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THE THEOGONY.
87
With silver whirlpools twined with many a maze,
It falls into the deep: one stream alone
Glides from the rock, a mighty bane to gods.
Who of immortals, that inhabit still
Olympus topped with snow, libation pours
And is forsworn, he one whole year entire
Lies reft of breath, nor yet approaches once
The nectared 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 everlasting deities remote
His lot is cast: in council nor in feast
Once joins he, till nine years entire are full.
•••••••
So great an oath the deities of heaven
Decreed the waters incorruptible,
Ancient, of Styx, who sweeps with wandering wave
A rugged region: where of dusky Earth,
And darksome Tartarus, and Ocean waste,
And the starred Heaven, the source and boundary
Successive rise and end: a dreary wild
And ghastly, e'en by deities abhorred."
—E. 1038-1072.
It falls into the deep: one stream alone
Glides from the rock, a mighty bane to gods.
Who of immortals, that inhabit still
Olympus topped with snow, libation pours
And is forsworn, he one whole year entire
Lies reft of breath, nor yet approaches once
The nectared 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 everlasting deities remote
His lot is cast: in council nor in feast
Once joins he, till nine years entire are full.
•••••••
So great an oath the deities of heaven
Decreed the waters incorruptible,
Ancient, of Styx, who sweeps with wandering wave
A rugged region: where of dusky Earth,
And darksome Tartarus, and Ocean waste,
And the starred Heaven, the source and boundary
Successive rise and end: a dreary wild
And ghastly, e'en by deities abhorred."
—E. 1038-1072.
Such, according to Hesiod, are the surroundings of the infernal prison-house which received the vanquished Titans when Jove's victory was assured. Not yet, however, could he rest from his toil: he had yet to scotch the half-serpent, half-human Typhœus, the offspring of a new union betwixt Earth and Tartarus,—a monster so terror-inspiring by means of its hundred heads and voices to match, that Olympus might well dread another and
