On Sodom (poem) (complete)

Already God almighty had blotted out the times of the first age by an avenging flood, with all the waters which the sky scattered, the earth, and the sea's surface spewed out; and, having agreed from then on not to decree punishments by destruction through water, whenever the air brought on a storm, he had commanded the many-coloured bow, marking the clouds with a purple and green border, in the name of Iris, to bridle the rains; it is the clasp proper to the rain-clouds. But the impiety of men fell back again together with the second race, and a new age of evil sprouted once more, allotted for its destruction no longer rains but fires. So the land of Sodom deserved to be burned by blazing dews and to show forth the signs of the end to come. There savage luxury, the enemy of modesty, stood in place of law. A foreknowing guest would flee it, preferring rather, at the Scythian altars or at those of Busiris, to wish for death through sacrifice, and to shed his blood under the gloves of the Bebrycian, and to sate the Libyan wrestling-grounds of Antaeus, and to take on new forms through Circe's cups, than to lose his violated sex at Sodom. Heaven was struck with indignation: couplings mixed with like incest; the nature of the kind rebellious against itself, and the name of man violated together with his body. But God, at the fixed time, foresees all things:

he judges the unjust, when the patient age of the crime has [given] a space for ceasing; no force had compelled his anger. And now the avenging day was at hand. Two young men sent from the flock, in angelic form, both spirits, bearing the divine commands of the Lord's ministry, come up to Sodom. There, of the stock of the pious, was Lot, a stranger, wise and a just dweller; he alone remembered God. A useful tree often lies hidden in the woods, bearing fruit as if a guest. He then, sitting before the gate (the heavenly ones were scarcely approaching the walls), though unaware that they were divine, of his own accord calls them, addresses them, honours them with ancestral respect, and invites to his hospitality those who were preparing to lodge far off, prevailing with long entreaties; with a pious table and upright services he eagerly fulfils the pledges of friendship. Night had given rest; another dawn had dissolved the night, and Sodom clamours at the doors with its shameful law. Lot, a suppliant, against them: “Let not a lust agreed upon now inflame you, young men, to defile youth itself with luxury in which, in vain, they call for begetting, for seed; with which no living souls marry, neither those that dwell in the dens, nor those that come back to the stalls, nor those that gape beneath the waves, nor those that hang near the clouds on the measure of their wings, nor those that creep over the earth with stretched-out body.

Every kind is a kind by its own increase; but a female is wife to all, and to none is any but a female mother. Now, if young men's right is to lay waste modesty, I have within two daughters, of marriageable age; their virginity swells in its flower; already given over to the harvest, a desire worthy of husbands: let your pleasure take it. I, their father, hand them over, and for my guests I will weigh out the grief.” The mad crowd says to this: “Who are you, how great, and from where, to lord it over us and lay down laws? A stranger, not a ruler, you plough the acres of Sodom. Now, therefore, you yourself will pay what our desire is, for your daughters and for your guests: one is enough for all.” Words and deeds at once; no delay in the raging crowd. As a turbid torrent, rolling with wintry force, carries along countless streams with a single course, if any tree there is struck by the rapid waves, not to last long, holding on with its rooted tresses as long as it can, when it loses the soil eaten away beneath, hanging now with its trunk dug round, uncertain, it defers its certain fall this way and that: not otherwise was Lot tottering in the middle of the crowd's whirlpool, almost overcome; but the divine power came to help. The angelic young men snatched him from the threshold and restored him to the house; and the mad crowd, there and then, they punish with the loss of sight, as a foretaste of the punishments.

Then they disclose the decrees of God: that a punishment from heaven will be fitting for Sodom; that he himself has deserved salvation by title of righteousness. “Why, then, do you not gird yourself to hasten flight from here, and lead out as well whatever family you have? We are now bringing destruction on the city.” Lot quickly speaks to his sons-in-law; but the hard mind of men scorned to believe the warning and laughed at the fear. Soon, at the time when light tries to kindle the darkness and the face of the sky is two-coloured from night and day, the young men pressed to lead the Chaldean family out of Sodom and to grant salvation to the just house. “Come now, Lot, rise up and take your wife and your two daughters and go out from here, exiled, forestalling the punishments of Sodom.” With friendly hands too they lead them out, trembling, and give you these further commands: “Save your soul, Lot; do not by chance wish to turn your gaze backward, or to stop the step you have begun: hasten to the mountain!” Lot feared to climb the heights with slow step, lest the heavenly wrath should overtake him first; so he proceeds to ask for another harbour, a small city which he had seen opposite. “Here”, he says, “let my flight be: surely it scarcely stands with walls, and it is neither far nor great for me.” They favoured his request and granted salvation to the city itself as well. Hence the barbarian tongue knew the name of the place as Zoar.

Then Lot enters Zoar; at the same time the sun rises, the last one indeed, and burning brings on the fires of Sodom; for it had armed all its rays with fire. A rival darkness creeps in, trying to shut in the light and weave masses into the confused sky. Smoking clouds come together; a new rain rushes down; sulphur with flames, chaos blazes; the heaven seethes; the scorched air crackles with liquid burnings. From this the fable has its fame, false from true: that the offspring of the Sun desired his father's chariot, and the light boy could not bridle the proud horses of fire; that the world burned; that then the unlawful charioteer was snatched away by a thunderbolt; that his sisters changed their mourning. Let the Eridanus see to it, if any poplar grows white there, or if any bird, more tuneful in its old age, puts on feathers. Here, otherwise, the marvels of a changed form mourn. For the wife, his companion, alas, a woman not patient even then of the divine law, alone turned back her bold eyes in vain at the murmurs of the sky, never to tell what she saw; and at once, changed there into brittle salt, she stood as her own tomb, and her own image, keeping a form without a body. For she endures still in her bare station under the sky, neither dissolved by rains through decay nor overthrown by winds.

Moreover, if any stranger mutilates the figure, at once, from itself, by an inward supply, it fills up the wounds. It is also said that, living still in another body, she discharges, with the usual blood, the monthly flows of her sex. Nowhere is Sodom; nowhere do impious walls shine there; nowhere is every inhospitable house with its masters. The whole region is a pyre: here with the black horror of embers, there with grey mould, the ashes mark the burnings. No one ploughs in vain the clods pitch-black with soot. That former savagery has perished, which Lot, foreseeing, when parted from his uncle, had chosen as rich fields. Even if any half-destroyed acres there attempt the glad riches of autumn, the finest fruits readily promise themselves to the eyes, pears, peaches and all apples, until they are plucked: for at once, touched by the finger, the deceit of the empty fruit dissolves into ash. Thus, then, with sky and earth buried alike, neither does the sea live there: that is the death of the sea, its stillness, that it moves no waves in panting rolls, and never sighs even before its native south wind, and that it cannot bring forth from its depths any scaly race, or one enclosed in smooth skin or bark, or the rough shell shut in a double fastening. Only bitumen there feigns a crop of its own:

the soot of a burned sea, which a living heat, cooking beneath the pools from the seething of sulphur and salt, tempers, and causes the sea-pitch to cling to the earth. At its proper time the greasy ooze of the burned water is carried in, and a skin is woven with foam over the black surface. They put in to shore: such is the way to catch the merchandise; they lean their light boats with a balancing of the sides, so as to teach the vein, once laid on, to climb aboard; for, lifting itself of its own accord, it will swim to the edges of the idle boat and give itself in a pressed mass as a large gift, unless the stain should touch it with which a woman clothes her months. See, another marvel of the sea is recorded from the disaster: everything there floats against its will; nature has withdrawn the power given to bodies to sink. Lastly, if you set the light-bearing nozzle of a lamp, where the wick has its fire, the tip of the flame will sail; if the flame is put out, the shipwrecked structure of the light will go under the waters. These punishments of Sodom and Gomorrah, marked for the ages, will teach unjust nations, whose hardened hearts have abandoned the fear of God, to revere the laws of heaven and to have care for the one Lord of all things.