Of many-languaged men: they lived of old

When Saturn reign’d in heaven, an age of gold.

Like gods they lived, with calm untroubled mind;

Free from the toils and anguish of our kind:

Nor e’er decrepid age mishaped their frame,

The hand’s, the foot’s proportions still the same.

Strangers to ill, their lives in feasts flow’d by:

[42]Wealthy in flocks; dear to the blest on high:

Dying they sank in sleep, nor seem’d to die.

Theirs was each good; the life-sustaining soil