ABSTRACT
SERAPION. Portents and prodigies are grown so frequent,
That they have lost their name. Our fruitful Nile
Flow’d e’re the wonted season, with a torrent So unexpected, and so wondrous fierce, That the wild deluge overtook the haste, Ev’n of the hinds10 that watch’d it: men and
beasts Were born above the tops of trees, that grew On th’ utmost margin of the water-mark. Then, with so swift an ebb, the flood drove
backward It slipt from underneath the scaly herd: Here monstrous Phocae11 panted on the shore; Forsaken dolphins there, with their broad tails, Lay lashing the departing waves: hard by ’em, Sea-horses12 floundring in the slimy mud, Toss’d up their heads, and dash’d the ooze
about ’em.
