In troubled seas, and all its steerage lost,
  He gives her to the winds, and in despair
  Seeks his last refuge in the gods and prayer. 
     What could he do? his eyes, if backward cast,
  Find a long path he had already passed;
  If forward, still a longer path they find: 
  Both he compares, and measures in his mind;
  And sometimes casts an eye upon the east,
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  And sometimes looks on the forbidden west. 
  The horses’ names he knew not in the fright: 
  Nor would he loose the reins, nor could he hold them tight. 
     Now all the horrors of the heavens he spies,
  And monstrous shadows of prodigious size,
  That, decked with stars, lie scattered o’er the skies. 
  There is a place above, where Scorpio, bent
  In tail and arms, surrounds a vast extent;
  In a wide circuit of the heavens he shines,
  And fills the space of two celestial signs.
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  Soon as the youth beheld him, vexed with heat,
  Brandish his sting, and in his poison sweat,
  Half dead with sudden fear he dropped the reins;
  The horses felt them loose upon their manes,
  And, flying out through all the plains above,
  Ran uncontrolled where’er their fury drove;
  Rushed on the stars, and through a pathless way
  Of unknown regions hurried on the day. 
  And now above, and now below they flew,
  And near the earth the burning chariot drew.
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     The clouds disperse in fumes, the wondering Moon
  Beholds her brother’s steeds beneath her own;
  The highlands smoke, cleft by the piercing rays,
  Or, clad with woods, in their own fuel blaze. 
  Next o’er the plains, where ripened harvests grow,
  The running conflagration spreads below. 
  But these are trivial ills; whole cities burn,
  And peopled kingdoms into ashes turn. 
     The mountains kindle as the car draws near,
  Athos and Tmolus red with fires appear;
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  Oeagrian Haemus (then a single name)
  And virgin Helicon increase the flame;
  Taurus and Oete glare amid the sky,
  And Ida, spite of all her fountains, dry. 
  Eryx, and Othrys, and Cithgeron, glow;
  And Rhodope, no longer clothed in snow;
  High Pindus, Mimas, and Parnassus sweat,
  And AEtna rages with redoubled heat. 
  Even Scythia, through her hoary regions warmed,
  In vain with all her native frost was armed.
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  Covered with flames, the towering Apennine,
  And Caucasus, and proud Olympus, shine;
  And, where the long extended Alps aspire,
  Now stands a huge, continued range of fire. 
     The astonished youth, where’er his eyes could turn,
  Beheld the universe around him burn: 
  The world was in a blaze; nor could he bear
  The sultry vapours and the scorching air,
  Which from below as from a furnace flowed,
  And now the axle-tree beneath him glowed: 
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  Lost in the whirling clouds, that round