De Rerum Natura

Lucretius

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

  1. Now come, and what the law of earthquakes is
  2. Hearken, and first of all take care to know
  3. That the under-earth, like to the earth around us,
  4. Is full of windy caverns all about;
  5. And many a pool and many a grim abyss
  6. She bears within her bosom, ay, and cliffs
  7. And jagged scarps; and many a river, hid
  8. Beneath her chine, rolls rapidly along
  9. Its billows and plunging boulders. For clear fact
  10. Requires that earth must be in every part
  11. Alike in constitution. Therefore, earth,
  12. With these things underneath affixed and set,
  13. Trembleth above, jarred by big down-tumblings,
  14. When time hath undermined the huge caves,
  15. The subterranean. Yea, whole mountains fall,
  16. And instantly from spot of that big jar
  17. There quiver the tremors far and wide abroad.
  18. And with good reason: since houses on the street
  19. Begin to quake throughout, when jarred by a cart
  20. Of no large weight; and, too, the furniture
  21. Within the house up-bounds, when a paving-block
  22. Gives either iron rim of the wheels a jolt.
  23. It happens, too, when some prodigious bulk
  24. Of age-worn soil is rolled from mountain slopes
  25. Into tremendous pools of water dark,
  26. That the reeling land itself is rocked about
  27. By the water's undulations; as a basin
  28. Sometimes won't come to rest until the fluid
  29. Within it ceases to be rocked about
  30. In random undulations.
  31. And besides,
  32. When subterranean winds, up-gathered there
  33. In the hollow deeps, bulk forward from one spot,
  34. And press with the big urge of mighty powers
  35. Against the lofty grottos, then the earth
  36. Bulks to that quarter whither push amain
  37. The headlong winds. Then all the builded houses
  38. Above ground- and the more, the higher up-reared
  39. Unto the sky- lean ominously, careening
  40. Into the same direction; and the beams,
  41. Wrenched forward, over-hang, ready to go.
  42. Yet dread men to believe that there awaits
  43. The nature of the mighty world a time
  44. Of doom and cataclysm, albeit they see
  45. So great a bulk of lands to bulge and break!
  46. And lest the winds blew back again, no force
  47. Could rein things in nor hold from sure career
  48. On to disaster. But now because those winds
  49. Blow back and forth in alternation strong,
  50. And, so to say, rallying charge again,
  51. And then repulsed retreat, on this account
  52. Earth oftener threatens than she brings to pass
  53. Collapses dire. For to one side she leans,
  54. Then back she sways; and after tottering
  55. Forward, recovers then her seats of poise.
  56. Thus, this is why whole houses rock, the roofs
  57. More than the middle stories, middle more
  58. Than lowest, and the lowest least of all.