What an image!  The original deluge raising water levels so high that they lap over the summits like liquid blankets.  And look at that ignominious end to Jove-drowned humanity. 

From Hughes’ superb, punchy re-telling of Ovid’s tales.  Now’s your chance to read this ancient classic in fresh-decked language. 

The ocean, with nowhere else to go,

Makes its bed in the hills,

Pulling its coverlet over bare summits. 

 

While starvation picks off the survivors.

 

Drowned mankind, imploring limbs outspread,

Floats like a plague of dead frogs. 

Source: Ted Hughes, ‘Creation; Four Ages; Flood; Lycaon’, Tales from Ovid (London: Faber and Faber, 1997), p. 23

Photo credit: kimgreenhalgh90 at pixabay