Poetry Reading Fall '99

 Metamorphoses by Ovid

As to the other forms of animal life, the earth spontaneously produced these of diverse kinds; after that old moisture remaining from the flood had grown warm from the rays of the sun, the slime of the wet marshes swelled with heat, and the fertile seeds of life, nourished in that life-giving soil, as in a mother's womb, grew and in time took on some special form. So when the seven-mouthed Nile has receded from the drenched fields and has returned again to its former bed, and the fresh slime has been heated by the sun's rays, farmers as they turn over the lumps of earth find many animate things; and among these some, but now begun, are upon the very verge of life, some are unfinished and lacking in their proper parts, and oft-times in the same body one part is alive and the other still nothing but raw earth. For when moisture and heat unite, life is conceived, and from these two sources all living things spring. And, though fire and water are naturally at enmity, still heat and moisture produce all things, and this inharmonious harmony is fitted to the growth of life. When, therefore, the earth, covered with mud from the recent flood, became heated up by the hot ethereal rays of the sun, she brought forth innumerable forms of life; in part she restored the ancient shapes, and in part she created creatures new and strange.
   She, indeed, would have wished not so to do, but thee also she then bore, thou huge Python, thou snake unknown before, who was a terror to new created men; so huge a space of mountain-side didst thou fill. This monster the god of the bow destroyed with lethal arms never before used except against does and wild she-goats, crushing him with countless darts, well-nigh emptying his quiver, till the creature's poisonous blood flowed from the black wounds. And, that the fame of his deed might not perish through lapse of time, he instituted sacred games whose contests throngs beheld, called Pythian from the name of the serpent he had overthrown.