PR. Think not that thou canst all things know, nor deem Such knowledge happiness: the all-knowing Fates No pleasure have, who sit eternally Spinning the unnumbered threads that Time hath woven, And weaves, upgathering in his furthest house To store from sight; but what 'tis joy to learn Or use to know, that may'st thou ask of right. IN. Then tell me, for thou knowest, what is fire? PR. Know then, O king, that this fair earth of men, 570 The Olympus of the gods, and all the heavens Are lesser kingdoms of the boundless space Wherein Fate rules; they have their several times, Their seasons and the limit of their thrones, And from the nature of eternal things Springing, themselves are changed; even as the trees Or birds or beasts of earth, which now arise To being, now in turn decay and die. The heaven and earth thou seest, for long were held By Fire, a raging power, to whom the Fates 580 Decreed a slow diminishing old age, But to his daughter, who is that gentle goddess, Queen of the clear and azure firmament, In heaven called Hygra, but by mortals Air, To her, the child of his slow doting years, Was given a beauteous youth, not long to outlast His life, but be the pride of his decay, And win to gentler sway his lost domains. And when the day of time arrived, when Air Took o'er from her decrepit sire the third 590 Of the Sun's kingdoms, the one-moonèd earth, Straight came she down to her inheritance. Gaze on the sun with thine unshaded eye And shrink from what she saw. Forests of fire Whose waving trunks, sucking their fuel, reared In branched flame roaring, and their torrid shades Aye underlit with fire. The mountains lifted And fell and followed like a running sea, And from their swelling flanks spumed froth of fire; Or, like awakening monsters, mighty mounds 600 Rose on the plain awhile. SEM. (_maidens_). He discovers a foe. SEM. (_youths_). An enemy he paints. PR. These all she quenched, Or charmed their fury into the dens and bowels Of earth to smoulder, there the vital heat To hold for her creation, which then--to her aid Summoning high Reason from his home in heaven,-- She wrought anew upon the temperate lands. SEM. (_maidens_). 'Twas well Air won this kingdom of her sire. SEM. (_youths_). Now say how made she green this home of fire.