Page:Hesiod, and Theognis.djvu/102

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88
HESIOD.

less welcome master should this pest attain full development. Zeus, we are told, foresaw the danger:—

"Intuitive and vigilant and strong
He thundered: instantaneous all around
Earth reeled with horrible crash: the firmament
Roared of high heaven, the ocean streams and seas,
And uttermost caverns! While the king in wrath
Uprose, beneath his everlasting feet
Trembled Olympus: groaned the steadfast earth.
From either side a burning radiance caught
The darkly-rolling ocean, from the flash
Of lightnings and the monster's darted flame,
Hot thunderbolts, and blasts of fiery winds.
Glowed earth, air, sea: the billows heaved on high
Foamed round the shores, and dashed on every side
Beneath the rush of gods. Concussion wild
And unappeasable arose: aghast
The gloomy monarch of th' infernal dead
Trembled: the sub-Tartarean Titans heard
E'en where they stood and Cronus in the midst;
They heard appalled the unextinguished rage
Of tumult and the din of dreadful war.
Now when the god, the fulness of his might
Gathering at once, had grasped his radiant arms,
The glowing thunderbolt and bickering flame,
He from the summit of th' Olympian mount
Leapt at a bound, and smote him: hissed at once
The horrible monster's heads enormous, scorched
In one conflagrant blaze. When thus the god
Had quelled him, thunder-smitten, mangled, prone,
He fell: beneath his weight earth groaning shook.
Flame from the lightning-stricken prodigy
Flashed 'mid the mountain hollows, rugged, dark,
Where he fell smitten. Broad earth glowed intense
From that unbounded vapour, and dissolved:—