De Rerum Natura

Lucretius

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

  1. Likewise, days may wax
  2. Whilst the nights wane, and daylight minished be
  3. Whilst nights do take their augmentations,
  4. Either because the self-same sun, coursing
  5. Under the lands and over in two arcs,
  6. A longer and a briefer, doth dispart
  7. The coasts of ether and divides in twain
  8. His orbit all unequally, and adds,
  9. As round he's borne, unto the one half there
  10. As much as from the other half he's ta'en,
  11. Until he then arrives that sign of heaven
  12. Where the year's node renders the shades of night
  13. Equal unto the periods of light.
  14. For when the sun is midway on his course
  15. Between the blasts of northwind and of south,
  16. Heaven keeps his two goals parted equally,
  17. By virtue of the fixed position old
  18. Of the whole starry Zodiac, through which
  19. That sun, in winding onward, takes a year,
  20. Illumining the sky and all the lands
  21. With oblique light- as men declare to us
  22. Who by their diagrams have charted well
  23. Those regions of the sky which be adorned
  24. With the arranged signs of Zodiac.
  25. Or else, because in certain parts the air
  26. Under the lands is denser, the tremulous
  27. Bright beams of fire do waver tardily,
  28. Nor easily can penetrate that air
  29. Nor yet emerge unto their rising-place:
  30. For this it is that nights in winter time
  31. Do linger long, ere comes the many-rayed
  32. Round Badge of the day. Or else because, as said,
  33. In alternating seasons of the year
  34. Fires, now more quick, and now more slow, are wont
  35. To stream together,- the fires which make the sun
  36. To rise in some one spot- therefore it is
  37. That those men seem to speak the truth [who hold
  38. A new sun is with each new daybreak born].