Page:Statius (Mozley 1928) v1.djvu/407

high into icy billows. Streams that before were dusty road-tracks now defy all stay of confining bank, Lerna surges up from her deepest depths and foams with her ancient poison. Shattered are all the forests, aged boughs are swept out upon the storm, and the shady summer-haunts of Lycaeus, unbeheld before by any suns, are now stripped bare to view. Yet he, now marvelling at the rocks down-hurled from the cloven mountains, now listening in terror to the cloud-born torrents dashing from the hills, and the raging flood whirling away home of shepherd and stall of beast, slackens not his pace, though distraught and uncertain of his way, but through the dark silences devours the lonely stretches of his road; on every side fear and the thought of his brother assail his heart. And just as a sailor, caught in a tempest on the deep, to whom neither lazy Wain nor Moon with friendly beam show bearings, stands beggared of resource in mid-tumult of sky and sea, and even now expects the treacherous reef submerged beneath the wave, or waits to see foaming jagged rocks fling themselves at his prow and heave it high in air: so the Cadmean hero threads the darkness of the forests with hastening step, while with huge shield he braves the lairs of fearsome beasts and forward-stooping thrusts through the brushwood thickets; terror’s sombre influence adds spurs to his resolve, till from above the town of Inachus, conquering the gloom with beam of light downpoured upon the shelving walls, shone forth the Larissaean height. hither sped by every hope he hies him fast, with Juno’s temple of Prosymna^[1] high on his left hand, and yonder the black marsh of Lerna’s water branded by Herculean fire,^[2] and at