At length the world was all restored to view, But desolate, and of a sickly hue; Nature beheld herself, and stood aghast, A dismal desert and a silent waste.

Which when Deucalion, with a piteous look, Beheld, he wept, and thus to Pyrrha spoke: “O wife! O sister! O of all thy kind The best, and only creature left behind, By kindred, love, and now by dangers join’d; Of multitudes, who breathed the common air, We two remain; a species in a pair: The rest the seas have swallow’d; nor have we Ev’n of this wretched life a certainty. The clouds are still above; and while I speak, A second deluge o’er our heads may break. Should I be snatch’d from hence, and thou remain, Without relief, or partner of thy pain, How couldst thou such a wretched life sustain? Should I be left, and thou be lost, the sea That buried her I loved, should bury me. O could our father his old arts inspire, And make me heir of his informing fire, That so I might abolish’d man retrieve, And perish’d people in new souls might live! But Heaven is pleased, nor ought we to complain, That we, the examples of mankind, remain.” He said: the careful couple join their tears, And then invoke the gods, with pious prayers.

Thus, in devotion having eased their grief, From sacred oracles they seek relief, And to Cephisus’ brook their way pursue; The stream was troubled, but the ford they knew: With living waters, in the fountain bred, They sprinkle first their garments and their head, Then took the way which to the temple led. The roofs were all defiled with moss and mire; The desert altars void of solemn fire. Before the gradual prostrate they adored; The pavement kiss’d; and thus the saint implor’d:

“O, righteous Themis, if the powers above By prayers are bent to pity, and to love; If human miseries can move their mind; If yet they can forgive, and yet be kind; Tell how we may restore, by second birth, Mankind, and people desolated earth.” Then thus the gracious goddess, nodding, said: “Depart, and with your vestments veil your head; And stooping lowly down, with loosen’d zones, Throw each behind your backs your mighty mother’s bones.” Amazed the pair, and mute with wonder, stand, Till Pyrrha first refused the dire command. “Forbid it Heaven,” said she, “that I should tear Those holy relics from the sepulchre!” They ponder’d the mysterious words again, For some new sense; and long they sought in vain: At length Deucalion clear’d his cloudy brow, And said, “the dark enigma will allow A meaning, which, if well I understand, From sacrilege will free the god’s command: This Earth our mighty mother is, the stones In her capacious body are her bones: These we must cast behind.” With hope and fear

The woman did the new solution hear: The man diffides in his own augury, And doubts the gods; yet both resolve to try. Descending from the mount, they first unbind Their vests, and veil’d, they cast the stones behind: The stones (a miracle to mortal view, But long tradition makes it pass for true) Did first the rigour of their kind expel, And suppled into softness as they fell; Then swell’d, and swelling by degrees, grew warm, And took the rudiments of human form. Imperfect shapes: in marble such are seen, When the rude chisel does the man begin; While yet the roughness of the stone remains, Without the rising muscles and the veins. The sappy parts, and next resembling juice, Were turn’d to moisture, for the body’s use; Supplying humours, blood, and nourishment; The rest, too solid to receive a bent, Converts to bones; and what was once a vein, Its former name and nature did retain. By help of power divine, in little space, What the man threw assumed a manly face, And what the wife, renew’d the female race.