Appendix
To all is wife; nor is there one that has
A mother save a female one. Yet now,
If youthful vigour holds it right to waste
The flower of modesty, I have within
Two daughters of a nuptial age, in whom
Virginity is swelling in its bloom,
Already ripe for harvest—a desire
Worthy of men—which let your pleasure reap!
Myself their sire, I yield them; and will pay
For my guests’ sake, the forfeit of my grief!”
Answered the mob insane: “And who art thou?
And what? and whence? to lord it over us,
And to expound us laws? Shall foreigner
Rule Sodom, and hurl threats? Now, then, thyself
For daughters and for guests shalt sate our greed!
One shall suffice for all!” So said, so done:
The frantic mob delays not. As, whene’er
A turbid torrent rolls with wintry tide,
And rushes at one speed through countless streams
Of rivers, if, just where it forks, some tree
Meets the swift waves (not long to stand, save while
By her root’s force she shall avail to oppose
Her tufty obstacles), when gradually
Her hold upon the undermined soil
Is failing, with her bared stem she hangs,
And, with uncertain heavings to and fro,
Defers her certain fall; not otherwise
Lot in the mid-whirl of the dizzy mob
Kept nodding, now almost o’ercome. But power
Divine brings succour: the angelic youths,
Snatching him from the threshold, to his roof
Restore him; but upon the spot they mulct
Of sight the mob insane in open day,—
Fit augury of coming penalties!
Then they unlock the just decrees of God:
That penalty condign from heaven will fall
On Sodom; that himself had merited
Safety upon the count of righteousness.
“Gird thee, then, up to hasten hence thy flight,
And with thee to lead out what family
Thou hast: already we are bringing on
Destruction o’er the city.” Lot with speed
Speaks to his sons-in-law; but their hard heart
Scorned to believe the warning, and at fear
Laughed. At what time the light attempts to climb
The darkness, and heaven’s face wears double hue
From night and day, the youthful visitants
Were instant to outlead from Sodoma
The race Chaldæan, and the righteous house
Consign to safety: “Ho! come, Lot! arise,
And take thy yokefellow and daughters twain,
And hence, beyond the boundaries be gone,
Preventing Sodom’s penalties!” And eke
With friendly hands they lead them trembling forth,
And then their final mandates give: “Save, Lot,
Thy life, lest thou perchance should will to turn
Thy retroverted gaze behind, or stay
The step once taken: to the mountain speed!”
Lot feared to creep the heights with tardy step,
Lest the celestial wrath-fires should o’ertake
And whelm him: therefore he essays to crave
Some other ports; a city small, to wit,
Which opposite he had espied. “Hereto,”
He said, “I speed my flight: scarce with its walls
’Tis visible; nor is it far, nor great.”
They, favouring his prayer, safety assured
To him and to the city; whence the spot
Is known in speech barbaric by the name
Segor. Lot enters Segor while the sun
Is rising, the last sun, which glowing bears
To Sodom conflagration; for his rays
He had armed all with fire: beneath him spreads
An emulous gloom, which seeks to intercept
The light; and clouds combine to interweave
Their smoky globes with the confused sky:
Down pours a novel shower: the ether seethes
With sulphur mixt with blazing flames: the air
Crackles with liquid heats exust. From hence
The fable has an echo of the truth
Amid its false, that the sun’s progeny
Would drive his father’s team; but nought availed
The giddy boy to curb the haughty steeds
Of fire: so blazed our orb: then lightning reft
The lawless charioteer, and bitter plaint
Transformed his sisters. Let Eridanus
See to it, if one poplar on his banks
Whitens, or any bird dons plumage there
Whose note old age makes mellow! Here they mourn
O’er miracles of metamorphosis
Of other sort. For, partner of Lot’s flight,
His wife (ah me, for woman! even then
Intolerant of law!) alone turned back
At the unearthly murmurs of the sky)
Her daring eyes, but bootlessly: not doomed
To utter what she saw! and then and there
Changed into brittle salt, herself her tomb
She stood, herself an image of herself,
Keeping an incorporeal form: and still
In her unsheltered station ’neath the heaven
Dures she, by rains unmelted, by decay
And winds unwasted; nay, if some strange hand
Deface her form, forthwith from her own store
Her wounds she doth repair. Still is she said
To live, and, ’mid her corporal change, discharge
With wonted blood her sex’s monthly dues.
Gone are the men of Sodom; gone the glare
Of their unhallowed ramparts; all the house
Inhospitable, with its lords, is gone:
The champaign is one pyre; here embers rough
And black, here ash-heaps with hoar mould, mark out
The conflagration’s course: evanished
Is all that old fertility which Lot,
Seeing outspread before him,…
. . . . . . . . . . . . .
No ploughman spends his fruitless toil on glebes
Pitchy with soot: or if some acres there,
But half consumed, still strive to emulate
Autumn’s glad wealth, pears, peaches, and all fruits
Promise themselves full easely to the eye
In fairest bloom, until the plucker’s hand
Is on them: then forthwith the seeming fruit
Crumbles to dust ’neath the bewraying touch,
And turns to embers vain. Thus, therefore (sky
And earth entombed alike), not e’en the sea
Lives there: the quiet of that quiet sea
Is death! —a sea which no wave animates
Through its anhealant volumes; which beneath
Its native Auster sighs not anywhere;
Which cannot from its depths one scaly race,
Or with smooth skin or cork-like fence encased,
Produce, or curled shell in single valve
Or double fold enclosed. Bitumen there
(The sooty reek of sea exust) alone,
With its own crop, a spurious harvest yields;
Which ’neath the stagnant surface vivid heat
From seething mass of sulphur and of brine
Maturing tempers, making earth cohere
Into a pitch marine. At season due
The heated water’s fatty ooze is borne
Up to the surface; and with foamy flakes
Over the level top a tawny skin
Is woven. They whose function is to catch
That ware put to, tilting their smooth skin down
With balance of their sides, to teach the film,
Once o’er the gunnel, to float in: for, lo!
Raising itself spontaneous, it will swim
Up to the edge of the unmoving craft;
And will, when pressed, for guerdon large, ensure
Immunity from the defiling touch
Of weft which female monthly efflux clothes.
Behold another portent notable,
Fruit of that sea’s disaster: all things cast
Therein do swim: gone is its native power
For sinking bodies: if, in fine, you launch
A torch’s lightsome hull (where spirit serves
For fire) therein, the apex of the flame
Will act as sail; put out the flame, and ’neath
The waters will the light’s wrecks ruin go!
Such Sodom’s and Gomorrah’s penalties,
For ages sealed as signs before the eyes
Of unjust nations, whose obdurate hearts
God’s fear have quite forsaken, will them teach
To reverence heaven-sanctioned rights, and lift
Their gaze unto one only Lord of all.
3. Genesis.
In the beginning did the Lord create
The heaven and earth: for formless was the land,
And hidden by the wave, and God immense
O’er the vast watery plains was hovering,
While chaos and black darkness shrouded all:
Which darkness, when God bade be from the pole
Disjoined, He speaks, “Let there be light;” and all
In the clear world was bright. Then, when the Lord
The first day’s work had finished, He formed
Heaven’s axis white with nascent clouds: the deep
Immense receives its wandering shores, and draws
The rivers manifold with mighty trains.
The third dun light unveiled earth’s face, and soon
(Its name assigned) the dry land’s story ’gins:
Together on the windy champaigns rise
The flowery seeds, and simultaneously
Fruit-bearing boughs put forth procurvant arms.
The fourth day, with the sun’s lamp generates
The moon, and moulds the stars with tremulous light
Radiant: these elements it gave as signs
To th’ underlying world, to teach the times
Which, through their rise and setting, were to change.
Then, on the fifth, the liquid streams receive
Their fish, and birds poise in the lower air
Their pinions many-hued. The sixth, again,
Supples the ice-cold snakes into their coils,
And over the whole fields diffuses herds
Of quadrupeds; and mandate gave that all
Should grow with multiplying seed, and roam
And feed in earth’s immensity. All these
When power divine by mere command arranged,
Observing that things mundane still would lack
A ruler, thus It speaks: “With utmost care,
Assimilated to our own aspect,
Make We a man to reign in the whole orb.”
And him, although He with a single word
Could have compounded, yet Himself did deign
To shape him with His sacred own right hand,
Inspiring his dull breast from breast divine.
Whom when He saw formed in a likeness such
As is His own, He measures how he broods
Alone on gnawing cares. Straight way his eyes
With sleep irriguous He doth perfuse;
That from his left rib woman softlier
May formed be, and that by mixture twin
His substance may add firmness to her limbs.
To her the name of “Life”—which is called “Eve” —
Is given: wherefore sons, as custom is,
Their parents leave, and, with a settled home,
Cleave to their wives. The seventh came, when God
At His works’ end did rest, decreeing it
Sacred unto the coming ages’ joys.
Straightway—the crowds of living things deployed
Before him—Adam’s cunning skill (the gift
Of the good Lord) gives severally to all
The name which still is permanent. Himself,
And, joined with him, his Eve, God deigns address