Part VI

There, odious to immortals, dreadful Styx
Inhabits: refluent Ocean’s eldest-born:
She from the gods apart for ever dwells
In far-re-echoing mansions, with arch’d roofs
Of loftiest rock o’erhung: and all around
The silver columns lean upon the skies.

Swift-footed Iris, nymph of Thaumas born,
Takes with no frequent embassy her way
O’er the broad main’s expanse, when haply strife
Be risen, and midst the gods dissension sown:
And if there be among th’ Olympian race
Who falsehood utters, Jove sends Iris down
To bring the great oath in a golden ewer:
The far-famed water, from steep, sky-capt rock
Distilling in cold stream. Beneath wide Earth
Abundant from the sacred river-head,
Through shades of blackest night, the Stygian horn
Of ocean flows: a tenth of all the streams
To the dread oath allotted. In nine streams
Circling the round of earth and the broad seas,
With silver whirlpools twined in many a maze,
It falls into the deep: one stream alone
Flows from the rock; a mighty bane to gods.
Who of immortals, that inhabit still
Olympus top’d with snow, libation pours
And is forsworn, he one whole year entire
Lies reft of breath: nor yet approaches once
The nectar’d and ambrosial sweet repast:
But still reclines on the spread festive couch
Mute, breathless; and a mortal lethargy
O’erwhelms him: but, his malady absolved
With the great round of the revolving year,
More ills on ills afflictive seize: nine years
From ever-living deities remote
His lot is cast: in council nor in feast
Once joins he, till nine years entire are full:
The tenth again he mingles with the blest
Societies, who fill th’ Olympian courts.
So great an oath the deities of heaven
Decreed the water of eternal Styx,
The ancient stream; that sweeps with wandering waves
A rugged region: where of dusky Earth,
And darksome Tartarus, and Ocean waste,
And starry Heaven, the source and boundary
Successive rise and end: a dreary wild
And ghastly: e’en by deities abhorr’d.

There gates resplendent rise; the threshold brass;
Immoveable; on deep foundations fix’d;
Self-framed. Before them the Titanic gods
Abide, without th’ assembly of the Blest,
Beyond the gulf of darkness. There beneath
The ocean-roots, th’ auxiliaries renown’d
Of Jove who rolls the hollow-pealing thunder,
Cottus and Gyges in near mansions dwell:
But He that shakes the shores with dashing surge
Hailing him son, gave Briareus as bride
Cymopolía; prize of brave desert.

But now when Jupiter from all the heaven
Had cast the Titans forth, huge Earth embraced
By Tartarus, through balmy Venus’ aid,
Her youngest-born Typhœus bore; whose hands
Of strength are fitted to stupendous deeds:
And indefatigable are the feet
Of the strong god: and from his shoulders rise
A hundred snaky heads of dragon growth,
Horrible, quivering with their blackening tongues:
In each amazing head, from eyes that roll’d
Within their sockets, fire shone sparkling: fire
Blazed from each head, the whilst he roll’d his glance
Glaring around him. In those fearful heads
Were voices of all sound, miraculous:
Now utter’d they distinguishable tones
Meet for the ear of gods: now the deep cry
Of a wild-bellowing bull untamed in strength:
And now the roaring of a lion, fierce
In spirit: and anon the yell of whelps
Strange to the ear: and now the monster hiss’d,
That the high mountains echoed back the sound.
Then had a dread event that fatal day
Inevitable fall’n, and he had ruled
O’er mortals and immortals; but the Sire
Of gods and men the peril instant knew
Intuitive; and vehement and strong
He thunder’d: instantaneous all around
Earth reel’d with horrible crash: the firmament
Of high heaven roar’d: the streams of Nile, the sea,
And uttermost caverns. While the king in wrath
Uprose, beneath his everlasting feet
The great Olympus trembled, and earth groan’d.
From either god a burning radiance caught
The darkly azured ocean: from the flash
Of lightnings, and that monster’s darted flame,
Hot thunderbolts, and blasts of fiery winds.
Earth, air, sea, glow’d: the billows, heaved on high,
Foam’d round the shores, and dash’d on every side
Beneath the rush of gods. Concussion wild
And unappeasable uprose: aghast
The gloomy monarch of th’ infernal dead
Shudder’d: the sub-tartarean Titans heard
E’en where they stood, with Saturn in the midst:
They heard appall’d the unextinguish’d rage
Of tumult, and the din of dreadful war.
But now when Jove had gather’d all his strength,
And grasp’d his weapons, bolts, and bickering flames,
He from the mount Olympus’ topmost ridge
Leap’d at a bound, and smote him: hiss’d at once
The horrible monster’s heads enormous, scorch’d
In one conflagrant blaze. When thus the god
Had quell’d him, thunder-smitten, mangled, prone,
He fell: earth groan’d and shook beneath his weight.
Flame from the lightning-stricken deity
Flash’d, midst the mountain-hollows, rugged, dark,
Where he fell smitten. Broad earth glow’d intense
From that unbounded vapour, and dissolv’d:
As fusile tin by art of youths above
The wide-brimm’d vase up-bubbling foams with heat;
Or iron, hardest of the mine, subdued
By burning flame amidst the woody dales
Melts in the sacred caves beneath the hands
Of Vulcan, so earth melted in the glare
Of blazing fire. He down wide Hell’s abyss
His victim hurl’d in bitterness of soul.
Lo! from Typhœus is the strength of winds
Moist-blowing: save the South, North, East, and West:
These born from gods, a blessing great to man:
Those, unavailing gusts, o’er the waste sea
Breathe barren: with sore peril fraught to man:
In whirlpool rage fall black upon the deep:
Now here, now there, they rush with stormy gale,
Scatter the rolling barks, and whelm in death
The mariner: an evil succourless
To men, who midst the ocean-ways their blast
Encounter. They again o’er all th’ expanse
Of flowery earth the pleasant works of man
Despoil, and fill the blacken’d air with cloud
Of eddying dust and hollow rustlings drear.