Ovid Blaze

Many are loud in favour of Jove’s speech
And spur his anger; many give quiet assent;
But all deplore the loss of humankind,
And ask what would the future world be like
Bereft of mortals? Who would cense their shrines?
Can Jove intend to abandon earth’s domain
To the brute beasts to ravage and despoil?
Such were their questions; but the gods’ great king
Bade them take heart (his forethought would provide)
And promised a new race of men on earth,
Unlike the first, a race of marvellous birth.
Now he was poised to launch his thunderbolts
Against the whole wide world, but paused for fear
The holy empyrean be set alight
By fires so many and blaze from pole to pole;
And he recalled the Fates foretold a time
When sea and land and heaven’s high palaces
In sweeping flames should burn, and down should fall
The beleaguered bastions of the universe.
He laid aside his lightnings; better seemed
A different punishment—to send the rains
To fall from every region of the sky
And in their deluge drown the human race.


- Ovid, Metamorphoses, Book 1