Poetry -7

The seventh poem (or poem fragment) is a bit of Ovid from Meamorphoses.  Ovid lived from about 43 BC to 17 AD.  This translation was done by John Dryden.

Of bodies chang'd to various forms, I sing:
Ye Gods, from whom these miracles did spring,
Inspire my numbers with celestial heat;
Till I my long laborious work compleat:
And add perpetual tenour to my rhimes,
Deduc'd from Nature's birth, to Caesar's times.
Before the seas, and this terrestrial ball,
And Heav'n's high canopy, that covers all,
Once was the face of Nature; if a face:
Rather a rude and indegested mass:
A lifeless lump, unfashion'd, and unfram'd,
Of jarring seeds; and justly Chaos nam'd.
No sun was lighted up, the world to view;
No moon did yet her blunted horns renew:
Nor yet was Earth suspended in the sky,
Nor pois'd, did on her own foundations lye:
Nor seas about the shores their arms had thrown;
But earth, and air, and water, were in one.
Thus air was void of light, and earth unstable,
And water's dark abyss unnavigable.
No certain form on any way was imprest;
All were confus'd, and each disturb'd the rest.
For hot and cold were in one body fixt;
And soft with hard, and light with heavy mixt.

It's a creation poem and a pretty good one.  I find it very interesting that Ovid would call out his contemporary Caesar, as if he understood his importance even as he lived.  The second half of this, from 'No sun was lighted up...' is very impressive.  It might be all of the recent reading of Shakespeare that I've been doing, but I couldn't help hearing Brian Blessed's voice. 
I'm not crazy about this translation though.  I found the constant apostrophes distracting.  And the punctuation at the end of lines is nearly random.  I'll score that against Dryden.