Never-forgotten anguish. When the time Was full, and Jove, the sire of gods and men, Came to the birth, her parents she besought, Earth and starr’d Heaven, that they should counsel yield How secretly the babe may spring to life: And how the father’s furies ’gainst his race In subtlety devour’d may meet revenge: They to their daughter listen’d and complied: Unfolding what the Fates had sure decreed Of kingly Saturn and his dauntless son: And her they sent to Lyctus: to the clime Of fallow’d Crete. Now when her time was come, The birth of Jove her youngest-born, vast Earth Took to herself the mighty babe, to rear With nurturing softness in the spacious isle Of Crete. So came she then, transporting him With the swift shades of night, to Lyctus first: And thence, upbearing in her arms, conceal’d Beneath the sacred ground, in sunless cave, Where shagg’d with thickening woods th’ Egæan mount Impends. Then swathing an enormous stone She placed it in the hands of Heaven’s huge son, The ancient king of gods: that stone he snatch’d; And in his ravening breast convey’d away: Wretch! nor bethought him that the stone supplied His own son’s place; survivor in its room, Unconquer’d and unharm’d: the same, who soon Subduing him with mightiness of arm, Should drive him from his state, and reign himself King of immortals. Swiftly grew the strength And hardy limbs of that same kingly babe: And when the great year had fulfill’d its round, Gigantic Saturn, wily as he was, Yet foil’d by Earth’s considerate craft, and quell’d By his son’s arts and strength, released his race: The stone he first disgorged, the last devour’d: This Jove on earth’s broad surface firmly fix’d At Pythos the divine, in the deep cleft Of high Parnassus: [200]to succeeding times A monument, and miracle to man. The brethren of his father too he loosed, Whom Heaven, their sire, had in his frenzy bound: They the good deed in grateful memory bore: And gave the thunder, and the burning bolt, And lightning, which vast Earth had heretofore Hid in her central caves. In these confides The god, and reigns o’er deities and men. Iäpetus ascends the bed of love With Clýmene, fair-ankled ocean-nymph: She brought forth Atlas: her undaunted son: Glorying Menœtius and Prometheus vers’d In changeful turns and shifting subtleties: And Epimetheus of unwary mind: Who from old time became an evil curse To man’s inventive race; for he received The clay-form’d virgin-woman sent from Jove. All-seeing Jove struck with his smouldering flash Haughty Menœtius, and cast down to hell; Shameless in crime and arrogant in strength. Atlas, enforced by stern necessity, [201]Props the broad heaven: on earth’s far borders, where Full opposite th’ Hesperian virgins sing