Fierce Boreas with his offspring iffues forth,
T' invade the frozen waggon of the North.
While frowning Aufter feeks the fouthern fphere,
And rots, with endless rain, th' unwholsome year.

High o'er the clouds, and empty realms of wind,
The God a clearer space for heaven defign'd;
Where fields of light and liquid æther flow,
Purg'd from the ponderous dregs of earth below.
Scarce had the power diftinguish'd thefe, when ftraight
The stars, no longer overlaid with weight,
Exert their heads from underneath the mass,
And upward fhoot, and kindle as they pass,
And with diffufive light adorn the heavenly place.
Then, every void of nature to fupply,

With forms of Gods he fills the vacant sky:
New herds of beafts he fends, the plains to fhare;
New colonies of birds, to people air;

And to their oozy beds the finny fish repair.
A creature of a more exalted kind

Was wanting yet, and then was man design'd:
Confcious of thought, of more capacious breast,
For empire form'd, and fit to rule the rest:
Whether with particles of heavenly fire
The God of nature did his foul inspire;
Or earth, but new divided from the sky,
And pliant ftill, retain'd th' ætherial energy:
Which wife Prometheus temper'd into paste,
And, mixt with living ftreams, the godlike image caft.
Thus, while the mute creation downward bend

Their fight, and to their earthly mother tend,

Man

Man looks aloft, and with erected eyes
Beholds his own hereditary skies.
From fuch rude principles our form began,
And earth was metamorphos'd into man.

THE GOLDEN AGE.

The golden age was first; when man, yet new,
No rule but uncorrupted reafon knew;
And, with a native bent, did good purfue.
Unforc'd by punishment, unaw'd by fear,
His words were fimple, and his foul fincere:
Needlefs was written-law, where none oppreft;
The law of man was written in his breast:
No fuppliant crowds before the judge appear'd;
No court erected yet, nor cause was heard;
But all was fafe, for confcience was their guard.
The mountain-trees in diftant profpect please,
Ere yet the pine descended to the feas;
Ere fails were fpread, new oceans to explore;
And happy mortals, unconcern'd for more,
Confin'd their wishes to their native shore.

}

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No walls were yet, nor fence, nor mote, nor mound;
Nor drum was heard, nor trumpet's angry found:
Nor fwords were forg'd; but, void of care and crime,
The foft creation flept away their time.

The teeming earth, yet guiltless of the plough,
And unprovok'd, did fruitful ftores allow:
Content with food, which nature freely bred,
On wildings and on ftrawberries they fed;
Cornels and bramble-berries gave the rest,
And falling acorns furnish'd out a feast,

The

The flowers unfown in fields and meadows reign'd;
And weftern winds immortal Spring maintain’d.
In following years the bearded corn enfu'd
From earth unask'd, nor was that earth renew'd.
From veins of vallies milk and nectar bróke;
And honey fweating through the pores of oak.

THE SILVER AGE.

But when good Saturn, banish'd from above,
Was driven to hell, the world was under Jove.
Succeeding times a filver age behold,
Excelling brafs, but more excell'd by gold.
Then Summer, Autumn, Winter, did appear;
And Spring was but a feafon of the
year.
The fun his annual courfe obliquely made,
Good days contracted, and enlarg'd the bad.
Then air with fultry heats began to glow,

The wings of winds were clogg'd with ice and fnow;
And shivering mortals, into houses driven,
Sought fhelter from th' inclemency of heaven.
Thofe houses, then, were caves, or homely fheds,
With twining oziers fenc'd, and mofs their beds.
Then ploughs, for feed, the fruitful furrows brokę,
And oxen labour'd first beneath the yoke.

To this next came in courfe the brazen age, A warlike offspring, prompt to bloody rage, Not impious yet

THE

THE IRON AGE.

-Hard fteel fucceeded then;

And ftubborn as the metal were the men.
Truth, Modefty, and Shame, the world forfook:
Fraud, Avarice, and Force, their places took.
Then fails were spread to every wind that blew;
Raw were the failors, and the depths were new:
Trees rudely hollow'd, did the waves sustain:
Ere fhips in triumph plough'd the watery plain.
Then land-marks limited to each his right:
For all before was common as the light.
Nor was the ground alone requir'd to bear
Her annual income to the crooked share;
But greedy mortals, rummaging her ftore,
Digg'd from her entrails firft the precious ore;
Which next to hell the prudent Gods had laid;
And that alluring ill to fight difplay'd;

Thus curfed steel, and more accurfed gold,
Gave mischief birth, and made that mischief bold:
And double death did wretched man invade,
By fteel affaulted, and by gold betray'd.

Now (brandish'd weapons glittering in their hands)
Mankind is broken loofe from moral bands;

No rights of hofpitality remain:

The gueft, by him who harbour'd him, is flain:
The fon-in-law pursues the father's life:
The wife her husband murders, he the wife.
The ftep-dame poifon for the fon prepares,
The fon inquires into his father's years.

Faith flies, and Piety in exile mourns; .

And Justice, here oppreft, to heaven returns.

THE GIANTS WA R.

Nor were the Gods themselves more fafe above;
Against beleaguer'd heaven the giants move.
Hills pil'd on hills, on mountains mountains lie,
To make their mad approaches to the sky.
Till Jove, no longer patient, took his time
'T' avenge with thunder their audacious crime:
Red lightning play'd along the firmament,
And their demolish'd works to pieces rent.

Sing'd with the flames, and with the bolts transfix'd,
With native earth their blood the monsters mix'd;
The blood, indued with animating heat,

Did in th' impregnate earth new fons beget:
They, Kike the feed from which they fprung, accurft,
Against the Gods immortal hatred nurst :

An impious, arrogant, and cruel brood;

Expreffing their original from blood.

Which when the king of Gods beheld from high

(Withal revolving in his memory,

What he himself had found on earth of late,

Lycaon's guilt, and his inhuman treat)
He figh'd, nor longer with his pity ftrove;
But kindled to a wrath becoming Jove;
Then call'd a general council of the Gods;
Who, fummon'd, iffue from their bleft abodes,
And fill th' affembly with a shining train,
A way there is, in heaven's expanded plain,