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The way, thou leading; such a scent I draw Of carnage, prey innumerable, and taste The savour of death from all things there that live; Nor shall I to the work thou enterprisest Be wanting, but afford the equal aid. So saying, with delight he snuffed the smell Of mortal change on earth. As when a flock Of ravenous fowl, though many a league remote, Against the day of battle, to a field, Where armies lie encamped, come flying, lured With scent of living carcases designed For death the following day, in bloody fight; So scented the grim feature, and upturned His nostrils wide into the murky air, Sagacious of his quarry from so far. Then both, from out Hell gates, into the waste Wide anarchy of Chaos, damp and dark, Flew diverse; and with power—their power was great— Hovering upon the waters, what they met, Solid or slimy, as in raging sea Tossed up and down, together crowded drove, From each side shoaling towards the mouth of Hell:-As when two polar winds, blowing adverse Upon the Cronian sea, together drive Mountains of ice, that stop the imagined way Beyond Petsora² eastward, to the rich Cathaian coast.3 The aggregated soil, Death, with his mace petrific, cold and dry, As with a trident smote, and fixed as firm As Delos, floating once; the rest his look Bound with Gorgonian rigour not to move;

1 Cronian sea.—Name given to the Polar Seas.

^\ Petsora.—A river descending to the Arctic Sea from the Ural mountains.

^\ As Delos, floating once.—One of the Cyclades group of islands, in the Ægean Sea, which was said to have been floating island, until Jupiter chained it to the bottom of the sea. \* Gorgonian rigour.—See Book II., line 611, and Note 3.