BOOK VI

BOOK VI

PROEM

 'Twas Athens first, the glorious in name,
 That whilom gave to hapless sons of men
 The sheaves of harvest, and re-ordered life,
 And decreed laws; and she the first that gave
 Life its sweet solaces, when she begat
 A man of heart so wise, who whilom poured
 All wisdom forth from his truth-speaking mouth;
 The glory of whom, though dead, is yet to-day,
 Because of those discoveries divine
 Renowned of old, exalted to the sky.
 For when saw he that well-nigh everything
 Which needs of man most urgently require
 Was ready to hand for mortals, and that life,
 As far as might be, was established safe,
 That men were lords in riches, honour, praise,
 And eminent in goodly fame of sons,
 And that they yet, O yet, within the home,
 Still had the anxious heart which vexed life
 Unpausingly with torments of the mind,
 And raved perforce with angry plaints, then he,
 Then he, the master, did perceive that 'twas
 The vessel itself which worked the bane, and all,
 However wholesome, which from here or there
 Was gathered into it, was by that bane
 Spoilt from within,--in part, because he saw
 The vessel so cracked and leaky that nowise
 'T could ever be filled to brim; in part because
 He marked how it polluted with foul taste
 Whate'er it got within itself. So he,
 The master, then by his truth-speaking words,
 Purged the breasts of men, and set the bounds
 Of lust and terror, and exhibited
 The supreme good whither we all endeavour,
 And showed the path whereby we might arrive
 Thereunto by a little cross-cut straight,
 And what of ills in all affairs of mortals
 Upsprang and flitted deviously about
 (Whether by chance or force), since nature thus
 Had destined; and from out what gates a man
 Should sally to each combat. And he proved
 That mostly vainly doth the human race
 Roll in its bosom the grim waves of care.
 For just as children tremble and fear all
 In the viewless dark, so even we at times
 Dread in the light so many things that be
 No whit more fearsome than what children feign,
 Shuddering, will be upon them in the dark.
 This terror then, this darkness of the mind,
 Not sunrise with its flaring spokes of light,
 Nor glittering arrows of morning can disperse,
 But only nature's aspect and her law.
 Wherefore the more will I go on to weave
 In verses this my undertaken task.

 And since I've taught thee that the world's great vaults
 Are mortal and that sky is fashioned
 Of frame e'en born in time, and whatsoe'er
 Therein go on and must perforce go on

 *****

 The most I have unravelled; what remains
 Do thou take in, besides; since once for all
 To climb into that chariot' renowned

 *****

 Of winds arise; and they appeased are
 So that all things again...

 *****

 Which were, are changed now, with fury stilled;
 All other movements through the earth and sky
 Which mortals gaze upon (O anxious oft
 In quaking thoughts!), and which abase their minds
 With dread of deities and press them crushed
 Down to the earth, because their ignorance
 Of cosmic causes forces them to yield
 All things unto the empery of gods
 And to concede the kingly rule to them.
 For even those men who have learned full well
 That godheads lead a long life free of care,
 If yet meanwhile they wonder by what plan
 Things can go on (and chiefly yon high things
 Observed o'erhead on the ethereal coasts),
 Again are hurried back unto the fears
 Of old religion and adopt again
 Harsh masters, deemed almighty,--wretched men,
 Unwitting what can be and what cannot,
 And by what law to each its scope prescribed,
 Its boundary stone that clings so deep in Time.
 Wherefore the more are they borne wandering on
 By blindfold reason. And, Memmius, unless
 From out thy mind thou spuest all of this
 And casteth far from thee all thoughts which be
 Unworthy gods and alien to their peace,
 Then often will the holy majesties
 Of the high gods be harmful unto thee,
 As by thy thought degraded,--not, indeed,
 That essence supreme of gods could be by this
 So outraged as in wrath to thirst to seek
 Revenges keen; but even because thyself
 Thou plaguest with the notion that the gods,
 Even they, the Calm Ones in serene repose,
 Do roll the mighty waves of wrath on wrath;
 Nor wilt thou enter with a serene breast
 Shrines of the gods; nor wilt thou able be
 In tranquil peace of mind to take and know
 Those images which from their holy bodies
 Are carried into intellects of men,
 As the announcers of their form divine.
 What sort of life will follow after this
 'Tis thine to see. But that afar from us
 Veriest reason may drive such life away,
 Much yet remains to be embellished yet
 In polished verses, albeit hath issued forth
 So much from me already; lo, there is
 The law and aspect of the sky to be
 By reason grasped; there are the tempest times
 And the bright lightnings to be hymned now--
 Even what they do and from what cause soe'er
 They're borne along--that thou mayst tremble not,
 Marking off regions of prophetic skies
 For auguries, O foolishly distraught
 Even as to whence the flying flame hath come,
 Or to which half of heaven it turns, or how
 Through walled places it hath wound its way,
 Or, after proving its dominion there,
 How it hath speeded forth from thence amain--
 Whereof nowise the causes do men know,
 And think divinities are working there.
 Do thou, Calliope, ingenious Muse,
 Solace of mortals and delight of gods,
 Point out the course before me, as I race
 On to the white line of the utmost goal,
 That I may get with signal praise the crown,
 With thee my guide!

GREAT METEOROLOGICAL PHENOMENA, ETC.

                   And so in first place, then,
 With thunder are shaken the blue deeps of heaven,
 Because the ethereal clouds, scudding aloft,
 Together clash, what time 'gainst one another
 The winds are battling. For never a sound there comes
 From out the serene regions of the sky;
 But wheresoever in a host more dense
 The clouds foregather, thence more often comes
 A crash with mighty rumbling. And, again,
 Clouds cannot be of so condensed a frame
 As stones and timbers, nor again so fine
 As mists and flying smoke; for then perforce
 They'd either fall, borne down by their brute weight,
 Like stones, or, like the smoke, they'd powerless be
 To keep their mass, or to retain within
 Frore snows and storms of hail. And they give forth
 O'er skiey levels of the spreading world
 A sound on high, as linen-awning, stretched
 O'er mighty theatres, gives forth at times
 A cracking roar, when much 'tis beaten about
 Betwixt the poles and cross-beams. Sometimes, too,
 Asunder rent by wanton gusts, it raves
 And imitates the tearing sound of sheets
 Of paper--even this kind of noise thou mayst
 In thunder hear--or sound as when winds whirl
 With lashings and do buffet about in air
 A hanging cloth and flying paper-sheets.
 For sometimes, too, it chances that the clouds
 Cannot together crash head-on, but rather
 Move side-wise and with motions contrary
 Graze each the other's body without speed,
 From whence that dry sound grateth on our ears,
 So long drawn-out, until the clouds have passed
 From out their close positions.

                                And, again,
 In following wise all things seem oft to quake
 At shock of heavy thunder, and mightiest walls
 Of the wide reaches of the upper world
 There on the instant to have sprung apart,
 Riven asunder, what time a gathered blast
 Of the fierce hurricane hath all at once
 Twisted its way into a mass of clouds,
 And, there enclosed, ever more and more
 Compelleth by its spinning whirl the cloud
 To grow all hollow with a thickened crust
 Surrounding; for thereafter, when the force
 And the keen onset of the wind have weakened
 That crust, lo, then the cloud, to-split in twain,
 Gives forth a hideous crash with bang and boom.
 No marvel this; since oft a bladder small,
 Filled up with air, will, when of sudden burst,
 Give forth a like large sound.

                            There's reason, too,
 Why clouds make sounds, as through them blow the winds:
 We see, borne down the sky, oft shapes of clouds
 Rough-edged or branched many forky ways;
 And 'tis the same, as when the sudden flaws
 Of north-west wind through the dense forest blow,
 Making the leaves to sough and limbs to crash.
 It happens too at times that roused force
 Of the fierce hurricane to-rends the cloud,
 Breaking right through it by a front assault;
 For what a blast of wind may do up there
 Is manifest from facts when here on earth
 A blast more gentle yet uptwists tall trees
 And sucks them madly from their deepest roots.
 Besides, among the clouds are waves, and these
 Give, as they roughly break, a rumbling roar;
 As when along deep streams or the great sea
 Breaks the loud surf. It happens, too, whenever
 Out from one cloud into another falls
 The fiery energy of thunderbolt,
 That straightaway the cloud, if full of wet,
 Extinguishes the fire with mighty noise;
 As iron, white from the hot furnaces,
 Sizzles, when speedily we've plunged its glow
 Down the cold water. Further, if a cloud
 More dry receive the fire, 'twill suddenly
 Kindle to flame and burn with monstrous sound,
 As if a flame with whirl of winds should range
 Along the laurel-tressed mountains far,
 Upburning with its vast assault those trees;
 Nor is there aught that in the crackling flame
 Consumes with sound more terrible to man
 Than Delphic laurel of Apollo lord.
 Oft, too, the multitudinous crash of ice
 And down-pour of swift hail gives forth a sound
 Among the mighty clouds on high; for when
 The wind hath packed them close, each mountain mass
 Of rain-cloud, there congealed utterly
 And mixed with hail-stones, breaks and booms...

 *****

 Likewise, it lightens, when the clouds have struck,
 By their collision, forth the seeds of fire:
 As if a stone should smite a stone or steel,
 For light then too leaps forth and fire then scatters
 The shining sparks. But with our ears we get
 The thunder after eyes behold the flash,
 Because forever things arrive the ears
 More tardily than the eyes--as thou mayst see
 From this example too: when markest thou
 Some man far yonder felling a great tree
 With double-edged ax, it comes to pass
 Thine eye beholds the swinging stroke before
 The blow gives forth a sound athrough thine ears:
 Thus also we behold the flashing ere
 We hear the thunder, which discharged is
 At same time with the fire and by same cause,
 Born of the same collision.

                            In following wise
 The clouds suffuse with leaping light the lands,
 And the storm flashes with tremulous elan:
 When the wind hath invaded a cloud, and, whirling there,
 Hath wrought (as I have shown above) the cloud
 Into a hollow with a thickened crust,
 It becomes hot of own velocity:
 Just as thou seest how motion will o'erheat
 And set ablaze all objects,--verily
 A leaden ball, hurtling through length of space,
 Even melts. Therefore, when this same wind a-fire
 Hath split black cloud, it scatters the fire-seeds,
 Which, so to say, have been pressed out by force
 Of sudden from the cloud;--and these do make
 The pulsing flashes of flame; thence followeth
 The detonation which attacks our ears
 More tardily than aught which comes along
 Unto the sight of eyeballs. This takes place--
 As know thou mayst--at times when clouds are dense
 And one upon the other piled aloft
 With wonderful upheavings--nor be thou
 Deceived because we see how broad their base
 From underneath, and not how high they tower.
 For make thine observations at a time
 When winds shall bear athwart the horizon's blue
 Clouds like to mountain-ranges moving on,
 Or when about the sides of mighty peaks
 Thou seest them one upon the other massed
 And burdening downward, anchored in high repose,
 With the winds sepulchred on all sides round:
 Then canst thou know their mighty masses, then
 Canst view their caverns, as if builded there
 Of beetling crags; which, when the hurricanes
 In gathered storm have filled utterly,
 Then, prisoned in clouds, they rave around
 With mighty roarings, and within those dens
 Bluster like savage beasts, and now from here,
 And now from there, send growlings through the clouds,
 And seeking an outlet, whirl themselves about,
 And roll from 'mid the clouds the seeds of fire,
 And heap them multitudinously there,
 And in the hollow furnaces within
 Wheel flame around, until from bursted cloud
 In forky flashes they have gleamed forth.

 Again, from following cause it comes to pass
 That yon swift golden hue of liquid fire
 Darts downward to the earth: because the clouds
 Themselves must hold abundant seeds of fire;
 For, when they be without all moisture, then
 They be for most part of a flamy hue
 And a resplendent. And, indeed, they must
 Even from the light of sun unto themselves
 Take multitudinous seeds, and so perforce
 Redden and pour their bright fires all abroad.
 And therefore, when the wind hath driven and thrust,
 Hath forced and squeezed into one spot these clouds,
 They pour abroad the seeds of fire pressed out,
 Which make to flash these colours of the flame.
 Likewise, it lightens also when the clouds
 Grow rare and thin along the sky; for, when
 The wind with gentle touch unravels them
 And breaketh asunder as they move, those seeds
 Which make the lightnings must by nature fall;
 At such an hour the horizon lightens round
 Without the hideous terror of dread noise
 And skiey uproar.

                     To proceed apace,
 What sort of nature thunderbolts possess
 Is by their strokes made manifest and by
 The brand-marks of their searing heat on things,
 And by the scorched scars exhaling round
 The heavy fumes of sulphur. For all these
 Are marks, O not of wind or rain, but fire.
 Again, they often enkindle even the roofs
 Of houses and inside the very rooms
 With swift flame hold a fierce dominion.
 Know thou that nature fashioned this fire
 Subtler than fires all other, with minute
 And dartling bodies,--a fire 'gainst which there's naught
 Can in the least hold out: the thunderbolt,
 The mighty, passes through the hedging walls
 Of houses, like to voices or a shout,--
 Through stones, through bronze it passes, and it melts
 Upon the instant bronze and gold; and makes,
 Likewise, the wines sudden to vanish forth,
 The wine-jars intact,--because, ye see,
 Its heat arriving renders loose and porous
 Readily all the wine--jar's earthen sides,
 And winding its way within, it scattereth
 The elements primordial of the wine
 With speedy dissolution--process which
 Even in an age the fiery steam of sun
 Could not accomplish, however puissant he
 With his hot coruscations: so much more
 Agile and overpowering is this force.

 *****

 Now in what manner engendered are these things,
 How fashioned of such impetuous strength
 As to cleave towers asunder, and houses all
 To overtopple, and to wrench apart
 Timbers and beams, and heroes' monuments
 To pile in ruins and upheave amain,
 And to take breath forever out of men,
 And to o'erthrow the cattle everywhere,--
 Yes, by what force the lightnings do all this,
 All this and more, I will unfold to thee,
 Nor longer keep thee in mere promises.

 The bolts of thunder, then, must be conceived
 As all begotten in those crasser clouds
 Up-piled aloft; for, from the sky serene
 And from the clouds of lighter density,
 None are sent forth forever. That 'tis so
 Beyond a doubt, fact plain to sense declares:
 To wit, at such a time the densed clouds
 So mass themselves through all the upper air
 That we might think that round about all murk
 Had parted forth from Acheron and filled
 The mighty vaults of sky--so grievously,
 As gathers thus the storm-clouds' gruesome might,
 Do faces of black horror hang on high--
 When tempest begins its thunderbolts to forge.
 Besides, full often also out at sea
 A blackest thunderhead, like cataract
 Of pitch hurled down from heaven, and far away
 Bulging with murkiness, down on the waves
 Falls with vast uproar, and draws on amain
 The darkling tempests big with thunderbolts
 And hurricanes, itself the while so crammed
 Tremendously with fires and winds, that even
 Back on the lands the people shudder round
 And seek for cover. Therefore, as I said,
 The storm must be conceived as o'er our head
 Towering most high; for never would the clouds
 O'erwhelm the lands with such a massy dark,
 Unless up-builded heap on lofty heap,
 To shut the round sun off. Nor could the clouds,
 As on they come, engulf with rain so vast
 As thus to make the rivers overflow
 And fields to float, if ether were not thus
 Furnished with lofty-piled clouds. Lo, then,
 Here be all things fulfilled with winds and fires--
 Hence the long lightnings and the thunders loud.
 For, verily, I've taught thee even now
 How cavernous clouds hold seeds innumerable
 Of fiery exhalations, and they must
 From off the sunbeams and the heat of these
 Take many still. And so, when that same wind
 (Which, haply, into one region of the sky
 Collects those clouds) hath pressed from out the same
 The many fiery seeds, and with that fire
 Hath at the same time inter-mixed itself,
 O then and there that wind, a whirlwind now,
 Deep in the belly of the cloud spins round
 In narrow confines, and sharpens there inside
 In glowing furnaces the thunderbolt.
 For in a two-fold manner is that wind
 Enkindled all: it trembles into heat
 Both by its own velocity and by
 Repeated touch of fire. Thereafter, when
 The energy of wind is heated through
 And the fierce impulse of the fire hath sped
 Deeply within, O then the thunderbolt,
 Now ripened, so to say, doth suddenly
 Splinter the cloud, and the aroused flash
 Leaps onward, lumining with forky light
 All places round. And followeth anon
 A clap so heavy that the skiey vaults,
 As if asunder burst, seem from on high
 To engulf the earth. Then fearfully a quake
 Pervades the lands, and 'long the lofty skies
 Run the far rumblings. For at such a time
 Nigh the whole tempest quakes, shook through and through,
 And roused are the roarings,--from which shock
 Comes such resounding and abounding rain,
 That all the murky ether seems to turn
 Now into rain, and, as it tumbles down,
 To summon the fields back to primeval floods:
 So big the rains that be sent down on men
 By burst of cloud and by the hurricane,
 What time the thunder-clap, from burning bolt
 That cracks the cloud, flies forth along. At times
 The force of wind, excited from without,
 Smiteth into a cloud already hot
 With a ripe thunderbolt. And when that wind
 Hath splintered that cloud, then down there cleaves forthwith
 Yon fiery coil of flame which still we call,
 Even with our fathers' word, a thunderbolt.
 The same thing haps toward every other side
 Whither that force hath swept. It happens, too,
 That sometimes force of wind, though hurtled forth
 Without all fire, yet in its voyage through space
 Igniteth, whilst it comes along, along,--
 Losing some larger bodies which cannot
 Pass, like the others, through the bulks of air,--
 And, scraping together out of air itself
 Some smaller bodies, carries them along,
 And these, commingling, by their flight make fire:
 Much in the manner as oft a leaden ball
 Grows hot upon its aery course, the while
 It loseth many bodies of stark cold
 And taketh into itself along the air
 New particles of fire. It happens, too,
 That force of blow itself arouses fire,
 When force of wind, a-cold and hurtled forth
 Without all fire, hath strook somewhere amain--
 No marvel, because, when with terrific stroke
 'Thas smitten, the elements of fiery-stuff
 Can stream together from out the very wind
 And, simultaneously, from out that thing
 Which then and there receives the stroke: as flies
 The fire when with the steel we hack the stone;
 Nor yet, because the force of steel's a-cold,
 Rush the less speedily together there
 Under the stroke its seeds of radiance hot.
 And therefore, thuswise must an object too
 Be kindled by a thunderbolt, if haply
 'Thas been adapt and suited to the flames.
 Yet force of wind must not be rashly deemed
 As altogether and entirely cold--
 That force which is discharged from on high
 With such stupendous power; but if 'tis not
 Upon its course already kindled with fire,
 It yet arriveth warmed and mixed with heat.

 And, now, the speed and stroke of thunderbolt
 Is so tremendous, and with glide so swift
 Those thunderbolts rush on and down, because
 Their roused force itself collects itself
 First always in the clouds, and then prepares
 For the huge effort of their going-forth;
 Next, when the cloud no longer can retain
 The increment of their fierce impetus,
 Their force is pressed out, and therefore flies
 With impetus so wondrous, like to shots
 Hurled from the powerful Roman catapults.
 Note, too, this force consists of elements
 Both small and smooth, nor is there aught that can
 With ease resist such nature. For it darts
 Between and enters through the pores of things;
 And so it never falters in delay
 Despite innumerable collisions, but
 Flies shooting onward with a swift elan.
 Next, since by nature always every weight
 Bears downward, doubled is the swiftness then
 And that elan is still more wild and dread,
 When, verily, to weight are added blows,
 So that more madly and more fiercely then
 The thunderbolt shakes into shivers all
 That blocks its path, following on its way.
 Then, too, because it comes along, along
 With one continuing elan, it must
 Take on velocity anew, anew,
 Which still increases as it goes, and ever
 Augments the bolt's vast powers and to the blow
 Gives larger vigour; for it forces all,
 All of the thunder's seeds of fire, to sweep
 In a straight line unto one place, as 'twere,--
 Casting them one by other, as they roll,
 Into that onward course. Again, perchance,
 In coming along, it pulls from out the air
 Some certain bodies, which by their own blows
 Enkindle its velocity. And, lo,
 It comes through objects leaving them unharmed,
 It goes through many things and leaves them whole,
 Because the liquid fire flieth along
 Athrough their pores. And much it does transfix,
 When these primordial atoms of the bolt
 Have fallen upon the atoms of these things
 Precisely where the intertwined atoms
 Are held together. And, further, easily
 Brass it unbinds and quickly fuseth gold,
 Because its force is so minutely made
 Of tiny parts and elements so smooth
 That easily they wind their way within,
 And, when once in, quickly unbind all knots
 And loosen all the bonds of union there.

 And most in autumn is shaken the house of heaven,
 The house so studded with the glittering stars,
 And the whole earth around--most too in spring
 When flowery times unfold themselves: for, lo,
 In the cold season is there lack of fire,
 And winds are scanty in the hot, and clouds
 Have not so dense a bulk. But when, indeed,
 The seasons of heaven are betwixt these twain,
 The divers causes of the thunderbolt
 Then all concur; for then both cold and heat
 Are mixed in the cross-seas of the year,
 So that a discord rises among things
 And air in vast tumultuosity
 Billows, infuriate with the fires and winds--
 Of which the both are needed by the cloud
 For fabrication of the thunderbolt.
 For the first part of heat and last of cold
 Is the time of spring; wherefore must things unlike
 Do battle one with other, and, when mixed,
 Tumultuously rage. And when rolls round
 The latest heat mixed with the earliest chill--
 The time which bears the name of autumn--then
 Likewise fierce cold-spells wrestle with fierce heats.
 On this account these seasons of the year
 Are nominated "cross-seas."--And no marvel
 If in those times the thunderbolts prevail
 And storms are roused turbulent in heaven,
 Since then both sides in dubious warfare rage
 Tumultuously, the one with flames, the other
 With winds and with waters mixed with winds.

 This, this it is, O Memmius, to see through
 The very nature of fire-fraught thunderbolt;
 O this it is to mark by what blind force
 It maketh each effect, and not, O not
 To unwind Etrurian scrolls oracular,
 Inquiring tokens of occult will of gods,
 Even as to whence the flying flame hath come,
 Or to which half of heaven it turns, or how
 Through walled places it hath wound its way,
 Or, after proving its dominion there,
 How it hath speeded forth from thence amain,
 Or what the thunderstroke portends of ill
 From out high heaven. But if Jupiter
 And other gods shake those refulgent vaults
 With dread reverberations and hurl fire
 Whither it pleases each, why smite they not
 Mortals of reckless and revolting crimes,
 That such may pant from a transpierced breast
 Forth flames of the red levin--unto men
 A drastic lesson?--why is rather he--
 O he self-conscious of no foul offence--
 Involved in flames, though innocent, and clasped
 Up-caught in skiey whirlwind and in fire?
 Nay, why, then, aim they at eternal wastes,
 And spend themselves in vain?--perchance, even so
 To exercise their arms and strengthen shoulders?
 Why suffer they the Father's javelin
 To be so blunted on the earth? And why
 Doth he himself allow it, nor spare the same
 Even for his enemies? O why most oft
 Aims he at lofty places? Why behold we
 Marks of his lightnings most on mountain tops?
 Then for what reason shoots he at the sea?--
 What sacrilege have waves and bulk of brine
 And floating fields of foam been guilty of?
 Besides, if 'tis his will that we beware
 Against the lightning-stroke, why feareth he
 To grant us power for to behold the shot?
 And, contrariwise, if wills he to o'erwhelm us,
 Quite off our guard, with fire, why thunders he
 Off in yon quarter, so that we may shun?
 Why rouseth he beforehand darkling air
 And the far din and rumblings? And O how
 Canst thou believe he shoots at one same time
 Into diverse directions? Or darest thou
 Contend that never hath it come to pass
 That divers strokes have happened at one time?
 But oft and often hath it come to pass,
 And often still it must, that, even as showers
 And rains o'er many regions fall, so too
 Dart many thunderbolts at one same time.
 Again, why never hurtles Jupiter
 A bolt upon the lands nor pours abroad
 Clap upon clap, when skies are cloudless all?
 Or, say, doth he, so soon as ever the clouds
 Have come thereunder, then into the same
 Descend in person, that from thence he may
 Near-by decide upon the stroke of shaft?
 And, lastly, why, with devastating bolt
 Shakes he asunder holy shrines of gods
 And his own thrones of splendour, and to-breaks
 The well-wrought idols of divinities,
 And robs of glory his own images
 By wound of violence?

                      But to return apace,
 Easy it is from these same facts to know
 In just what wise those things (which from their sort
 The Greeks have named "bellows") do come down,
 Discharged from on high, upon the seas.
 For it haps that sometimes from the sky descends
 Upon the seas a column, as if pushed,
 Round which the surges seethe, tremendously
 Aroused by puffing gusts; and whatso'er
 Of ships are caught within that tumult then
 Come into extreme peril, dashed along.
 This haps when sometimes wind's aroused force
 Can't burst the cloud it tries to, but down-weighs
 That cloud, until 'tis like a column from sky
 Upon the seas pushed downward--gradually,
 As if a Somewhat from on high were shoved
 By fist and nether thrust of arm, and lengthened
 Far to the waves. And when the force of wind
 Hath rived this cloud, from out the cloud it rushes
 Down on the seas, and starts among the waves
 A wondrous seething, for the eddying whirl
 Descends and downward draws along with it
 That cloud of ductile body. And soon as ever
 'Thas shoved unto the levels of the main
 That laden cloud, the whirl suddenly then
 Plunges its whole self into the waters there
 And rouses all the sea with monstrous roar,
 Constraining it to seethe. It happens too
 That very vortex of the wind involves
 Itself in clouds, scraping from out the air
 The seeds of cloud, and counterfeits, as 'twere,
 The "bellows" pushed from heaven. And when this shape
 Hath dropped upon the lands and burst apart,
 It belches forth immeasurable might
 Of whirlwind and of blast. Yet since 'tis formed
 At most but rarely, and on land the hills
 Must block its way, 'tis seen more oft out there
 On the broad prospect of the level main
 Along the free horizons.

                         Into being
 The clouds condense, when in this upper space
 Of the high heaven have gathered suddenly,
 As round they flew, unnumbered particles--
 World's rougher ones, which can, though interlinked
 With scanty couplings, yet be fastened firm,
 The one on other caught. These particles
 First cause small clouds to form; and, thereupon,
 These catch the one on other and swarm in a flock
 And grow by their conjoining, and by winds
 Are borne along, along, until collects
 The tempest fury. Happens, too, the nearer
 The mountain summits neighbour to the sky,
 The more unceasingly their far crags smoke
 With the thick darkness of swart cloud, because
 When first the mists do form, ere ever the eyes
 Can there behold them (tenuous as they be),
 The carrier-winds will drive them up and on
 Unto the topmost summits of the mountain;
 And then at last it happens, when they be
 In vaster throng upgathered, that they can
 By this very condensation lie revealed,
 And that at same time they are seen to surge
 From very vertex of the mountain up
 Into far ether. For very fact and feeling,
 As we up-climb high mountains, proveth clear
 That windy are those upward regions free.
 Besides, the clothes hung-out along the shore,
 When in they take the clinging moisture, prove
 That nature lifts from over all the sea
 Unnumbered particles. Whereby the more
 'Tis manifest that many particles
 Even from the salt upheavings of the main
 Can rise together to augment the bulk
 Of massed clouds. For moistures in these twain
 Are near akin. Besides, from out all rivers,
 As well as from the land itself, we see
 Up-rising mists and steam, which like a breath
 Are forced out from them and borne aloft,
 To curtain heaven with their murk, and make,
 By slow foregathering, the skiey clouds.
 For, in addition, lo, the heat on high
 Of constellated ether burdens down
 Upon them, and by sort of condensation
 Weaveth beneath the azure firmament
 The reek of darkling cloud. It happens, too,
 That hither to the skies from the Beyond
 Do come those particles which make the clouds
 And flying thunderheads. For I have taught
 That this their number is innumerable
 And infinite the sum of the Abyss,
 And I have shown with what stupendous speed
 Those bodies fly and how they're wont to pass
 Amain through incommunicable space.
 Therefore, 'tis not exceeding strange, if oft
 In little time tempest and darkness cover
 With bulking thunderheads hanging on high
 The oceans and the lands, since everywhere
 Through all the narrow tubes of yonder ether,
 Yea, so to speak, through all the breathing-holes
 Of the great upper-world encompassing,
 There be for the primordial elements
 Exits and entrances.

                      Now come, and how
 The rainy moisture thickens into being
 In the lofty clouds, and how upon the lands
 'Tis then discharged in down-pour of large showers,
 I will unfold. And first triumphantly
 Will I persuade thee that up-rise together,
 With clouds themselves, full many seeds of water
 From out all things, and that they both increase--
 Both clouds and water which is in the clouds--
 In like proportion, as our frames increase
 In like proportion with our blood, as well
 As sweat or any moisture in our members.
 Besides, the clouds take in from time to time
 Much moisture risen from the broad marine,--
 Whilst the winds bear them o'er the mighty sea,
 Like hanging fleeces of white wool. Thuswise,
 Even from all rivers is there lifted up
 Moisture into the clouds. And when therein
 The seeds of water so many in many ways
 Have come together, augmented from all sides,
 The close-jammed clouds then struggle to discharge
 Their rain-storms for a two-fold reason: lo,
 The wind's force crowds them, and the very excess
 Of storm-clouds (massed in a vaster throng)
 Giveth an urge and pressure from above
 And makes the rains out-pour. Besides when, too,
 The clouds are winnowed by the winds, or scattered
 Smitten on top by heat of sun, they send
 Their rainy moisture, and distil their drops,
 Even as the wax, by fiery warmth on top,
 Wasteth and liquefies abundantly.
 But comes the violence of the bigger rains
 When violently the clouds are weighted down
 Both by their cumulated mass and by
 The onset of the wind. And rains are wont
 To endure awhile and to abide for long,
 When many seeds of waters are aroused,
 And clouds on clouds and racks on racks outstream
 In piled layers and are borne along
 From every quarter, and when all the earth
 Smoking exhales her moisture. At such a time
 When sun with beams amid the tempest-murk
 Hath shone against the showers of black rains,
 Then in the swart clouds there emerges bright
 The radiance of the bow.

                         And as to things
 Not mentioned here which of themselves do grow
 Or of themselves are gendered, and all things
 Which in the clouds condense to being--all,
 Snow and the winds, hail and the hoar-frosts chill,
 And freezing, mighty force--of lakes and pools
 The mighty hardener, and mighty check
 Which in the winter curbeth everywhere
 The rivers as they go--'tis easy still,
 Soon to discover and with mind to see
 How they all happen, whereby gendered,
 When once thou well hast understood just what
 Functions have been vouchsafed from of old
 Unto the procreant atoms of the world.
 Now come, and what the law of earthquakes is
 Hearken, and first of all take care to know
 That the under-earth, like to the earth around us,
 Is full of windy caverns all about;
 And many a pool and many a grim abyss
 She bears within her bosom, ay, and cliffs
 And jagged scarps; and many a river, hid
 Beneath her chine, rolls rapidly along
 Its billows and plunging boulders. For clear fact
 Requires that earth must be in every part
 Alike in constitution. Therefore, earth,
 With these things underneath affixed and set,
 Trembleth above, jarred by big down-tumblings,
 When time hath undermined the huge caves,
 The subterranean. Yea, whole mountains fall,
 And instantly from spot of that big jar
 There quiver the tremors far and wide abroad.
 And with good reason: since houses on the street
 Begin to quake throughout, when jarred by a cart
 Of no large weight; and, too, the furniture
 Within the house up-bounds, when a paving-block
 Gives either iron rim of the wheels a jolt.
 It happens, too, when some prodigious bulk
 Of age-worn soil is rolled from mountain slopes
 Into tremendous pools of water dark,
 That the reeling land itself is rocked about
 By the water's undulations; as a basin
 Sometimes won't come to rest until the fluid
 Within it ceases to be rocked about
 In random undulations.

                           And besides,
 When subterranean winds, up-gathered there
 In the hollow deeps, bulk forward from one spot,
 And press with the big urge of mighty powers
 Against the lofty grottos, then the earth
 Bulks to that quarter whither push amain
 The headlong winds. Then all the builded houses
 Above ground--and the more, the higher up-reared
 Unto the sky--lean ominously, careening
 Into the same direction; and the beams,
 Wrenched forward, over-hang, ready to go.
 Yet dread men to believe that there awaits
 The nature of the mighty world a time
 Of doom and cataclysm, albeit they see
 So great a bulk of lands to bulge and break!
 And lest the winds blew back again, no force
 Could rein things in nor hold from sure career
 On to disaster. But now because those winds
 Blow back and forth in alternation strong,
 And, so to say, rallying charge again,
 And then repulsed retreat, on this account
 Earth oftener threatens than she brings to pass
 Collapses dire. For to one side she leans,
 Then back she sways; and after tottering
 Forward, recovers then her seats of poise.
 Thus, this is why whole houses rock, the roofs
 More than the middle stories, middle more
 Than lowest, and the lowest least of all.

 Arises, too, this same great earth-quaking,
 When wind and some prodigious force of air,
 Collected from without or down within
 The old telluric deeps, have hurled themselves
 Amain into those caverns sub-terrene,
 And there at first tumultuously chafe
 Among the vasty grottos, borne about
 In mad rotations, till their lashed force
 Aroused out-bursts abroad, and then and there,
 Riving the deep earth, makes a mighty chasm--
 What once in Syrian Sidon did befall,
 And once in Peloponnesian Aegium,
 Twain cities which such out-break of wild air
 And earth's convulsion, following hard upon,
 O'erthrew of old. And many a walled town,
 Besides, hath fall'n by such omnipotent
 Convulsions on the land, and in the sea
 Engulfed hath sunken many a city down
 With all its populace. But if, indeed,
 They burst not forth, yet is the very rush
 Of the wild air and fury-force of wind
 Then dissipated, like an ague-fit,
 Through the innumerable pores of earth,
 To set her all a-shake--even as a chill,
 When it hath gone into our marrow-bones,
 Sets us convulsively, despite ourselves,
 A-shivering and a-shaking. Therefore, men
 With two-fold terror bustle in alarm
 Through cities to and fro: they fear the roofs
 Above the head; and underfoot they dread
 The caverns, lest the nature of the earth
 Suddenly rend them open, and she gape,
 Herself asunder, with tremendous maw,
 And, all confounded, seek to chock it full
 With her own ruins. Let men, then, go on
 Feigning at will that heaven and earth shall be
 Inviolable, entrusted evermore
 To an eternal weal: and yet at times
 The very force of danger here at hand
 Prods them on some side with this goad of fear--
 This among others--that the earth, withdrawn
 Abruptly from under their feet, be hurried down,
 Down into the abyss, and the Sum-of-Things
 Be following after, utterly fordone,
 Till be but wrack and wreckage of a world.

 *****

EXTRAORDINARY AND PARADOXICAL TELLURIC PHENOMENA

 In chief, men marvel nature renders not
 Bigger and bigger the bulk of ocean, since
 So vast the down-rush of the waters be,
 And every river out of every realm
 Cometh thereto; and add the random rains
 And flying tempests, which spatter every sea
 And every land bedew; add their own springs:
 Yet all of these unto the ocean's sum
 Shall be but as the increase of a drop.
 Wherefore 'tis less a marvel that the sea,
 The mighty ocean, increaseth not. Besides,
 Sun with his heat draws off a mighty part:
 Yea, we behold that sun with burning beams
 To dry our garments dripping all with wet;
 And many a sea, and far out-spread beneath,
 Do we behold. Therefore, however slight
 The portion of wet that sun on any spot
 Culls from the level main, he still will take
 From off the waves in such a wide expanse
 Abundantly. Then, further, also winds,
 Sweeping the level waters, can bear off
 A mighty part of wet, since we behold
 Oft in a single night the highways dried
 By winds, and soft mud crusted o'er at dawn.
 Again, I've taught thee that the clouds bear off
 Much moisture too, up-taken from the reaches
 Of the mighty main, and sprinkle it about
 O'er all the zones, when rain is on the lands
 And winds convey the aery racks of vapour.
 Lastly, since earth is porous through her frame,
 And neighbours on the seas, girdling their shores,
 The water's wet must seep into the lands
 From briny ocean, as from lands it comes
 Into the seas. For brine is filtered off,
 And then the liquid stuff seeps back again
 And all re-poureth at the river-heads,
 Whence in fresh-water currents it returns
 Over the lands, adown the channels which
 Were cleft erstwhile and erstwhile bore along
 The liquid-footed floods.

                           And now the cause
 Whereby athrough the throat of Aetna's Mount
 Such vast tornado-fires out-breathe at times,
 I will unfold: for with no middling might
 Of devastation the flamy tempest rose
 And held dominion in Sicilian fields:
 Drawing upon itself the upturned faces
 Of neighbouring clans, what time they saw afar
 The skiey vaults a-fume and sparkling all,
 And filled their bosoms with dread anxiety
 Of what new thing nature were travailing at.

 In these affairs it much behooveth thee
 To look both wide and deep, and far abroad
 To peer to every quarter, that thou mayst
 Remember how boundless is the Sum-of-Things,
 And mark how infinitely small a part
 Of the whole Sum is this one sky of ours--
 O not so large a part as is one man
 Of the whole earth. And plainly if thou viewest
 This cosmic fact, placing it square in front,
 And plainly understandest, thou wilt leave
 Wondering at many things. For who of us
 Wondereth if some one gets into his joints
 A fever, gathering head with fiery heat,
 Or any other dolorous disease
 Along his members? For anon the foot
 Grows blue and bulbous; often the sharp twinge
 Seizes the teeth, attacks the very eyes;
 Out-breaks the sacred fire, and, crawling on
 Over the body, burneth every part
 It seizeth on, and works its hideous way
 Along the frame. No marvel this, since, lo,
 Of things innumerable be seeds enough,
 And this our earth and sky do bring to us
 Enough of bane from whence can grow the strength
 Of maladies uncounted. Thuswise, then,
 We must suppose to all the sky and earth
 Are ever supplied from out the infinite
 All things, O all in stores enough whereby
 The shaken earth can of a sudden move,
 And fierce typhoons can over sea and lands
 Go tearing on, and Aetna's fires o'erflow,
 And heaven become a flame-burst. For that, too,
 Happens at times, and the celestial vaults
 Glow into fire, and rainy tempests rise
 In heavier congregation, when, percase,
 The seeds of water have foregathered thus
 From out the infinite. "Aye, but passing huge
 The fiery turmoil of that conflagration!"
 So sayst thou; well, huge many a river seems
 To him that erstwhile ne'er a larger saw;
 Thus, huge seems tree or man; and everything
 Which mortal sees the biggest of each class,
 That he imagines to be "huge"; though yet
 All these, with sky and land and sea to boot,
 Are all as nothing to the sum entire
 Of the all-Sum.

                 But now I will unfold
 At last how yonder suddenly angered flame
 Out-blows abroad from vasty furnaces
 Aetnaean. First, the mountain's nature is
 All under-hollow, propped about, about
 With caverns of basaltic piers. And, lo,
 In all its grottos be there wind and air--
 For wind is made when air hath been uproused
 By violent agitation. When this air
 Is heated through and through, and, raging round,
 Hath made the earth and all the rocks it touches
 Horribly hot, and hath struck off from them
 Fierce fire of swiftest flame, it lifts itself
 And hurtles thus straight upwards through its throat
 Into high heav'n, and thus bears on afar
 Its burning blasts and scattereth afar
 Its ashes, and rolls a smoke of pitchy murk
 And heaveth the while boulders of wondrous weight--
 Leaving no doubt in thee that 'tis the air's
 Tumultuous power. Besides, in mighty part,
 The sea there at the roots of that same mount
 Breaks its old billows and sucks back its surf.
 And grottos from the sea pass in below
 Even to the bottom of the mountain's throat.
 Herethrough thou must admit there go...

 *****

 And the conditions force [the water and air]
 Deeply to penetrate from the open sea,
 And to out-blow abroad, and to up-bear
 Thereby the flame, and to up-cast from deeps
 The boulders, and to rear the clouds of sand.
 For at the top be "bowls," as people there
 Are wont to name what we at Rome do call
 The throats and mouths.

                        There be, besides, some thing
 Of which 'tis not enough one only cause
 To state--but rather several, whereof one
 Will be the true: lo, if thou shouldst espy
 Lying afar some fellow's lifeless corse,
 'Twere meet to name all causes of a death,
 That cause of his death might thereby be named:
 For prove thou mayst he perished not by steel,
 By cold, nor even by poison nor disease,
 Yet somewhat of this sort hath come to him
 We know--And thus we have to say the same
 In divers cases.

                   Toward the summer, Nile
 Waxeth and overfloweth the champaign,
 Unique in all the landscape, river sole
 Of the Aegyptians. In mid-season heats
 Often and oft he waters Aegypt o'er,
 Either because in summer against his mouths
 Come those northwinds which at that time of year
 Men name the Etesian blasts, and, blowing thus
 Upstream, retard, and, forcing back his waves,
 Fill him o'erfull and force his flow to stop.
 For out of doubt these blasts which driven be
 From icy constellations of the pole
 Are borne straight up the river. Comes that river
 From forth the sultry places down the south,
 Rising far up in midmost realm of day,
 Among black generations of strong men
 With sun-baked skins. 'Tis possible, besides,
 That a big bulk of piled sand may bar
 His mouths against his onward waves, when sea,
 Wild in the winds, tumbles the sand to inland;
 Whereby the river's outlet were less free,
 Likewise less headlong his descending floods.
 It may be, too, that in this season rains
 Are more abundant at its fountain head,
 Because the Etesian blasts of those northwinds
 Then urge all clouds into those inland parts.
 And, soothly, when they're thus foregathered there,
 Urged yonder into midmost realm of day,
 Then, crowded against the lofty mountain sides,
 They're massed and powerfully pressed. Again,
 Perchance, his waters wax, O far away,
 Among the Aethiopians' lofty mountains,
 When the all-beholding sun with thawing beams
 Drives the white snows to flow into the vales.

 Now come; and unto thee I will unfold,
 As to the Birdless spots and Birdless tarns,
 What sort of nature they are furnished with.
 First, as to name of "birdless,"--that derives
 From very fact, because they noxious be
 Unto all birds. For when above those spots
 In horizontal flight the birds have come,
 Forgetting to oar with wings, they furl their sails,
 And, with down-drooping of their delicate necks,
 Fall headlong into earth, if haply such
 The nature of the spots, or into water,
 If haply spreads thereunder Birdless tarn.
 Such spot's at Cumae, where the mountains smoke,
 Charged with the pungent sulphur, and increased
 With steaming springs. And such a spot there is
 Within the walls of Athens, even there
 On summit of Acropolis, beside
 Fane of Tritonian Pallas bountiful,
 Where never cawing crows can wing their course,
 Not even when smoke the altars with good gifts,--
 But evermore they flee--yet not from wrath
 Of Pallas, grieved at that espial old,
 As poets of the Greeks have sung the tale;
 But very nature of the place compels.
 In Syria also--as men say--a spot
 Is to be seen, where also four-foot kinds,
 As soon as ever they've set their steps within,
 Collapse, o'ercome by its essential power,
 As if there slaughtered to the under-gods.
 Lo, all these wonders work by natural law,
 And from what causes they are brought to pass
 The origin is manifest; so, haply,
 Let none believe that in these regions stands
 The gate of Orcus, nor us then suppose,
 Haply, that thence the under-gods draw down
 Souls to dark shores of Acheron--as stags,
 The wing-footed, are thought to draw to light,
 By sniffing nostrils, from their dusky lairs
 The wriggling generations of wild snakes.
 How far removed from true reason is this,
 Perceive thou straight; for now I'll try to say
 Somewhat about the very fact.

                                And, first,
 This do I say, as oft I've said before:
 In earth are atoms of things of every sort;
 And know, these all thus rise from out the earth--
 Many life-giving which be good for food,
 And many which can generate disease
 And hasten death, O many primal seeds
 Of many things in many modes--since earth
 Contains them mingled and gives forth discrete.
 And we have shown before that certain things
 Be unto certain creatures suited more
 For ends of life, by virtue of a nature,
 A texture, and primordial shapes, unlike
 For kinds alike. Then too 'tis thine to see
 How many things oppressive be and foul
 To man, and to sensation most malign:
 Many meander miserably through ears;
 Many in-wind athrough the nostrils too,
 Malign and harsh when mortal draws a breath;
 Of not a few must one avoid the touch;
 Of not a few must one escape the sight;
 And some there be all loathsome to the taste;
 And many, besides, relax the languid limbs
 Along the frame, and undermine the soul
 In its abodes within. To certain trees
 There hath been given so dolorous a shade
 That often they gender achings of the head,
 If one but be beneath, outstretched on the sward.
 There is, again, on Helicon's high hills
 A tree that's wont to kill a man outright
 By fetid odour of its very flower.
 And when the pungent stench of the night-lamp,
 Extinguished but a moment since, assails
 The nostrils, then and there it puts to sleep
 A man afflicted with the falling sickness
 And foamings at the mouth. A woman, too,
 At the heavy castor drowses back in chair,
 And from her delicate fingers slips away
 Her gaudy handiwork, if haply she
 Hath got the whiff at menstruation-time.
 Once more, if thou delayest in hot baths,
 When thou art over-full, how readily
 From stool in middle of the steaming water
 Thou tumblest in a fit! How readily
 The heavy fumes of charcoal wind their way
 Into the brain, unless beforehand we
 Of water 've drunk. But when a burning fever,
 O'ermastering man, hath seized upon his limbs,
 Then odour of wine is like a hammer-blow.
 And seest thou not how in the very earth
 Sulphur is gendered and bitumen thickens
 With noisome stench?--What direful stenches, too,
 Scaptensula out-breathes from down below,
 When men pursue the veins of silver and gold,
 With pick-axe probing round the hidden realms
 Deep in the earth?--Or what of deadly bane
 The mines of gold exhale? O what a look,
 And what a ghastly hue they give to men!
 And seest thou not, or hearest, how they're wont
 In little time to perish, and how fail
 The life-stores in those folk whom mighty power
 Of grim necessity confineth there
 In such a task? Thus, this telluric earth
 Out-streams with all these dread effluvia
 And breathes them out into the open world
 And into the visible regions under heaven.

 Thus, too, those Birdless places must up-send
 An essence bearing death to winged things,
 Which from the earth rises into the breezes
 To poison part of skiey space, and when
 Thither the winged is on pennons borne,
 There, seized by the unseen poison, 'tis ensnared,
 And from the horizontal of its flight
 Drops to the spot whence sprang the effluvium.
 And when 'thas there collapsed, then the same power
 Of that effluvium takes from all its limbs
 The relics of its life. That power first strikes
 The creatures with a wildering dizziness,
 And then thereafter, when they're once down-fallen
 Into the poison's very fountains, then
 Life, too, they vomit out perforce, because
 So thick the stores of bane around them fume.

 Again, at times it happens that this power,
 This exhalation of the Birdless places,
 Dispels the air betwixt the ground and birds,
 Leaving well-nigh a void. And thither when
 In horizontal flight the birds have come,
 Forthwith their buoyancy of pennons limps,
 All useless, and each effort of both wings
 Falls out in vain. Here, when without all power
 To buoy themselves and on their wings to lean,
 Lo, nature constrains them by their weight to slip
 Down to the earth, and lying prostrate there
 Along the well-nigh empty void, they spend
 Their souls through all the openings of their frame.

 *****


 Further, the water of wells is colder then
 At summer time, because the earth by heat
 Is rarefied, and sends abroad in air
 Whatever seeds it peradventure have
 Of its own fiery exhalations.
 The more, then, the telluric ground is drained
 Of heat, the colder grows the water hid
 Within the earth. Further, when all the earth
 Is by the cold compressed, and thus contracts
 And, so to say, concretes, it happens, lo,
 That by contracting it expresses then
 Into the wells what heat it bears itself.

 'Tis said at Hammon's fane a fountain is,
 In daylight cold and hot in time of night.
 This fountain men be-wonder over-much,
 And think that suddenly it seethes in heat
 By intense sun, the subterranean, when
 Night with her terrible murk hath cloaked the lands--
 What's not true reasoning by a long remove:
 I' faith when sun o'erhead, touching with beams
 An open body of water, had no power
 To render it hot upon its upper side,
 Though his high light possess such burning glare,
 How, then, can he, when under the gross earth,
 Make water boil and glut with fiery heat?--
 And, specially, since scarcely potent he
 Through hedging walls of houses to inject
 His exhalations hot, with ardent rays.
 What, then's, the principle? Why, this, indeed:
 The earth about that spring is porous more
 Than elsewhere the telluric ground, and be
 Many the seeds of fire hard by the water;
 On this account, when night with dew-fraught shades
 Hath whelmed the earth, anon the earth deep down
 Grows chill, contracts; and thuswise squeezes out
 Into the spring what seeds she holds of fire
 (As one might squeeze with fist), which render hot
 The touch and steam of the fluid. Next, when sun,
 Up-risen, with his rays has split the soil
 And rarefied the earth with waxing heat,
 Again into their ancient abodes return
 The seeds of fire, and all the Hot of water
 Into the earth retires; and this is why
 The fountain in the daylight gets so cold.
 Besides, the water's wet is beat upon
 By rays of sun, and, with the dawn, becomes
 Rarer in texture under his pulsing blaze;
 And, therefore, whatso seeds it holds of fire
 It renders up, even as it renders oft
 The frost that it contains within itself
 And thaws its ice and looseneth the knots.
 There is, moreover, a fountain cold in kind
 That makes a bit of tow (above it held)
 Take fire forthwith and shoot a flame; so, too,
 A pitch-pine torch will kindle and flare round
 Along its waves, wherever 'tis impelled
 Afloat before the breeze. No marvel, this:
 Because full many seeds of heat there be
 Within the water; and, from earth itself
 Out of the deeps must particles of fire
 Athrough the entire fountain surge aloft,
 And speed in exhalations into air
 Forth and abroad (yet not in numbers enow
 As to make hot the fountain). And, moreo'er,
 Some force constrains them, scattered through the water,
 Forthwith to burst abroad, and to combine
 In flame above. Even as a fountain far
 There is at Aradus amid the sea,
 Which bubbles out sweet water and disparts
 From round itself the salt waves; and, behold,
 In many another region the broad main
 Yields to the thirsty mariners timely help,
 Belching sweet waters forth amid salt waves.
 Just so, then, can those seeds of fire burst forth
 Athrough that other fount, and bubble out
 Abroad against the bit of tow; and when
 They there collect or cleave unto the torch,
 Forthwith they readily flash aflame, because
 The tow and torches, also, in themselves
 Have many seeds of latent fire. Indeed,
 And seest thou not, when near the nightly lamps
 Thou bringest a flaxen wick, extinguished
 A moment since, it catches fire before
 'Thas touched the flame, and in same wise a torch?
 And many another object flashes aflame
 When at a distance, touched by heat alone,
 Before 'tis steeped in veritable fire.
 This, then, we must suppose to come to pass
 In that spring also.

                     Now to other things!
 And I'll begin to treat by what decree
 Of nature it came to pass that iron can be
 By that stone drawn which Greeks the magnet call
 After the country's name (its origin
 Being in country of Magnesian folk).
 This stone men marvel at; and sure it oft
 Maketh a chain of rings, depending, lo,
 From off itself! Nay, thou mayest see at times
 Five or yet more in order dangling down
 And swaying in the delicate winds, whilst one
 Depends from other, cleaving to under-side,
 And ilk one feels the stone's own power and bonds--
 So over-masteringly its power flows down.

 In things of this sort, much must be made sure
 Ere thou account of the thing itself canst give,
 And the approaches roundabout must be;
 Wherefore the more do I exact of thee
 A mind and ears attent.

                        First, from all things
 We see soever, evermore must flow,
 Must be discharged and strewn about, about,
 Bodies that strike the eyes, awaking sight.
 From certain things flow odours evermore,
 As cold from rivers, heat from sun, and spray
 From waves of ocean, eater-out of walls
 Along the coasts. Nor ever cease to seep
 The varied echoings athrough the air.
 Then, too, there comes into the mouth at times
 The wet of a salt taste, when by the sea
 We roam about; and so, whene'er we watch
 The wormwood being mixed, its bitter stings.
 To such degree from all things is each thing
 Borne streamingly along, and sent about
 To every region round; and nature grants
 Nor rest nor respite of the onward flow,
 Since 'tis incessantly we feeling have,
 And all the time are suffered to descry
 And smell all things at hand, and hear them sound.

 Now will I seek again to bring to mind
 How porous a body all things have--a fact
 Made manifest in my first canto, too.
 For, truly, though to know this doth import
 For many things, yet for this very thing
 On which straightway I'm going to discourse,
 'Tis needful most of all to make it sure
 That naught's at hand but body mixed with void.
 A first ensample: in grottos, rocks o'erhead
 Sweat moisture and distil the oozy drops;
 Likewise, from all our body seeps the sweat;
 There grows the beard, and along our members all
 And along our frame the hairs. Through all our veins
 Disseminates the foods, and gives increase
 And aliment down to the extreme parts,
 Even to the tiniest finger-nails. Likewise,
 Through solid bronze the cold and fiery heat
 We feel to pass; likewise, we feel them pass
 Through gold, through silver, when we clasp in hand
 The brimming goblets. And, again, there flit
 Voices through houses' hedging walls of stone;
 Odour seeps through, and cold, and heat of fire
 That's wont to penetrate even strength of iron.
 Again, where corselet of the sky girds round

 *****

 And at same time, some Influence of bane,
 When from Beyond 'thas stolen into [our world].
 And tempests, gathering from the earth and sky,
 Back to the sky and earth absorbed retire--
 With reason, since there's naught that's fashioned not
 With body porous.

                  Furthermore, not all
 The particles which be from things thrown off
 Are furnished with same qualities for sense,
 Nor be for all things equally adapt.
 A first ensample: the sun doth bake and parch
 The earth; but ice he thaws, and with his beams
 Compels the lofty snows, up-reared white
 Upon the lofty hills, to waste away;
 Then, wax, if set beneath the heat of him,
 Melts to a liquid. And the fire, likewise,
 Will melt the copper and will fuse the gold,
 But hides and flesh it shrivels up and shrinks.
 The water hardens the iron just off the fire,
 But hides and flesh (made hard by heat) it softens.
 The oleaster-tree as much delights
 The bearded she-goats, verily as though
 'Twere nectar-steeped and shed ambrosia;
 Than which is naught that burgeons into leaf
 More bitter food for man. A hog draws back
 For marjoram oil, and every unguent fears
 Fierce poison these unto the bristled hogs,
 Yet unto us from time to time they seem,
 As 'twere, to give new life. But, contrariwise,
 Though unto us the mire be filth most foul,
 To hogs that mire doth so delightsome seem
 That they with wallowing from belly to back
 Are never cloyed.

                  A point remains, besides,
 Which best it seems to tell of, ere I go
 To telling of the fact at hand itself.
 Since to the varied things assigned be
 The many pores, those pores must be diverse
 In nature one from other, and each have
 Its very shape, its own direction fixed.
 And so, indeed, in breathing creatures be
 The several senses, of which each takes in
 Unto itself, in its own fashion ever,
 Its own peculiar object. For we mark
 How sounds do into one place penetrate,
 Into another flavours of all juice,
 And savour of smell into a third. Moreover,
 One sort through rocks we see to seep, and, lo,
 One sort to pass through wood, another still
 Through gold, and others to go out and off
 Through silver and through glass. For we do see
 Through some pores form-and-look of things to flow,
 Through others heat to go, and some things still
 To speedier pass than others through same pores.
 Of verity, the nature of these same paths,
 Varying in many modes (as aforesaid)
 Because of unlike nature and warp and woof
 Of cosmic things, constrains it so to be.

 Wherefore, since all these matters now have been
 Established and settled well for us
 As premises prepared, for what remains
 'Twill not be hard to render clear account
 By means of these, and the whole cause reveal
 Whereby the magnet lures the strength of iron.
 First, stream there must from off the lode-stone seeds
 Innumerable, a very tide, which smites
 By blows that air asunder lying betwixt
 The stone and iron. And when is emptied out
 This space, and a large place between the two
 Is made a void, forthwith the primal germs
 Of iron, headlong slipping, fall conjoined
 Into the vacuum, and the ring itself
 By reason thereof doth follow after and go
 Thuswise with all its body. And naught there is
 That of its own primordial elements
 More thoroughly knit or tighter linked coheres
 Than nature and cold roughness of stout iron.
 Wherefore, 'tis less a marvel what I said,
 That from such elements no bodies can
 From out the iron collect in larger throng
 And be into the vacuum borne along,
 Without the ring itself do follow after.
 And this it does, and followeth on until
 'Thath reached the stone itself and cleaved to it
 By links invisible. Moreover, likewise,
 The motion's assisted by a thing of aid
 (Whereby the process easier becomes),--
 Namely, by this: as soon as rarer grows
 That air in front of the ring, and space between
 Is emptied more and made a void, forthwith
 It happens all the air that lies behind
 Conveys it onward, pushing from the rear.
 For ever doth the circumambient air
 Drub things unmoved, but here it pushes forth
 The iron, because upon one side the space
 Lies void and thus receives the iron in.
 This air, whereof I am reminding thee,
 Winding athrough the iron's abundant pores
 So subtly into the tiny parts thereof,
 Shoves it and pushes, as wind the ship and sails.
 The same doth happen in all directions forth:
 From whatso side a space is made a void,
 Whether from crosswise or above, forthwith
 The neighbour particles are borne along
 Into the vacuum; for of verity,
 They're set a-going by poundings from elsewhere,
 Nor by themselves of own accord can they
 Rise upwards into the air. Again, all things
 Must in their framework hold some air, because
 They are of framework porous, and the air
 Encompasses and borders on all things.
 Thus, then, this air in iron so deeply stored
 Is tossed evermore in vexed motion,
 And therefore drubs upon the ring sans doubt
 And shakes it up inside....

 *****

 In sooth, that ring is thither borne along
 To where 'thas once plunged headlong--thither, lo,
 Unto the void whereto it took its start.

 It happens, too, at times that nature of iron
 Shrinks from this stone away, accustomed
 By turns to flee and follow. Yea, I've seen
 Those Samothracian iron rings leap up,
 And iron filings in the brazen bowls
 Seethe furiously, when underneath was set
 The magnet stone. So strongly iron seems
 To crave to flee that rock. Such discord great
 Is gendered by the interposed brass,
 Because, forsooth, when first the tide of brass
 Hath seized upon and held possession of
 The iron's open passage-ways, thereafter
 Cometh the tide of the stone, and in that iron
 Findeth all spaces full, nor now hath holes
 To swim through, as before. 'Tis thus constrained
 With its own current 'gainst the iron's fabric
 To dash and beat; by means whereof it spues
 Forth from itself--and through the brass stirs up--
 The things which otherwise without the brass
 It sucks into itself. In these affairs
 Marvel thou not that from this stone the tide
 Prevails not likewise other things to move
 With its own blows: for some stand firm by weight,
 As gold; and some cannot be moved forever,
 Because so porous in their framework they
 That there the tide streams through without a break,
 Of which sort stuff of wood is seen to be.
 Therefore, when iron (which lies between the two)
 Hath taken in some atoms of the brass,
 Then do the streams of that Magnesian rock
 Move iron by their smitings.

                             Yet these things
 Are not so alien from others, that I
 Of this same sort am ill prepared to name
 Ensamples still of things exclusively
 To one another adapt. Thou seest, first,
 How lime alone cementeth stones: how wood
 Only by glue-of-bull with wood is joined--
 So firmly too that oftener the boards
 Crack open along the weakness of the grain
 Ere ever those taurine bonds will lax their hold.
 The vine-born juices with the water-springs
 Are bold to mix, though not the heavy pitch
 With the light oil-of-olive. And purple dye
 Of shell-fish so uniteth with the wool's
 Body alone that it cannot be ta'en
 Away forever--nay, though thou gavest toil
 To restore the same with the Neptunian flood,
 Nay, though all ocean willed to wash it out
 With all its waves. Again, gold unto gold
 Doth not one substance bind, and only one?
 And is not brass by tin joined unto brass?
 And other ensamples how many might one find!
 What then? Nor is there unto thee a need
 Of such long ways and roundabout, nor boots it
 For me much toil on this to spend. More fit
 It is in few words briefly to embrace
 Things many: things whose textures fall together
 So mutually adapt, that cavities
 To solids correspond, these cavities
 Of this thing to the solid parts of that,
 And those of that to solid parts of this--
 Such joinings are the best. Again, some things
 Can be the one with other coupled and held,
 Linked by hooks and eyes, as 'twere; and this
 Seems more the fact with iron and this stone.
 Now, of diseases what the law, and whence
 The Influence of bane upgathering can
 Upon the race of man and herds of cattle
 Kindle a devastation fraught with death,
 I will unfold. And, first, I've taught above
 That seeds there be of many things to us
 Life-giving, and that, contrariwise, there must
 Fly many round bringing disease and death.
 When these have, haply, chanced to collect
 And to derange the atmosphere of earth,
 The air becometh baneful. And, lo, all
 That Influence of bane, that pestilence,
 Or from Beyond down through our atmosphere,
 Like clouds and mists, descends, or else collects
 From earth herself and rises, when, a-soak
 And beat by rains unseasonable and suns,
 Our earth hath then contracted stench and rot.
 Seest thou not, also, that whoso arrive
 In region far from fatherland and home
 Are by the strangeness of the clime and waters
 Distempered?--since conditions vary much.
 For in what else may we suppose the clime
 Among the Britons to differ from Aegypt's own
 (Where totters awry the axis of the world),
 Or in what else to differ Pontic clime
 From Gades' and from climes adown the south,
 On to black generations of strong men
 With sun-baked skins? Even as we thus do see
 Four climes diverse under the four main-winds
 And under the four main-regions of the sky,
 So, too, are seen the colour and face of men
 Vastly to disagree, and fixed diseases
 To seize the generations, kind by kind:
 There is the elephant-disease which down
 In midmost Aegypt, hard by streams of Nile,
 Engendered is--and never otherwhere.
 In Attica the feet are oft attacked,
 And in Achaean lands the eyes. And so
 The divers spots to divers parts and limbs
 Are noxious; 'tis a variable air
 That causes this. Thus when an atmosphere,
 Alien by chance to us, begins to heave,
 And noxious airs begin to crawl along,
 They creep and wind like unto mist and cloud,
 Slowly, and everything upon their way
 They disarrange and force to change its state.
 It happens, too, that when they've come at last
 Into this atmosphere of ours, they taint
 And make it like themselves and alien.
 Therefore, asudden this devastation strange,
 This pestilence, upon the waters falls,
 Or settles on the very crops of grain
 Or other meat of men and feed of flocks.
 Or it remains a subtle force, suspense
 In the atmosphere itself; and when therefrom
 We draw our inhalations of mixed air,
 Into our body equally its bane
 Also we must suck in. In manner like,
 Oft comes the pestilence upon the kine,
 And sickness, too, upon the sluggish sheep.
 Nor aught it matters whether journey we
 To regions adverse to ourselves and change
 The atmospheric cloak, or whether nature
 Herself import a tainted atmosphere
 To us or something strange to our own use
 Which can attack us soon as ever it come.

THE PLAGUE ATHENS

 'Twas such a manner of disease, 'twas such
 Mortal miasma in Cecropian lands
 Whilom reduced the plains to dead men's bones,
 Unpeopled the highways, drained of citizens
 The Athenian town. For coming from afar,
 Rising in lands of Aegypt, traversing
 Reaches of air and floating fields of foam,
 At last on all Pandion's folk it swooped;
 Whereat by troops unto disease and death
 Were they o'er-given. At first, they'd bear about
 A skull on fire with heat, and eyeballs twain
 Red with suffusion of blank glare. Their throats,
 Black on the inside, sweated oozy blood;
 And the walled pathway of the voice of man
 Was clogged with ulcers; and the very tongue,
 The mind's interpreter, would trickle gore,
 Weakened by torments, tardy, rough to touch.
 Next when that Influence of bane had chocked,
 Down through the throat, the breast, and streamed had
 E'en into sullen heart of those sick folk,
 Then, verily, all the fences of man's life
 Began to topple. From the mouth the breath
 Would roll a noisome stink, as stink to heaven
 Rotting cadavers flung unburied out.
 And, lo, thereafter, all the body's strength
 And every power of mind would languish, now
 In very doorway of destruction.
 And anxious anguish and ululation (mixed
 With many a groan) companioned alway
 The intolerable torments. Night and day,
 Recurrent spasms of vomiting would rack
 Alway their thews and members, breaking down
 With sheer exhaustion men already spent.
 And yet on no one's body couldst thou mark
 The skin with o'er-much heat to burn aglow,
 But rather the body unto touch of hands
 Would offer a warmish feeling, and thereby
 Show red all over, with ulcers, so to say,
 Inbranded, like the "sacred fires" o'erspread
 Along the members. The inward parts of men,
 In truth, would blaze unto the very bones;
 A flame, like flame in furnaces, would blaze
 Within the stomach. Nor couldst aught apply
 Unto their members light enough and thin
 For shift of aid--but coolness and a breeze
 Ever and ever. Some would plunge those limbs
 On fire with bane into the icy streams,
 Hurling the body naked into the waves;
 Many would headlong fling them deeply down
 The water-pits, tumbling with eager mouth
 Already agape. The insatiable thirst
 That whelmed their parched bodies, lo, would make
 A goodly shower seem like to scanty drops.
 Respite of torment was there none. Their frames
 Forspent lay prone. With silent lips of fear
 Would Medicine mumble low, the while she saw
 So many a time men roll their eyeballs round,
 Staring wide-open, unvisited of sleep,
 The heralds of old death. And in those months
 Was given many another sign of death:
 The intellect of mind by sorrow and dread
 Deranged, the sad brow, the countenance
 Fierce and delirious, the tormented ears
 Beset with ringings, the breath quick and short
 Or huge and intermittent, soaking sweat
 A-glisten on neck, the spittle in fine gouts
 Tainted with colour of crocus and so salt,
 The cough scarce wheezing through the rattling throat.
 Aye, and the sinews in the fingered hands
 Were sure to contract, and sure the jointed frame
 To shiver, and up from feet the cold to mount
 Inch after inch: and toward the supreme hour
 At last the pinched nostrils, nose's tip
 A very point, eyes sunken, temples hollow,
 Skin cold and hard, the shuddering grimace,
 The pulled and puffy flesh above the brows!--
 O not long after would their frames lie prone
 In rigid death. And by about the eighth
 Resplendent light of sun, or at the most
 On the ninth flaming of his flambeau, they
 Would render up the life. If any then
 Had 'scaped the doom of that destruction, yet
 Him there awaited in the after days
 A wasting and a death from ulcers vile
 And black discharges of the belly, or else
 Through the clogged nostrils would there ooze along
 Much fouled blood, oft with an aching head:
 Hither would stream a man's whole strength and flesh.
 And whoso had survived that virulent flow
 Of the vile blood, yet into thews of him
 And into his joints and very genitals
 Would pass the old disease. And some there were,
 Dreading the doorways of destruction
 So much, lived on, deprived by the knife
 Of the male member; not a few, though lopped
 Of hands and feet, would yet persist in life,
 And some there were who lost their eyeballs: O
 So fierce a fear of death had fallen on them!
 And some, besides, were by oblivion
 Of all things seized, that even themselves they knew
 No longer. And though corpse on corpse lay piled
 Unburied on ground, the race of birds and beasts
 Would or spring back, scurrying to escape
 The virulent stench, or, if they'd tasted there,
 Would languish in approaching death. But yet
 Hardly at all during those many suns
 Appeared a fowl, nor from the woods went forth
 The sullen generations of wild beasts--
 They languished with disease and died and died.
 In chief, the faithful dogs, in all the streets
 Outstretched, would yield their breath distressfully
 For so that Influence of bane would twist
 Life from their members. Nor was found one sure
 And universal principle of cure:
 For what to one had given the power to take
 The vital winds of air into his mouth,
 And to gaze upward at the vaults of sky,
 The same to others was their death and doom.

 In those affairs, O awfullest of all,
 O pitiable most was this, was this:
 Whoso once saw himself in that disease
 Entangled, ay, as damned unto death,
 Would lie in wanhope, with a sullen heart,
 Would, in fore-vision of his funeral,
 Give up the ghost, O then and there. For, lo,
 At no time did they cease one from another
 To catch contagion of the greedy plague,--
 As though but woolly flocks and horned herds;
 And this in chief would heap the dead on dead:
 For who forbore to look to their own sick,
 O these (too eager of life, of death afeard)
 Would then, soon after, slaughtering Neglect
 Visit with vengeance of evil death and base--
 Themselves deserted and forlorn of help.
 But who had stayed at hand would perish there
 By that contagion and the toil which then
 A sense of honour and the pleading voice
 Of weary watchers, mixed with voice of wail
 Of dying folk, forced them to undergo.
 This kind of death each nobler soul would meet.
 The funerals, uncompanioned, forsaken,
 Like rivals contended to be hurried through.

 *****

 And men contending to ensepulchre
 Pile upon pile the throng of their own dead:
 And weary with woe and weeping wandered home;
 And then the most would take to bed from grief.
 Nor could be found not one, whom nor disease
 Nor death, nor woe had not in those dread times
 Attacked.

 By now the shepherds and neatherds all,
 Yea, even the sturdy guiders of curved ploughs,
 Began to sicken, and their bodies would lie
 Huddled within back-corners of their huts,
 Delivered by squalor and disease to death.
 O often and often couldst thou then have seen
 On lifeless children lifeless parents prone,
 Or offspring on their fathers', mothers' corpse
 Yielding the life. And into the city poured
 O not in least part from the countryside
 That tribulation, which the peasantry
 Sick, sick, brought thither, thronging from every quarter,
 Plague-stricken mob. All places would they crowd,
 All buildings too; whereby the more would death
 Up-pile a-heap the folk so crammed in town.
 Ah, many a body thirst had dragged and rolled
 Along the highways there was lying strewn
 Besides Silenus-headed water-fountains,--
 The life-breath choked from that too dear desire
 Of pleasant waters. Ah, everywhere along
 The open places of the populace,
 And along the highways, O thou mightest see
 Of many a half-dead body the sagged limbs,
 Rough with squalor, wrapped around with rags,
 Perish from very nastiness, with naught
 But skin upon the bones, well-nigh already
 Buried--in ulcers vile and obscene filth.
 All holy temples, too, of deities
 Had Death becrammed with the carcasses;
 And stood each fane of the Celestial Ones
 Laden with stark cadavers everywhere--
 Places which warders of the shrines had crowded
 With many a guest. For now no longer men
 Did mightily esteem the old Divine,
 The worship of the gods: the woe at hand
 Did over-master. Nor in the city then
 Remained those rites of sepulture, with which
 That pious folk had evermore been wont
 To buried be. For it was wildered all
 In wild alarms, and each and every one
 With sullen sorrow would bury his own dead,
 As present shift allowed. And sudden stress
 And poverty to many an awful act
 Impelled; and with a monstrous screaming they
 Would, on the frames of alien funeral pyres,
 Place their own kin, and thrust the torch beneath
 Oft brawling with much bloodshed round about
 Rather than quit dead bodies loved in life.