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And time, and place, are lost; where eldest Night And Chaos, ancestors of Nature, hold Eternal anarchy, amidst the noise Of endless wars, and by confusion stand. For Hot, Cold, Moist, and Dry, four champions fierce, Strive here for mastery, and to battle bring Their embryon atoms; they around the flag Of each his faction, in their several clans, Light-armed or heavy, sharp, smooth, swift, or slow, Swarm populous, unnumbered as the sands Of Barca or Cyrene's torrid soil, Levied to side with warring winds, and poise Their lighter wings. To whom these most adhere He rules a moment. Chaos umpire sits, And by decision more embroils the fray By which he reigns. Next him, high arbiter, Chance governs all. Into this wild abyss, The womb of Nature, and perhaps her grave, Of neither sea, nor shore, nor air nor fire, But all these in their pregnant causes mixed Confusedly, and which thus must ever fight, Unless the Almighty Maker them ordain His dark materials to create more worlds; Into this wild abyss, the wary fiend Stood on the brink of hell, and looked awhile, Pondering his voyage; for no narrow frith He had to cross. Nor was his ear less pealed With noises loud and ruinous—to compare Great things with small—than when Bellona storms With all her battering engines bent to raze Some capital city; or less than if this frame Of heaven were falling, and these elements In mutiny had from her axle torn The steadfast earth. At last his sail-broad vans He spreads for flight, and in the surging smoke Uplifted spurns the ground; thence many a league,

As in a cloudy chair, ascending, rides Audacious; but, that seat soon failing, meets A vast vacuity. All unawares, Fluttering his pennons vain, plumb down he drops Ten thousand fathom deep; and to this hour Down had been falling, had not, by ill chance, The strong rebuff of some tumultuous cloud, Instinct with fire and nitre, hurried him As many miles aloft. That fury stayed, Quenched in a boggy syrtis, neither sea, Nor good dry land; nigh foundered, on he fares, Treading the crude consistence, half on foot, Half flying. Behoves him now both oar and sail. As when a gryphon, through the wilderness With winged course, o'er hill or moory dale, Pursues the Arimaspian, who by stealth Had from his wakeful custody purloined The guarded gold: so eagerly the fiend O'er bog, or steep, through strait, rough, dense, or rare, With head, hands, wings, or feet, pursues his way, And swims, or sinks, or wades, or creeps, or flies. At length a universal hubbub wild, Of stunning sounds, and voices all confused, Borne through the hollow dark, assaults his ear With loudest vehemence. Thither he plies, Undaunted, to meet there whatever power Or spirit of the nethermost abyss Might in that noise reside, of whom to ask Which way the nearest coast of darkness lies Bordering on light; when straight behold the throne Of Chaos,2 and his dark pavilion spread Wide on the wasteful deep; with him enthroned

to be the special guardians of gold mines; while the Arimaspians were a people skilled and brave in possessing "Chaos,—The spirit supposed to have its home amidst the "unformed and void."