De Rerum Natura

Lucretius

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

  1. Nor need there be for men
  2. Astonishment that yonder sun so small
  3. Can yet send forth so great a light as fills
  4. Oceans and all the lands and sky aflood,
  5. And with its fiery exhalations steeps
  6. The world at large. For it may be, indeed,
  7. That one vast-flowing well-spring of the whole
  8. Wide world from here hath opened and out-gushed,
  9. And shot its light abroad; because thuswise
  10. The elements of fiery exhalations
  11. From all the world around together come,
  12. And thuswise flow into a bulk so big
  13. That from one single fountain-head may stream
  14. This heat and light. And seest thou not, indeed,
  15. How widely one small water-spring may wet
  16. The meadow-lands at times and flood the fields?
  17. 'Tis even possible, besides, that heat
  18. From forth the sun's own fire, albeit that fire
  19. Be not a great, may permeate the air
  20. With the fierce hot- if but, perchance, the air
  21. Be of condition and so tempered then
  22. As to be kindled, even when beat upon
  23. Only by little particles of heat-
  24. Just as we sometimes see the standing grain
  25. Or stubble straw in conflagration all
  26. From one lone spark. And possibly the sun,
  27. Agleam on high with rosy lampion,
  28. Possesses about him with invisible heats
  29. A plenteous fire, by no effulgence marked,
  30. So that he maketh, he, the Fraught-with-fire,
  31. Increase to such degree the force of rays.