He said, “I speed my flight: scarce with its walls
’Tis visible; nor is it far, nor great.”
They, favouring his prayer, safety assured
135 To him and to the city; whence the spot
Is known in speech barbaric by the name
Segor. Lot enters Segor while the sun
Is rising, the last sun, which glowing bears
To Sodom conflagration; for his rays
140 He had armed all with fire: beneath him spreads
An emulous gloom, which seeks to intercept
The light; and clouds combine to interweave
Their smoky globes with the confused sky:
Down pours a novel shower: the ether seethes
145 With sulphur mixt with blazing flames: the air
Crackles with liquid heats exust. From hence
The fable has an echo of the truth
Amid its false, that the sun’s progeny
Would drive his father’s team; but nought availed
150 The giddy boy to curb the haughty steeds
Of fire: so blazed our orb: then lightning reft
The lawless charioteer, and bitter plaint
Transformed his sisters. Let Eridanus
See to it, if one poplar on his banks
155 Whitens, or any bird dons plumage there
Whose note old age makes mellow!
Here they mourn
O’er miracles of metamorphosis
Of other sort. For, partner of Lot’s flight,
His wife (ah me, for woman! even then
160 Intolerant of law!) alone turned back
At the unearthly murmurs of the sky)
Her daring eyes, but bootlessly: not doomed
To utter what she saw! and then and there
Changed into brittle salt, herself her tomb
165 She stood, herself an image of herself,
Keeping an incorporeal form: and still
In her unsheltered station ’neath the heaven
Dures she, by rains unmelted, by decay
And winds unwasted; nay, if some strange hand
170 Deface her form, forthwith from her own store
Her wounds she doth repair. Still is she said
To live, and, ’mid her corporal change, discharge
With wonted blood her sex’s monthly dues.
Gone are the men of Sodom; gone the glare
175 Of their unhallowed ramparts; all the house