Although to left and right, to east and west, the darkness was
fastened firm, was dense, yet "the great gods opened the great gates
in the darkness," and let the light through. First, the moon
appeared, through a "boiling," or breaking up of the clouds, so that
now men were able to once more count time by the movements of the
moon. On the seventh day, Shamas, the sun, appeared; first, his
horns, his beams, broke through the darkness imperfectly; then he
swells to a circle, and comes nearer and nearer to perfect dawn; at
last he appeared on the horizon, in the east, formed beautifully, and
his orbit was perfected; i. e., his orbit could be traced
continuously through the clearing heavens.

But how did the human race fare in this miserable time?

In his magnificent poem "Darkness," Byron has imagined such a blind
and darkling world as these legends depict; and he has imagined, too,
the hunger, and the desolation, and the degradation of the time.

We are not to despise the imagination. There never was yet a great
thought that had not wings to it; there never was yet a great mind
that did not survey things from above the mountain-tops.

If Bacon built the causeway over which modern science has advanced,
it was because, mounting on the pinions of his magnificent
imagination, he saw that poor struggling mankind needed such a
pathway; his heart embraced humanity even as his brain embraced the
universe.

The river which is a boundary to the rabbit, is but a landmark to the