Metamorphoses - Opening

PROLOGUE

Changes of shape, new forms, are the theme which my spirit impels me

now to recite. Inspire me, O gods (it is you who have even transformed my art), and spin me a thread from the world's beginning

down to my own lifetime, in one continuous poem.

THE CREATION

Before the earth and the sea and the all-encomapssing heaven

came into being, the whole of nature displayed but a single

face, which men have called Chaos: a cruse, unstructured mass,

no matter composed of disparate, incompatible elements.

No Titan the sun god was present to cast his rays on the universe,

nor Phoebe the moon to replenish her horns and grow to her fullness;

no earth suspended in equilibrium, wrapped in its folding

mantle of air; no Amphitrite, the goddess of ocean,

to stretch her sinuous arms all round the earth's long coastline.

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Published by the Penguin Group

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First published 2004

Text copyright David Raeburn, 2004

Introduction copyright Denis Feeney, 2004

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The moral right of the translator has been asserted

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OVID
Metapmorphoses

A New Verse Translation

Translated by DAVID RAEBURN

with an Introduction by DENIS FEENEY

PENGUIN BOOKS