De Rerum Natura

Lucretius

Lucretius. De Rerum Natura. William Ellery Leonard. E. P. Dutton. 1916.

  1. And for the rest, that sea, and streams, and springs
  2. Forever with new waters overflow,
  3. And that perennially the fluids well,
  4. Needeth no words- the mighty flux itself
  5. Of multitudinous waters round about
  6. Declareth this. But whatso water first
  7. Streams up is ever straightway carried off,
  8. And thus it comes to pass that all in all
  9. There is no overflow; in part because
  10. The burly winds (that over-sweep amain)
  11. And skiey sun (that with his rays dissolves)
  12. Do minish the level seas; in part because
  13. The water is diffused underground
  14. Through all the lands. The brine is filtered off,
  15. And then the liquid stuff seeps back again
  16. And all regathers at the river-heads,
  17. Whence in fresh-water currents on it flows
  18. Over the lands, adown the channels which
  19. Were cleft erstwhile and erstwhile bore along
  20. The liquid-footed floods.
  1. Now, then, of air
  2. I'll speak, which hour by hour in all its body
  3. Is changed innumerably. For whatso'er
  4. Streams up in dust or vapour off of things,
  5. The same is all and always borne along
  6. Into the mighty ocean of the air;
  7. And did not air in turn restore to things
  8. Bodies, and thus recruit them as they stream,
  9. All things by this time had resolved been
  10. And changed into air. Therefore it never
  11. Ceases to be engendered off of things
  12. And to return to things, since verily
  13. In constant flux do all things stream.