2. A Strain of Sodom.
(Author Uncertain.)
Already had Almighty God wiped off
By vengeful flood (with waters all conjoined
Which heaven discharged on earth and the sea’s plain
Outspued) the times of the primeval age:
5 Had pledged Himself, while nether air should bring
The winters in their course, ne’er to decree,
By liquid ruin, retribution’s due;
And had assigned, to curb the rains, the bow
Of many hues, sealing the clouds with band
10 Of purple and of green, Iris its name,
The rain-clouds’ proper baldric.
But alike
With mankind’s second race impiety
Revives, and a new age of ill once more
Shoots forth; allotted now no more to showers
15 For ruin, but to fires: thus did the land
Of Sodom earn to be by glowing dews
Upburnt, and typically thus portend
The future end. There wild voluptuousness
(Modesty’s foe) stood in the room of law;
20 Which prescient guest would shun, and sooner choose
At Scythian or Busirian altar’s foot
’Mid sacred rites to die, and, slaughtered, pour
His blood to Bebryx, or to satiate
Libyan palæstras, or assume new forms;
25 By virtue of Circæan cups, than lose
His outraged sex in Sodom. At heaven’s gate
There knocked for vengeance marriages commit
With equal incest common ’mong a race
By nature rebels ’gainst themselves; and hurts
30 Done to man’s name and person equally.
But God, forewatching all things, at fix’d time
Doth judge the unjust; with patience tarrying
The hour when crime’s ripe age—not any force
Of wrath impetuous—shall have circumscribed
35 The space for waiting.
Now at length the day
Of vengeance was at hand. Sent from the host
Angelical, two, youths in form, who both
Were ministering spirits, carrying
The Lord’s divine commissions, come beneath
40 The walls of Sodom. There was dwelling Lot
A transplantation from a pious stock;