eagle. Let not the gnawers of the world, the rodentia, despise the
winged creatures of the upper air.

{p. 226}

Byron saw what the effects of the absence of the sunlight would
necessarily be upon the world, and that which he prefigured the
legends of mankind tell us actually came to pass, in the dark days
that followed the Drift.

He says:

"Morn came, and went--and came, and brought no day,
And men forgot their passions in the dread
Of this their desolation, and all hearts
Were chilled into a selfish prayer for light. . . .
A fearful hope was all the world contained;
Forests were set on fire--but hour by hour
They fell and faded,--and the crackling trunks
Extinguished with a crash,--and all was black.
The brows of men by the despairing light
Wore an unearthly aspect, as by fits
The flashes fell upon them; some lay down
And bid their eyes and wept; and some did rest
Their chins upon their clinchèd hands and smiled;
And others hurried to and fro, and fed
Their funeral piles with fuel, and looked up
With mad disquietude on the dull sky,
The pall of a past world; and then again
With curses cast them down upon the dust,