----Hard steel succeeded then; And stubborn as the metal were the men. Truth, modesty, and shame, the world forsook; Fraud, avarice, and force, their places, took. Then sails were spread to every wind that blew; Raw were the sailors, and the depths were new: Trees, rudely hollowed, did the waves sustain, Ere ships in triumph ploughed the watery plain. Then land-marks limited to each his right; For all before was common as the light. Nor was the ground alone required to bear Her annual income to the crooked share; But greedy mortals, rummaging her store, Digged from her entrails first the precious ore; Which next to hell the prudent gods had laid, And that alluring ill to sight displayed. Thus cursed steel, and more accursed gold, Gave mischief birth, and made that mischief bold; And double death did wretched man invade, By steel assaulted, and by gold betrayed. Now (brandished weapons glittering in their hands) Mankind is broken loose from moral bands: No rights of hospitality remain, The guest, by him who harboured him, is slain; The son-in-law pursues the father's life; The wife her husband murders, he the wife; The step-dame poison for the son prepares; The son inquires into his father's years. Faith flies, and Piety in exile mourns; And Justice, here oppressed, to heaven returns. THE GIANT'S WAR. Nor were the Gods themselves more safe above; Against beleaguered heaven the Giants move. Hills piled on hills, on mountains mountains lie, To make their mad approaches to the sky: Till Jove, no longer patient, took his time To avenge with thunder their audacious crime; Red lightning played along the firmament, And their demolished works to pieces rent. Singed with the flames, and with the bolts transfixed, With native earth their blood the monsters mixed; The blood, endued with animating heat, Did in the impregnate earth new sons beget; They, like the seed from which they sprung, accursed, Against the gods immortal hatred nursed; An impious, arrogant, and cruel brood, Expressing their original from blood. Which when the King of Gods beheld from high, (Withal revolving in his memory, What he himself had found on earth of late, Lycaon's guilt, and his inhuman treat,) He sighed, nor longer with his pity strove, But kindled to a wrath becoming Jove: Then called a general council of the gods; Who, summoned, issue from their blest abodes, And fill the assembly with a shining train. A way there is in heaven's expanded plain, Which, when the skies are clear, is seen below, And mortals by the name of milky know. The ground-work is of stars; through which the road Lies open to the Thunderer's abode. The gods of greater nations dwell around, And on the right and left the palace bound;