The floods, by nature enemies to land, And proudly swelling with their new command, Remove the living stones that stopp’d their way, And, gushing from their source, augment the sea. Then, with his mace, their monarch struck the ground, With inward trembling earth received the wound, And rising streams a ready passage found. The expanded waters gather on the plain, They float the fields, and overtop the grain; Then rushing onwards, with a sweepy sway, Bear flocks, and folds, and labouring hinds, away. Nor safe their dwellings were, for, sapp’d by floods, Their houses fell upon their household gods. The solid piles, too strongly built to fall, High o’er their heads behold a watery wall. Now seas and earth were in confusion lost; A world of waters, and without a coast.