Minor Latin poets; with introductions and English translations

PHOENIXThere is a fiir-off land, blest amid the first streaksof dawn, where standeth open tlie mightiest portalof the everlasting sky, yet not beside the risings ofthe summer or the winter Sun, but where he shedsdaylight from the heavens in spring. There a plainspreads out its open levels; no knoll swells there,no hollow valley gapes, yet that region o'ertopsby twice six ells our mountains whose ridges arereckoned high. Here is the grove of the Sun, awoodland planted with many a tree and green withthe honours of eternal foliage. When the sky wentablaze from the fires of Phaethon's car, that regionwas inviolate from the flames ; " it rose above thewaters on which Deucalion sailed, when the flood hadwhelmed the world in its waves. ^ Hither no bloodlessDiseases come, no sickly Eld, nor cruel Death nordesperate Fear nor nameless Crime nor maddenedLust for wealth or Wrath or Frenzy afire with the loveof murder ; bitter Grief is absent and Beggary besetwith rags and sleepless Cares and violent Hunger. '^No tempest raveth there nor savage force of windnor does the hoar-frost shroud the ground in chilly" For Phaethon's disastrous driving of the car of his fatherApollo see Ovid, Met. II. 1-332.* Deucalion's ark saved him and Pyrrha during the primevaldeluge.' The personifications are largely based on Virg. Aen. VI.274 .sy?.651