De Rerum Natura

Lucretius

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

  1. Into being
  2. The clouds condense, when in this upper space
  3. Of the high heaven have gathered suddenly,
  4. As round they flew, unnumbered particles-
  5. World's rougher ones, which can, though interlinked
  6. With scanty couplings, yet be fastened firm,
  7. The one on other caught. These particles
  8. First cause small clouds to form; and, thereupon,
  9. These catch the one on other and swarm in a flock
  10. And grow by their conjoining, and by winds
  11. Are borne along, along, until collects
  12. The tempest fury. Happens, too, the nearer
  13. The mountain summits neighbour to the sky,
  14. The more unceasingly their far crags smoke
  15. With the thick darkness of swart cloud, because
  16. When first the mists do form, ere ever the eyes
  17. Can there behold them (tenuous as they be),
  18. The carrier-winds will drive them up and on
  19. Unto the topmost summits of the mountain;
  20. And then at last it happens, when they be
  21. In vaster throng upgathered, that they can
  22. By this very condensation lie revealed,
  23. And that at same time they are seen to surge
  24. From very vertex of the mountain up
  25. Into far ether. For very fact and feeling,
  26. As we up-climb high mountains, proveth clear
  27. That windy are those upward regions free.