Page:Miscellanies - With a biographical sketch by Ralph Waldo Emerson and a general index to the writings. -- by Thoreau, Henry David.djvu/377

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To Heaven it is possible from black

Night to make arise unspotted light,

And with cloud-blackening darkness to obscure

The pure splendor of day.

First, indeed, the Fates brought the wise-counseling

Uranian Themis, with golden horses,

By the fountains of Ocean to the awful ascent

Of Olympus, along the shining way,

To be the first spouse of Zeus the Deliverer.

And she bore the golden-filleted, fair-wristed

Hours, preservers of good things.

Equally tremble before God

And a man dear to God.

Pindar used such exaggerations [in praise of poetry] as to say that even the gods themselves, when at his marriage Zeus asked if they wanted anything, "asked him to make certain gods for them who should celebrate these great works and all his creation with speech and song."