Classic Poem

Now founds the vault of heav'n with loud alarms,
And gods by gods embattling, rush to arms:
Here stalk the Titans of portentous size,
Burst from their dungeons, and assault the skies;
And there, unchain'd from Erebus and night,
Auxiliar giants, aid the gods in fight.
An hundred arms each tow'r-like warrior rears,
And stares from fifty heads amid the stars:
The dreadful brotherhood stern frowning stands,
And hurls an hundred rocks from hundred hands:
The Titans rush'd with fury, uncontroll'd;
Gods sunk on gods, or giant, giant roll'd.
Then roar'd the ocean with a dreadful sound,
Heaven shook with all its thrones, and groan'd the ground;
Trembled th' eternal poles at ev'ry stroke,
And frighted hell from its foundation shook:
Noise, horrid noise, th' aerial region fills,
Rocks dash on rocks, and hills encounter hills;
Thro' earth, air, heav'n, tumultuous clamours rise,
And shouts of battle thunder in the skies;
Then Jove omnipotent display'd the god,
And all Olympus trembled as he trod.
He grasps ten thousand thunders in his hand,
Bares his red arm, and wields the forky brand;
Then aims the bolts, and bids his lightnings play;
They flash, and rend thro' heav'n their flaming way.
Redoubling blow on blow, in wrath he moves,
The sing'd earth groans, and burns with all her groves:
The floods, the billows, boiling, hiss with fires,
And bick'ring flame, and smould'ring smoke aspires.
A night of clouds blots out the golden day;
Full in their eyes the writhen lightnings play:
Ev'n Chaos burns. Again earth groans, heav'n roars,
As tumbling downward with its shining tow'rs;
Or burst this earth, torn from her central place,
With dire disruption from her deepest base.
Nor slept the wind; the wind new horror forms,
Clouds dash on clouds before the outrageous storms,
While tearing up the sands, in drifts they rise,
And half the deserts mount th' encumber'd skies.
At once the tempest bellows, lightnings fly,
The thunders roar, and clouds involve the sky.
Stupendous were the deeds of heav'nly might,
What less, when gods conflicting, cope in fight?
Now heav'n its foes with horrid inroad gores,
And slow, and sour, recede the giant pow'rs.
Here stalks Ægeon, here fierce Gyges moves,
There Cottus rends up hills with all their groves:
These hurl'd at once against the Titan bands,
Three hundred mountains from three hundred hands,
And overshadowing, overwhelming bound
With chains infrangible beneath the ground.
Below this earth, far as earth's confines lie,
Thro' space unmeasur'd from the starry sky,
Nine days an anvil of enormous weight
Down rushing headlong from th' aerial height
Scarce reaches earth, thence toss'd in giddy rounds,
Scarce reaches, in nine days, th' infernal bounds;
A wall of iron of stupendous height
Guards the dire dungeons, black with threefold night;
High o'er the horrors of th' eternal shade,
The stedfast base of earth and seas is laid;
There, in coercive durance, Jove detains
The groaning Titans in afflictive chains;
A seat of woe, remote from cheerful day,
Thro' gulphs impassable, a boundless way.
Above these realms a brazen structure stands
With brazen portals, fram'd by Neptune's hands;
Thro' chaos to the ocean's base it swells,
There stern Ægeon with his giants dwells,
Fierce guards of Jove, from hence the fountains rise
That wash the earth, or wander thro' the skies,
That groaning, murmur thro' the realm of woes,
Or feed the channels where the ocean flows:
Collected horrors throng the dire abodes,
Horrid and fell, detested ev'n by gods.
Enormous gulf, immense the bounds appear,
Wasteful and void, the journey of a year;
Where beating storms, as in wild whirls they fight,
Toss the pale wand'rer, and retoss thro' night.
The pow'rs immortal, with affright survey
The hideous chasm, and seal it up from day.
Hence, thro' the vault of heav'n huge Atlas rears
His giant limbs, and props the golden spheres.
Here sable night and here the beamy day
Lodge and dislodge, alternate in their sway.
A brazen port the varying pow'rs divides;
When day forth issues, here the night resides;
And when night veils the skies, obsequious day,
Re-entering, plunges from the starry way.
She from her lamp, with beaming radiance bright,
Pours o'er th' expanded earth a flood of light;
But night, by sleep attended, rides in shades,
Brother of death, and all that breathes invades;
From her foul womb they sprung, resistless pow'rs,
Nurs'd in the horrors of Tartarean bow'rs,
Remote from day, when with her flaming wheels
She mounts the skies, or paints the western hills.
With downy footsteps sleep in silence glides
O'er the wide earth, and o'er the spacious tides,
The friend of life, death unrelenting bears
An iron heart, and laughs at human cares:
She makes the mould'ring race of man her prey,
And ev'n th' immortal pow'rs detest her sway.
Thus fell the Titans, from the realms above,
Beneath the thunders of almighty Jove;
Then earth, impregnate, felt maternal woes,
And shook thro' all her frame with teeming throes:
Hence rose Typhoeus, a gigantic birth,
A monster sprung from Tartarus and Earth,
A match for gods in might, on high he spreads,
From his huge trunk, an hundred dragons' heads,
And, from an hundred mouths, in vengeance flings
Envenom'd foam, and darts an hundred stings.
Horror terrific frowns from ev'ry brow,
And like a furnace his red eye-balls glow;
Fires dart from ev'ry crest, and, as he turns,
Keen splendours flash, and all the giant burns.
Whene'er he speaks, in echoing thunders rise
An hundred voices, and affright the skies;
Unutterably fierce, the bright abodes
Frequent they shake, and terrify the gods:
Now bellowing, like a savage bull, they roar,
Or angry lions in the midnight hour;
Now yell like furious whelps, or hiss like snakes,
The rocks rebound, and ev'ry mountain shakes:
He hurl'd defiance 'gainst th' immortal pow'rs,
And heav'n had seiz'd, with all its shining tow'rs,
But, at the voice of Jove, from pole to pole
Red lightnings flash, and raging thunders roll;
Rattling o'er all th' expansion of the skies,
Bolt after bolt o'er earth and ocean flies.
Stern frowns the god amidst the lightnings' blaze,
Olympus shakes from his eternal base;
Trembles the earth; fierce flame involves the poles,
Devours the ground, and o'er the billows rolls:
Fires from Typhoeus flash: with dreadful sound
Storms rattle, thunder rolls, and groans the ground,
Above, below, the conflagration roars;
Ev'n the seas, kindled, burn thro' all their shores:
Deluge of fire, earth rocks her tott'ring coasts,
And gloomy Pluto shakes with all his ghosts;
Ev'n the pale Titans, chain'd on burning floors,
Start at the din that rends the infernal shores;
Then, in full wrath, Jove all the god applies,
And all his thunders burst at once the skies,
And rushing gloomy from th' Olympian brow,
He blasts the giant with th' Almighty blow;
The giant, tumbling, sinks beneath the wound,
And with enormous ruin rocks the ground.
Nor yet the lightnings of th' Almighty stay,
Thro' the sing'd earth they burst their burning way;
Earth kindling inward, melts in all her caves,
And hissing, floats with fierce metallic waves;
As iron fusile from the furnace flows,
Or molten ore with keen effulgence glows,
When the dire bolts of Jove stern Vulcan frames,
In burning channels roll the liquid flames.
Thus melted earth, and Jove from realms on high
Plung'd the huge giant to the nether sky.
Then from Typhoeus sprung the winds that bear
Storms on their wings, and thunder in the air;
But from the gods descend, of milder kind,
The east, the west, the south, and boreal wind:
These, in soft whispers, breathe a friendly breeze,
Play thro' the groves, or sport upon the seas;
They fan the sultry air with cooling gales,
And wast from realm to realm the flying sails;
The rest in storms of sounding whirlwinds fly,
Toss the wild waves, and battle in the sky,
Fatal to man, at once all ocean roars,
And scatter'd navies bulge on distant shores;
Then thund'ring o'er the earth they rend their way,
Grass, herb, and flow'r, beneath their rage decay;
While tow'rs and domes, vain boasts of human trust,
Torn from their inmost base, are whelm'd in dust.
Thus heav'n asserted its eternal reign
O'er the proud giants and Titanic train;
And now in peace the gods their Jove obey,
And all the thrones of heav'n adore his sway.