Ovid Hair Toss

Across the height of heaven there runs a road,
Clear when the night is bare, the Milky Way,
Famed for its sheen of white. Along this way
Come the immortals to the royal halls
Of the great Thunderer; on either hand
The mansions of the aristocracy
Are thronged, their doors flung wide; the common sort
Live in the scattered suburbs; here reside
The great and famous; this majestic place
(To speak so bold) is heaven’s Palatine.
So in the marble council-chamber sat
The gods; and Jupiter above them throned,
Leaning upon his ivory sceptre, tossed
From side to side his fearsome locks, and shook
Ocean and earth and all the starry sky,
And thus in wrath and indignation spoke:
‘Never felt I more anxious for the world,
My realm, not when the serpent-footed giants
Strove each to grapple in his hundred arms
The captive sky. Fierce was that foe indeed,
Yet war hung on one front, sprang from one source;
But now throughout the whole great orb whose shores
Resound with Ocean’s roar the mortal race
Must be destroyed. By that dark stream I swear,
That glides below the world through glades of Hell,
All has been tried and, when no cure avails,
Rightly the knife is used lest the disease
Spread and infection draw what still is sound.


- Ovid, Metamorphoses, Book 1