V.

In ancient times an iron Fate lorded it, with dumb force, over the

widespread families of men. A gloomy oppression swathed their anxious

souls: the Earth was boundless, the abode of the gods and their home. From

eternal ages stood its mysterious structure. Beyond the red hills of the

morning, in the sacred bosom of the sea, dwelt the sun, the

all-enkindling, live luminary. An aged giant upbore the happy world.

Prisoned beneath mountains lay the first-born sons of mother Earth,

helpless in their destroying fury against the new, glorious race of gods,

and their kindred, glad-hearted men. Ocean’s dusky, green abyss was the

lap of a goddess. In the crystal grottoes revelled a wanton folk. Rivers,

trees, flowers, and beasts had human wits. Sweeter tasted the wine, poured

out by youth impersonated; a god was in the grape-clusters; a loving,

motherly goddess upgrew in the full golden sheaves; love’s sacred carousal

was a sweet worship of the fairest of the goddesses. Life revelled through

the centuries like one spring-time, an ever-variegated festival of the

children of heaven and the dwellers on the earth. All races childlike

adored the ethereal, thousandfold flame, as the one sublimest thing in the

world.