mes, and fissures wide,
Departing moisture prove. The forage green,
Whitens; trees crackle with their burning leaves;
And ripe corn adds its fuel to the blaze.
Why mourn we trifles? Mighty cities fall;
Their walls protect them not; their dwellers sink
To ashes with them. Woods on mountains flame;--
Athos, Cilician Taurus, Tmolus, burn;
Oete, and Ide, her pleasant fountains dry;
With virgin Helicon, and Haemus high,
OEagrius since. Now with redoubled flames
Fierce Etna blazes;--Eryx, Othrys too;
Cynthus, and fam'd Parnassus' double top,
And Rhodope, at length of snow depriv'd:
Dindyma, Mimas, and the sacred hill
Cythaeron nam'd, and lofty Mycale:
Nor aid their snows the Scythians: Ossa burns,
Pindus, and Caucasus, and, loftier still,
The huge Olympus; with the towering Alps;
And cloud-capt Apennines. Now the youth,
Beholds earth flaming fierce from every part;--
The heat o'erpowers him; fiery air he breathes
As from a furnace; and the car he rides
Glows with the flame beneath him: sore annoy'd
On every side by cinders, and by smoke
Hot curling round him. Whither now he drives,
Or where he is, he knows not; in a cloud
Of pitchy night involv'd; swept as the steeds
Swift-flying will. The AEthiopians then,
'Tis said, their sable tincture first receiv'd;
Their purple blood the glowing heat call'd forth
To tinge their skins. Then dry'd the scorching fire
From arid Lybia all her fertile streams.
Now with dishevell'd locks the nymphs bewail'd
Their fountains and their lakes. Boeotia mourns
The loss of Dirce: Argos Amymone:
Corinth laments Pirene. Nor yet safe
Were rivers bounded by far distant shores,
Tanais' midmost waves fume to the sky;
And ancient Peneus smokes: Ismenos swift;
Caicus, Teuthrantean; and the flood
Of Phocis, Erymanthus: Xanthus too,
Doom'd to be fir'd again: Lycormas brown;
Maeander's sportive oft recircling waves;
Mygdonian Melas; and the Spartan flood,
Eurotas; with Euphrates burn: and burn,
Orontes; and the rapid Thermodoon;
Ganges; and Phasis; and the Ister swift.
Alpheus boils; the banks of Spercheus burn;
And Tagus' golden sands the flames dissolve.
Stream-loving swans, whose song melodious rung
Throughout Maeonian regions, feel the heat,
Caister's streams amid. In terror Nile
Fled to the farthest earth, and sunk his head,
Yet undiscover'd!--void the seven-fold stream,
His mouth