De Rerum Natura

Lucretius

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

  1. Again, since battle so fiercely one with other
  2. The four most mighty members the world,
  3. Aroused in an all unholy war,
  4. Seest not that there may be for them an end
  5. Of the long strife?- Or when the skiey sun
  6. And all the heat have won dominion o'er
  7. The sucked-up waters all?- And this they try
  8. Still to accomplish, though as yet they fail,-
  9. For so aboundingly the streams supply
  10. New store of waters that 'tis rather they
  11. Who menace the world with inundations vast
  12. From forth the unplumbed chasms of the sea.
  13. But vain- since winds (that over-sweep amain)
  14. And skiey sun (that with his rays dissolves)
  15. Do minish the level seas and trust their power
  16. To dry up all, before the waters can
  17. Arrive at the end of their endeavouring.
  18. Breathing such vasty warfare, they contend
  19. In balanced strife the one with other still
  20. Concerning mighty issues,- though indeed
  21. The fire was once the more victorious,
  22. And once- as goes the tale- the water won
  23. A kingdom in the fields. For fire o'ermastered
  24. And licked up many things and burnt away,
  25. What time the impetuous horses of the Sun
  26. Snatched Phaethon headlong from his skiey road
  27. Down the whole ether and over all the lands.
  28. But the omnipotent Father in keen wrath
  29. Then with the sudden smite of thunderbolt
  30. Did hurl the mighty-minded hero off
  31. Those horses to the earth. And Sol, his sire,
  32. Meeting him as he fell, caught up in hand
  33. The ever-blazing lampion of the world,
  34. And drave together the pell-mell horses there
  35. And yoked them all a-tremble, and amain,
  36. Steering them over along their own old road,
  37. Restored the cosmos,- as forsooth we hear
  38. From songs of ancient poets of the Greeks-
  39. A tale too far away from truth, meseems.
  40. For fire can win when from the infinite
  41. Has risen a larger throng of particles
  42. Of fiery stuff; and then its powers succumb,
  43. Somehow subdued again, or else at last
  44. It shrivels in torrid atmospheres the world.
  45. And whilom water too began to win-
  46. As goes the story- when it overwhelmed
  47. The lives of men with billows; and thereafter,
  48. When all that force of water-stuff which forth
  49. From out the infinite had risen up
  50. Did now retire, as somehow turned aside,
  51. The rain-storms stopped, and streams their fury checked.