrid inroad gores,
And flow and fower recede the giant powers;
Here ftalks geon, here fierce Gyges moves,
There Cottus rends up hills with all their groves;

Thefe

Thefe hurl'd at once against the Titan bands

Three hundred mountains from three hundred hands:
And overshadowing, overwhelming bound
With chains infrangible beneath the ground;
Below this earth, far as earth's confines lie
Through space unmeafur'd, from the ftarry sky;-
Nine days an anvil of enormous weight,
Down rufhing headlong from th' aerial height,
Scarce reaches earth: Thence toft in giddy rounds
Scarce reaches in nine days th' infernal bounds;
A wall of iron of stupendous height

Guards the dire dungeons black with threefold night;
High o'er the horrors of th' eternal shade
The fledfaft bafe of earth and feas is laid ;
There in coercive durance Jove detains
The groaning Titans in afflictive chains.
A feat of woe! remote from chearful day,
Through gulphs impassable, a boundlefs way.

Above these realms, a brazen ftructure ftands
With brazen portals, fram'd by Neptune's hands;:
Through chaos to the ocean's base it fwells,
There ftern geon with his giants dwells;
Fierce guards of Jove! from hence the fountains rife
That wash the earth, or wander through the fkies,
That groaning murmur through the realm of woes,
Or feed the channels where the ocean flows;
Collected horrors throng the dire abodes,
Horrid and fell! detefted ev'n by Gods ?
Enormous gulph! immenfe the bounds appear,
Wafteful and void, the journey of a year:
L

Where

Where beating storms, as in wild whirls they fight, Tofs the pale wanderer, and retofs through night: The powers immortal with affright survey

The hideous chafm, and feal it up from day.

Hence through the vault of heaven huge Atlas rears
His giant limbs, and props the golden spheres:
Here fable Night, and here the beamy Day,
Lodge and diflodge, alternate in their fway.
A brazen port the varying powers divides,
When Day forth iffues, here the Night refides;
And when Night veils the skies, obfequious Day,
Re-entering, plunges from the ftarry way.

She from her lamp, with beaming radiance bright,
Pours o'er th' expanded earth a flood of light:
But Night, by Sleep attended, rides in shades,
Brother of Death, and all that breathes invades :
From her foul womb they sprung, refiftless powers,
Nurs'd in the horrors of Tartarean bowers,

*

Remote from day, when with her flaming wheels
She mounts the skies, or paints the western hills:
With downy footsteps fleep in filence glides
O'er the wide earth, and o'er the spacious tides;
The friend of life! Death unrelenting bears
An iron heart, and laughs at human cares;
She makes the mouldering race of man her prey,
And ev❜n th' immortal powers deteft her fway.

Thus fell the + Titans from the realms above,
Beneath the thunders of Almighty Jove;

* Of night.

7820.

Then

Then earth impregnate felt maternal woes,

And shook through all her frame with teeming throes :
Hence rofe Typheeus, a gigantic birth,

A monfter fprung from Tartarus and Earth,
A match for Gods in might! on high he spreads
From his huge trunk an hundred dragons heads,
And from an hundred mouths in vengeance flings
Envenom'd foam, and darts an hundred stings;
Horror, terrific, frowns from every brow,
And like a furnace his red eye-balls glow;
Fires dart from every creft, and as he turns
Keen splendors flash, and all the giant burns :
Whene'er he speaks, in echoing thunders rise
An hundred voices, and affright the skies,
Unutterably fierce! the bright abodes
Frequent they shake, and terrify the Gods:
Now bellowing like a savage bull, they roar,
Or angry lions in the midnight hour;
Now yell like furious whelps, or hifs like snakes,
The rocks rebound, and every mountain shakes;
He hurl'd defiance 'gainst th' immortal powers,
And heaven had feiz'd with all its fhining towers,
But, at the voice of Jove, from pole to pole
Red lightnings flash, and raging thunders roll,
Rattling o'er all th' expanfion of the skies,
Bolt after bolt o'er earth and ocean flies.
Stern frowns the God amidst the lightnings blaze,
Olympus flakes from his eternal base;
Trembles the earth: fierce flame involves the poles,
Devours the ground, and o'er the billows rolls,