Part II

Others again were born from Earth and Heaven:
Three giant sons: strong, dreadful but to name,
Children of glorying valour: Briareus,
Cottus and Gyges: from whose shoulders burst
A hundred arms that mock’d approach, and o’er
Their limbs hard-sinew’d fifty heads upsprang:
Mighty th’ immeasurable strength display’d
In each gigantic stature: and of all
The children born to earth and heaven these sons
Were dreadfullest: and they, e’en from the first,
Drew down their father’s hate: as each was born
He seized them all, and hid them in th’ abyss
Of Earth: nor e’er released them to the light.
Heaven in his evil deed rejoiced: vast Earth
Groan’d inly, sore aggrieved: but soon devised
A stratagem of mischief and of fraud.
Sudden creating for herself a kind
Of whiter iron, she with labour framed
A scythe enormous: and address’d her sons:
She spoke emboldening words, though grieved at heart.

“My sons! alas! ye children of a sire
Most impious, now obey a mother’s voice:
So shall we well avenge the fell despite
Of him your father, who the first devised
Deeds of injustice.” While she said, on all
Fear fell: nor utterance found they, till with soul
Embolden’d, wily Saturn huge address’d
His awful mother. “Mother! be the deed
My own: thus pledged I will most sure achieve
This feat: nor heed I him, our sire, of name
Detested: for that he the first devised
Deeds of injustice.” Thus he said, and Earth
Was gladden’d at her heart. She planted him
In ambush dark and secret: in his grasp
She placed the sharp-tooth’d scythe, and tutor’d him
In every wile. Vast Heaven came down from high,
And with him brought the gloominess of Night
On all beneath: with ardour of embrace
Hovering o’er Earth, in his immensity
He lay diffused around. The son stretch’d forth
His weaker hand from ambush: in his right
He took the sickle huge and long and rough
With sharpen’d teeth: and hastily he reap’d
The genial organs of his sire, at once
Cut sheer: then cast behind him far away.
They not in vain escaped his hold: for Earth
Received the blood-drops, and as years roll’d round
Teem’d with strong furies and with giants huge,
Shining in mail, and grasping in their hands
Protended spears: and wood-nymphs, named of men
Dryads, o’er all th’ immeasurable earth.

So severing, as was said, with edge of steel
The genial spoils, he from the continent
Amidst the many surges of the sea
Hurl’d them. Full long they drifted o’er the deeps:
Till now swift-circling a white foam arose
From that immortal substance, and a nymph
Was quicken’d in the midst. The wafting waves
First bore her to Cythera’s heavenly coast:
Then reach’d she Cyprus, girt with flowing seas,
And forth emerged a goddess, in the charms
Of awful beauty. Where her delicate feet
Had press’d the sands, green herbage flowering sprang.
Her Aphrodite gods and mortals name,
The foam-born goddess: and her name is known,
As Cytherea with the blooming wreath,
For that she touch’d Cythera’s flowery coast:
And Cypris, for that on the Cyprian shore
She rose, amidst the multitude of waves:
And Philomedia, from the source of life.
Love track’d her steps; and beautiful Desire
Pursued, while soon as born she bent her way
Towards heaven’s assembled gods: her honours these
From the beginning: whether gods or men
Her presence bless, to her the portion fell
Of virgin whisperings and alluring smiles,
And smooth deceits, and gentle ecstasy,
And dalliance, and the blandishments of love.

But the great Heaven, rebuking those his sons
That issued from his loins, new-named them now
Titans: and said that they avenging dared
A crime; but retribution was behind.

Abhorred Fate and dark Necessity
And Death were born from Night: by none embraced
These gloomy Night brought self-conceiving forth:
And Sleep and all the hovering host of dreams.
Then bare she Momus; Care, still brooding sad
On many griefs; and next th’ Hesperian maids,
Whose charge o’er-sees the fruits of blooming gold
Beyond the sounding ocean, the fair trees
Of golden fruitage. Then the Destinies
Arose, and Fates in vengeance pitiless:
Clotho, and Lachesis, and Atropos:
Who at the birth of men dispense the lot
Of good and evil. They of men and gods
The crimes pursue, nor ever pause from wrath
Tremendous, till destructive on the head
Of him that sins the retribution fall.

Then teem’d pernicious Night with Nemesis,
The scourge of mortal men: again she bare
Fraud and lascivious Love: slow-wasting Age,
And still-persisting Strife. From hateful Strife
Came sore Affliction and Oblivion drear:
Famine and weeping Sorrows: Combats, Wars,
And Slaughters, and all Homicides: and Brawls,
And Bickerings, and deluding Lies: with them
Perverted Law and galling Injury,
Inseparable mates: and the dread Oath;
A mighty bane to him of earth-born men
Who wilful swears, and perjured is forsworn.

The Sea with Earth embracing, Nereus rose,
Eldest of all his race: unerring seer,
And true: with filial veneration named
Ancient of Years: for mild and blameless he:
Remembering still the right; still merciful
As just in counsels. Then rose Thaumas vast,
Phorcys the mighty, Ceto fair of cheek,
And stern Eurybia, of an iron soul.

From Nereus and the fair-hair’d Doris, nymph
Of ocean’s perfect stream, the lovely race
Of goddess Nereids rose to light, whose haunt
Is midst the waters of the sterile main:
Eucrate, Proto, Thetis, Amphitrite,
Love-breathing Thália, Sao, and Eudora,
And Spio, skimming with light feet the wave:
Galene, Glauce, and Cymothöe:
Agave, and the graceful Melita:
Rose-arm’d Eunice, and Eulimene:
Pasithea, Doto, Erato, Pherusa,
Nesæa, Cranto, and Dynamene:
Protomedía, Doris, and Actæa:
And Panope, and Galatæa fair:
Rose-arm’d Hipponöe: soft Hippothöe:
Cymodoce who calms, at once, the waves
Of the dark sea, and blasts of heaven-breathed winds:
With whom Cymatolége, and the nymph
Of beauteous ankles Amphitrite glide:
Cymo, Eïone, Liagore,
And Halimede, with her sea-green wreath:
Pontoporïa, and Polynome;
Evagore, and blithe Glauconome:
Laomedía, and Evarne blest
With gracious nature and with faultless form:
Lysianassa, and Autonome,
And Psamathe, with shape of comeliness:
Divine Menippe, Neso, and Themistho:
And Pronöe, and Eupompe, and Nemertes:
Full of her deathless sire’s prophetic soul.
These sprang from blameless Nereus: Nereid nymphs:
Who midst the waters ply their blameless tasks.

Electra, nymph of the deep-flowing ocean,
Embraced with Thaumas: rapid Iris thence
Rose, and Aëllo and Ocypetes,
The sister-harpies, fair with streaming locks:
Who track the breezy winds and flights of birds,
On wings of swiftness hovering nigh the heaven.

Then Ceto, fair of cheek, to Phorcys bore
The Graiæ; from their birth-hour gray: and hence
Their name with gods, and men that walk the earth:
Long-robed Pephredo, saffron-veil’d Enýo:
And Gorgons dwelling on the brink of night
Beyond the sounding main: where silver-voiced
Th’ Hesperian maidens in their watches sing:
Stheno, Euryale, Medusa these:
The last ill-fated, since of mortal date:
The two immortal, and unchanged by years.
Yet her alone the blue-hair’d god of waves
Enfolded, on the tender meadow grass,
And bedded flowers of spring: when Perseus smote
Her neck, and snatch’d the sever’d bleeding head,
The great Chrysaor then leap’d into life:
And Pegasus the steed; who born beside
Old Nilus’ fountains thence derived a name.
Chrysaor, grasping in his hands a sword
Of gold, flew upward on the winged horse:
And left beneath him earth, mother of flocks,
And soar’d to heaven’s immortals: and there dwells
In palaces of Jove, and to the god
Deep-counsell’d bears the bolt and arrowy flame.