“Meanwhile, the father of Phaëton” (the Sun), “in squalid garb and destitute of his comeliness, just as he is wont to be when he suffers an eclipse of his disk, abhors both the light, himself, and the day; and gives his mind up to grief, and adds resentment to his sorrow.”

In other words, the poet is now describing the age of darkness, which, as we have seen, must have followed the conflagration, when the condensing vapor wrapped the world in a vast cloak of cloud.

The Sun refuses to go again on his daily journey; just as we shall see hereafter, in the American legends, he refuses to stir until threatened or coaxed into action.

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“All the deities,” says Ovid, “stand around the Sun as he says such things, and they entreat him, with suppliant voice, not to determine to bring darkness over the world.”  At length they induce the enraged and bereaved father to resume his task.

“But the omnipotent father” (Jupiter) “surveys the vast walls of heaven, and carefully searches that no part, impaired by the violence of the fire, may fall into ruin.  After he has seen them to be secure and in their own strength, he examines the earth, and the works of man; yet a care for his own Arcadia is more particularly his object.  He restores, too, the springs and the rivers, that had not yet dared to flow, he gives grass to the earth, green leaves to the trees; and orders the injured forests again to be green.”

The work of renovation has begun; the condensing moisture renews the springs and rivers, the green mantle of verdure once more covers the earth, and from the waste places the beaten and burned trees put forth new sprouts.

The legend ends, like Ragnarok, in a beautiful picture of a regenerated world.

Divest this poem of the myth of Phaëton, and we have a very faithful tradition of the conflagration of the world caused by the comet.

The cause of the trouble is a something which takes place high in the heavens; it rushes through space; it threatens the stars; it traverses particular constellations; it is disastrous; it has yellow hair; it is associated with great heat; it sets the world on fire it dries up the seas; its remains are scattered over the earth; it covers the earth with ashes; the sun ceases to appear; there is a time when he is, as it were, in eclipse, darkened; after a while he returns; verdure comes again upon the earth, the springs and rivers reappear, the world is renewed.  During this catastrophe man has hidden himself, swanlike,

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in the waters; or the intelligent children of the earth betake themselves to deep caverns for protection from the conflagration.

How completely does all this accord, in chronological order and in its details, with the Scandinavian legend; and with what reason teaches us must have been the consequences to the earth if a comet had fallen upon it!