He thundered aloud, and darted the poised lightning from his right ear, against the charioteer, and at the same moment deprived him both of life and his seat, and by his ruthless fires restrained the flames. The horses are affrighted, and, making a bound in the opposite direction, they shake the yoke from their necks, and disengage themselves from the torn harness. In one place lie the reins, in another the axle-tree wrenched from the pole, in another part are the spokes of the broken wheels, and _the fragments of the chariot torn in pieces are scattered far and wide_. But Phaëton, the flames consuming his _yellow_ hair, _is hurled headlong_, and is borne in _a long track through the air_, as sometimes _a star is seen to fall from the serene sky_, although it really has not fallen. Him the great Eridanus receives in a part of the world far distant from his country, and bathes his foaming face. The _Hesperian Naiads_ commit his body, smoking from the _three-forked_ flames, to the tomb, and inscribe these verses on the stone: 'Here is Phaëton buried, the driver of his father's chariot, which, if he did not manage, still he miscarried in a great attempt.' "But his wretched father" (the Sun) "_had hidden his_ {p. 163} _face overcast with bitter sorrow_, and, if only we can believe it, they say that _one day passed without the sun_. The flames" (of the fires on the earth) "afforded light, and there was some advantage in that disaster." As there was no daily return of the sun to mark the time, that one day of darkness was probably of long duration; it may have endured for years. Then follows Ovid's description of the mourning of Clymene and the daughters of the Sun and the Naiads for the dead Phaëton. Cycnus, king of Liguria, grieves for Phaëton until he is transformed into a swan; reminding one of the Central American legend, (which I shall give hereafter,) which states that in that day all men were turned into _goslings_ or _geese_, a reminiscence, perhaps, of those who saved themselves from the fire by taking refuge in the waters of the seas: "Cycnus becomes a new bird; but he trusts himself not to the heavens or the air, as being mindful of the _fire unjustly sent from thence_. He _frequents the pools and the wide lakes_, and, abhorring fire, he chooses the streams, the very contrary of flames. "Meanwhile, the father of Phaëton" (the Sun), "in _squalid garb_ and destitute of his comeliness, _just as he is wont to be when he suffers an eclipse of his disk_, abhors both the light, himself, and the day; and gives his mind up to grief, and adds resentment to his sorrow." In other words, the poet is now describing the age of darkness, which, as we have seen, must have followed the conflagration, when the condensing vapor wrapped the world in a vast cloak of cloud. The Sun refuses to go again on his daily journey; just as we shall see hereafter, in the American legends, he refuses to stir until threatened or coaxed into action. {p. 164}