The sparks should catch his axle-tree of heaven; Rememb'ring, in the Fates, a time, when fire Should to the battlements of heaven aspire, And all his blazing worlds above should burn, And all the inferior globe to cinders turn. His dire artillery thus dismissed, he bent His thoughts to some securer punishment; Concludes to pour a watery deluge down, And, what he durst not burn, resolves to drown. The Northern breath, that freezes floods, he binds, With all the race of cloud-dispelling winds; The South he loosed, who night and horror brings, And fogs are shaken from his flaggy wings. From his divided beard two streams he pours; His head and rheumy eyes, distil in showers; With rain his robe and heavy mantle flow, And lazy mists are lowring on his brow. Still as he swept along, with his clenched fist, He squeezed the clouds; the imprisoned clouds resist; The skies, from pole to pole, with peals resound, And showers enlarged come pouring on the ground. Then clad in colours of a various dye, Junonian Iris breeds a new supply To feed the clouds: impetuous rain descends; The bearded corn beneath the burden bends; Defrauded clowns deplore their perished grain, And the long labours of the year are vain. Nor from his patrimonial heaven alone Is Jove content to pour his vengeance down; Aid from his brother of the seas he craves, To help him with auxiliary waves. The watery tyrant calls his brooks and floods, Who roll from mossy caves, their moist abodes; And with perpetual urns his palace fill: To whom, in brief, he thus imparts his will. Small exhortation needs; your powers employ, And this bad world (so Jove requires) destroy. Let loose the reins to all your watery store; Bear down the dams, and open every door. The floods, by nature enemies to land, And proudly swelling with their new command, Remove the living stones that stopped their way, And, gushing from their source, augment the sea.[21] Then, with his mace, their monarch struck the ground; } With inward trembling earth received the wound, } And rising streams a ready passage found. } The expanded waters gather on the plain, They float the fields, and overtop the grain; Then rushing onwards, with a sweepy sway, Bear flocks, and folds, and labouring hinds, away. Nor safe their dwellings were; for, sap'd by floods, Their houses fell upon their household gods. The solid piles, too strongly built to fall, High o'er their heads behold a watery wall. Now seas and earth were in confusion lost; A world of waters, and without a coast. One climbs a cliff; one in his boat is borne, And ploughs above, where late he sowed his corn. Others o'er chimney tops and turrets row, And drop their anchors on the meads below;