poses the several bodies, of which the universe is formed, into
their proper situations.

At first, the sea, the earth, and the heaven, which covers all things,
were the only face of nature throughout the whole universe, which men
have named Chaos; a rude and undigested mass,[4] and nothing {more} than
an inert weight, and the discordant atoms of things not harmonizing,
heaped together in the same spot. No Sun[5] as yet gave light to the
world; nor did the Moon,[6] by increasing, recover her horns anew. The
Earth did not {as yet} hang in the surrounding air, balanced by its own
weight, nor had Amphitrite[7] stretched out her arms along the
lengthened margin of the coasts. Wherever, too, was the land, there also
was the sea and the air; {and} thus was the earth without firmness, the
sea unnavigable, the air void of light; in no one {of them} did its
{present} form exist. And one was {ever} obstructing the other; because
in the same body the cold was striving with the hot, the moist with the
dry, the soft with the hard, things having weight with {those} devoid of
weight.

To this discord God and bounteous Nature[8] put an end; for he separated
the earth from the heavens, and the waters from the earth, and
distinguished the clear heavens from the gross atmosphere. And after he
had unravelled these {elements}, and released them from {that} confused
heap, he combined them, {thus} disjoined, in harmonious unison, {each}
in {its proper} place. The element of the vaulted heaven,[9] fiery and
without weight, shone forth, and selected a place for itself in the
highest region; next after it, {both} in lightness and in place, was the
air; the Earth was more weighty than these, and drew {with it} the more
ponderous atoms, and was pressed together by its own gravity. The
encircling waters sank to the lowermost place,[10] and surrounded the
solid globe.

[Footnote 4: _A rude and undigested mass._--Ver. 7. This is very
similar to the words of the Scriptures, 'And the earth was without
form and void,' Genesis, ch. i. ver. 2.]

[Footnote 5: _No Sun._--Ver. 10. Titan. The Sun is so called, on
account of his supposed father, Hyperion, who was one of the
Titans. Hyperion is thought to have been the first who, by
assiduous observation, discovered the course of the Sun, Moon, and
other luminaries. By them he regulated the time for the seasons,
and imparted this knowledge to others. Being thus, as it w