De Rerum Natura

Lucretius

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

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