Ovid Flood

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.

[...]

Swiftly within the Wind-god’s cave he locked
The north wind and the gales that drive away
The gathered clouds, and sent the south wind forth;
And out on soaking wings the south wind flew,
His ghastly features veiled in deepest gloom.
His beard was sodden with rain, his white hair drenched;
Mists wreathed his brow and streaming water fell
From wings and chest; and when in giant hands
He crushed the hanging clouds, the thunder crashed
And storms of blinding rain poured down from heaven.
Iris, great Juno’s envoy, rainbow-clad,
Gathered the waters and refilled the clouds.
The crops lay flat; the farmer mourned his hopes;
The long year’s labour died, vain labour lost.
Nor was Jove’s wrath content with heaven above;
His sea-blue brother brings his waters’ aid,
And summons all the rivers to attend
Their master’s palace. ‘Now time will not wait
For many words’, he says; ‘pour out your strength—
The need is great! Unbar your doors! Away
With dykes and dams and give your floods free rein!’
The streams returned and freed their fountains’ flow
And rolled in course unbridled to the sea.
Then with his trident Neptune struck the earth,
Which quaked and moved to give the waters way.
In vast expanse across the open plains
The rivers spread and swept away together
Crops, orchards, vineyards, cattle, houses, men,
Temples and shrines with all their holy things.
If any home is left and, undestroyed,
Resists the huge disaster, over its roof,
The waters meet and in their whirling flood
High towers sink from sight; now land and sea
Had no distinction; over the whole earth
All things were sea, a sea without a shore.
Some gained the hilltops, others took to boats
And rowed where late they ploughed; some steered a course
Above the cornfields and the farmhouse roofs,
And some caught fishes in the lofty elms.
Perchance in the green meads an anchor dropped
And curving keels brushed through the rows of vines,
And where out now the graceful goats had browsed
Gross clumsy seals hauled their ungainly bulk.
The Nereids see with awe beneath the waves
Cities and homes and groves, and in the woods
The dolphins live and high among the branches
Dash to and fro and shake the oaks in play.
Wolves swim among the sheep, and on the waters
Tigers are borne along and tawny lions.
No more his lightning stroke avails the boar
Nor his swift legs the stag—both borne away.
The wandering birds long seek a resting place
And drop with weary wings into the sea.
The waters’ boundless licence overwhelmed
The hills, and strange waves lashed the mountain peaks.
The world was drowned; those few the deluge spared
For dearth of food in lingering famine died.

[...]

Between Boeotia and the Oetean hills
The land of Phocis lies, a fertile land
When land it was, but now part of the sea,
A spreading wilderness of sudden waters.
There a great mountain aims towards the stars
Its double peak, Parnassus, soaring high
Above the clouds; and there Deucalion,
Borne on a raft, with his dear wife beside,
Had grounded; all elsewhere the deluge whelmed.
Praise and thanksgiving to the mountain’s gods
And nymphs they gave, and to the prophetess,
Themis, then guardian of the oracle;
No man was better, none loved goodness more
Than he, no woman more devout than she.
And when Jove saw the world a waste of waters,
And of so many millions but one man,
And of so many millions but one woman
Alive, both innocent, both worshippers,
He bade the clouds disperse, the north wind drive
The storms away, and to the earth revealed
The heavens again and to the sky the earth.
Spent was the anger of the sea; the Lord
Who rules the main laid by his three-pronged spear
And calmed the waves and, calling from the deep
Triton, sea-hued, his shoulders barnacled
With sea-shells, bade him blow his echoing conch
To bid the rivers, waves and floods retire.
He raised his horn, his hollow spiralled whorl,
The horn that, sounded in mid ocean, fills
The shores of dawn and sunset round the world;
And when it touched the god’s wet-bearded lips
And took his breath and sounded the retreat,
All the wide waters of the land and sea
Heard it, and all, hearing its voice, obeyed.
The sea has shores again, the rivers run
Brimming between their banks, the floods subside,
The hills emerge, the swelling contours rise;
As the floods lessen, larger grows the land,
And after many days the woods reveal
Their tree-tops bare and branches lined with mud.
Earth was restored; but when Deucalion
Saw the deep silence of the desolate lands
And the wide empty wastes, in tears he said:
‘Pyrrha, my dearest cousin, dearest wife,
Sole woman left alive, whom ties of blood
And family, then marriage, joined to me,
And now our perils join, in all the lands
The sun beholds from dawn to eve we two
Remain, their peoples—the sea has claimed the rest.
Yet even now our lives are scarce assured,
And still the clouds strike terror in my heart.
Suppose, poor soul, the Fates had rescued you
Alone, what would you feel, how could you face
Your fear without me? Who would staunch your grief?
Be sure that, if the sea had held you too,
I’d follow you; the sea would hold me too.
O for my father’s magic to restore
Mankind again and in the moulded clay
Breathe life and so repopulate the world!
Now on us two the human race depends—
So Heaven wills—us, patterns of mankind.’


- Ovid, Metamorphoses, Book 1