ovid - beginnings/creation

thus clay, so lately no more than a crude and formless substance

was metamorphosed to assume the strange new figure of man

changes of shape, new forms, are the theme which my spirit impels me now to recite

inspire me, o gods (it is you who have even transformed my art) and spin me a thread from the world's beginning down to my own lifetime in one continuous poem

before the earth and the sea and the all encompassing heaven came into being,

the whole of nature displayed but a single face, which men have called chaos

a crude, unstructured mass, nothing but weight without motion

a general conglomeration of matter composed of disparate, incompatible elements

none of the elements kept its shape and all were in conflict inside one body

the cold with the hot, the wet with the dry, the soft with the hard, and weight with the weightless.

the god who is nature was kinder

and brought this dispute to a settlement

he severed the earth from the sky and parted the sea from the land

he separated translucent space from the cloudier atmosphere.

he disentangled the elements

so as to set them free from the heap of darkness, then gave them their seperate places and tied them down in peaceful concordat

when the god, whichever one of the gods

had divided the substance of chaos and ordered it thus in its different constituent members

first, in order that the earth should hang suspended in perfect symmetrical balance

he moulded it into the shape of a great sphere.

and just as the sky is cut

into zones

the king of the gods divided the year into 4 seasons

summer, changeable autumn, winter and only a short spring.

the sky for the first time burned and glowed with dry white heat

and the blasts of the wild winds froze the rain into hanging icicles.

the final age was of iron

the floodgates opened and all the forces of evil invaded a breed of inferior mettle

loyalty, truth and conscience went into exile

their throne usurped by guile and deception, treacherous plots, brute force and a criminal lust for possession