De Rerum Natura

Lucretius

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

  1. Besides, the clothes hung-out along the shore,
  2. When in they take the clinging moisture, prove
  3. That nature lifts from over all the sea
  4. Unnumbered particles. Whereby the more
  5. 'Tis manifest that many particles
  6. Even from the salt upheavings of the main
  7. Can rise together to augment the bulk
  8. Of massed clouds. For moistures in these twain
  9. Are near akin. Besides, from out all rivers,
  10. As well as from the land itself, we see
  11. Up-rising mists and steam, which like a breath
  12. Are forced out from them and borne aloft,
  13. To curtain heaven with their murk, and make,
  14. By slow foregathering, the skiey clouds.
  15. For, in addition, lo, the heat on high
  16. Of constellated ether burdens down
  17. Upon them, and by sort of condensation
  18. Weaveth beneath the azure firmament
  19. The reek of darkling cloud. It happens, too,
  20. That hither to the skies from the Beyond
  21. Do come those particles which make the clouds
  22. And flying thunderheads. For I have taught
  23. That this their number is innumerable
  24. And infinite the sum of the Abyss,
  25. And I have shown with what stupendous speed
  26. Those bodies fly and how they're wont to pass
  27. Amain through incommunicable space.
  28. Therefore, 'tis not exceeding strange, if oft
  29. In little time tempest and darkness cover
  30. With bulking thunderheads hanging on high
  31. The oceans and the lands, since everywhere
  32. Through all the narrow tubes of yonder ether,
  33. Yea, so to speak, through all the breathing-holes
  34. Of the great upper-world encompassing,
  35. There be for the primordial elements
  36. Exits and entrances.