De Rerum Natura

Lucretius

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

  1. There be, besides, some thing
  2. Of which 'tis not enough one only cause
  3. To state- but rather several, whereof one
  4. Will be the true: lo, if thou shouldst espy
  5. Lying afar some fellow's lifeless corse,
  6. 'Twere meet to name all causes of a death,
  7. That cause of his death might thereby be named:
  8. For prove thou mayst he perished not by steel,
  9. By cold, nor even by poison nor disease,
  10. Yet somewhat of this sort hath come to him
  11. We know- And thus we have to say the same
  12. In divers cases.
  13. Toward the summer, Nile
  14. Waxeth and overfloweth the champaign,
  15. Unique in all the landscape, river sole
  16. Of the Aegyptians. In mid-season heats
  17. Often and oft he waters Aegypt o'er,
  18. Either because in summer against his mouths
  19. Come those northwinds which at that time of year
  20. Men name the Etesian blasts, and, blowing thus
  21. Upstream, retard, and, forcing back his waves,
  22. Fill him o'erfull and force his flow to stop.
  23. For out of doubt these blasts which driven be
  24. From icy constellations of the pole
  25. Are borne straight up the river. Comes that river
  26. From forth the sultry places down the south,
  27. Rising far up in midmost realm of day,
  28. Among black generations of strong men
  29. With sun-baked skins. 'Tis possible, besides,
  30. That a big bulk of piled sand may bar
  31. His mouths against his onward waves, when sea,
  32. Wild in the winds, tumbles the sand to inland;
  33. Whereby the river's outlet were less free,
  34. Likewise less headlong his descending floods.
  35. It may be, too, that in this season rains
  36. Are more abundant at its fountain head,
  37. Because the Etesian blasts of those northwinds
  38. Then urge all clouds into those inland parts.
  39. And, soothly, when they're thus foregathered there,
  40. Urged yonder into midmost realm of day,
  41. Then, crowded against the lofty mountain sides,
  42. They're massed and powerfully pressed. Again,
  43. Perchance, his waters wax, O far away,
  44. Among the Aethiopians' lofty mountains,
  45. When the all-beholding sun with thawing beams
  46. Drives the white snows to flow into the vales.