The Sibyl · a new plain-English translation from the original language
"Men gorged on faithlessness, driven by a monstrous frenzy,
God will not fail to notice what you have done, for he sees everything,
the immortal savior who watches over all, who has commanded me
to announce it to you, so that you do not destroy yourselves in your minds.
Sober up, cut away your vices, and do not violently
fight one another with murderous hearts,
drenching the wide earth with human blood.
Show reverence, mortals, for the immense and fearless
heavenly builder, the imperishable God who dwells in the sky,
and all of you pray to him — he is kind —
pray to him for the life of your cities and of the whole world,
of four-footed creatures and birds, that he may be gracious to all.
For there will come a time when the whole boundless world of men,
perishing in waters, will wail a terrible song.
Suddenly the air will grow turbulent against you,
and the wrath of the great God will come from heaven upon you.
It will surely happen, when he sends it upon men —
the immortal savior — unless you appease God
and hold to repentance from now on, and no longer
let one man do to another anything harsh or wicked and lawless,
but rather keep guard over a holy life."
But hearing him, each of them sneered,
calling him deranged, a madman.
And then again Noah cried out his song once more:
"O you utterly wretched, evil-hearted, unstable men,
who have abandoned reverence and long for shamelessness,
tyrants in your turmoil, sinners and violent,
liars gorged on faithlessness, wrongdoers with no truth in you at all,
seducers of beds, sophists pouring out foul speech,
not fearing the wrath of God Most High,
reserved for payment down to the fifth generation.
You do not weep for one another, hard-hearted men, but laugh —
you will laugh a sardonic laugh, when it comes,
this, I tell you, the fearful and oncoming water of God.
[When the foul offspring of Rhea, flourishing on earth
in unquenchable roots, an ever-flowing wave,
becomes vanished, trunk and all, in a single night,
and the earthshaker who shakes the ground scatters
the hiding-places of the earth and breaks apart the walls of cities full of their men.]
And then the whole world of countless men
will die. But how much shall I grieve, how much shall I weep
in my wooden house, how many tears shall I mingle with the waves?
For when this water commanded by God comes upon us,
the earth will sail, the mountains will sail, and the sky too will sail,
everything will be water, and in the waters everything will perish.
The winds will stop, and there will be a second age.
O Phrygia, you will be first to rise up from the crest of the water;
you will be first in turn to nurture another generation of men
beginning anew; you will be the nurse of all."
But when he had spoken these things in vain to that lawless generation,