# Of the Nature of Things (Leonard)/Book VI

PROEM
 'Twas Athens first, the glorious in name,  That whilom gave to hapless sons of men  The sheaves of harvest, and re-ordered life,  And decreed laws; and she the first that gave  Life its sweet solaces, when she begat  A man of heart so wise, who whilom poured  All wisdom forth from his truth-speaking mouth;  The glory of whom, though dead, is yet to-day,  Because of those discoveries divine  Renowned of old, exalted to the sky.  For when saw he that well-nigh everything  Which needs of man most urgently require  Was ready to hand for mortals, and that life,  As far as might be, was established safe,  That men were lords in riches, honour, praise,  And eminent in goodly fame of sons,  And that they yet, O yet, within the home,  Still had the anxious heart which vexed life  Unpausingly with torments of the mind,  And raved perforce with angry plaints, then he,  Then he, the master, did perceive that 'twas  The vessel itself which worked the bane, and all,  However wholesome, which from here or there  Was gathered into it, was by that bane  Spoilt from within,--in part, because he saw  The vessel so cracked and leaky that nowise  'T could ever be filled to brim; in part because  He marked how it polluted with foul taste  Whate'er it got within itself. So he,  The master, then by his truth-speaking words,  Purged the breasts of men, and set the bounds  Of lust and terror, and exhibited  The supreme good whither we all endeavour,  And showed the path whereby we might arrive  Thereunto by a little cross-cut straight,  And what of ills in all affairs of mortals  Upsprang and flitted deviously about  (Whether by chance or force), since nature thus  Had destined; and from out what gates a man  Should sally to each combat. And he proved  That mostly vainly doth the human race  Roll in its bosom the grim waves of care.  For just as children tremble and fear all  In the viewless dark, so even we at times  Dread in the light so many things that be  No whit more fearsome than what children feign,  Shuddering, will be upon them in the dark.  This terror then, this darkness of the mind,  Not sunrise with its flaring spokes of light,  Nor glittering arrows of morning can disperse,  But only nature's aspect and her law.  Wherefore the more will I go on to weave  In verses this my undertaken task.
 And since I've taught thee that the world's great vaults  Are mortal and that sky is fashioned  Of frame e'en born in time, and whatsoe'er  Therein go on and must perforce go on
 The most I have unravelled; what remains  Do thou take in, besides; since once for all  To climb into that chariot' renowned
 Of winds arise; and they appeased are  So that all things again...
 Which were, are changed now, with fury stilled;  All other movements through the earth and sky  Which mortals gaze upon (O anxious oft  In quaking thoughts!), and which abase their minds  With dread of deities and press them crushed  Down to the earth, because their ignorance  Of cosmic causes forces them to yield  All things unto the empery of gods  And to concede the kingly rule to them.  For even those men who have learned full well  That godheads lead a long life free of care,  If yet meanwhile they wonder by what plan  Things can go on (and chiefly yon high things  Observed o'erhead on the ethereal coasts),  Again are hurried back unto the fears  Of old religion and adopt again  Harsh masters, deemed almighty,--wretched men,  Unwitting what can be and what cannot,  And by what law to each its scope prescribed,  Its boundary stone that clings so deep in Time.  Wherefore the more are they borne wandering on  By blindfold reason. And, Memmius, unless  From out thy mind thou spuest all of this  And casteth far from thee all thoughts which be  Unworthy gods and alien to their peace,  Then often will the holy majesties  Of the high gods be harmful unto thee,  As by thy thought degraded,--not, indeed,  That essence supreme of gods could be by this  So outraged as in wrath to thirst to seek  Revenges keen; but even because thyself  Thou plaguest with the notion that the gods,  Even they, the Calm Ones in serene repose,  Do roll the mighty waves of wrath on wrath;  Nor wilt thou enter with a serene breast  Shrines of the gods; nor wilt thou able be  In tranquil peace of mind to take and know  Those images which from their holy bodies  Are carried into intellects of men,  As the announcers of their form divine.  What sort of life will follow after this  'Tis thine to see. But that afar from us  Veriest reason may drive such life away,  Much yet remains to be embellished yet  In polished verses, albeit hath issued forth  So much from me already; lo, there is  The law and aspect of the sky to be  By reason grasped; there are the tempest times  And the bright lightnings to be hymned now--  Even what they do and from what cause soe'er  They're borne along--that thou mayst tremble not,  Marking off regions of prophetic skies  For auguries, O foolishly distraught  Even as to whence the flying flame hath come,  Or to which half of heaven it turns, or how  Through walled places it hath wound its way,  Or, after proving its dominion there,  How it hath speeded forth from thence amain--  Whereof nowise the causes do men know,  And think divinities are working there.  Do thou, Calliope, ingenious Muse,  Solace of mortals and delight of gods,  Point out the course before me, as I race  On to the white line of the utmost goal,  That I may get with signal praise the crown,  With thee my guide!
GREAT METEOROLOGICAL PHENOMENA, ETC.
 And so in first place, then,  With thunder are shaken the blue deeps of heaven,  Because the ethereal clouds, scudding aloft,  Together clash, what time 'gainst one another  The winds are battling. For never a sound there comes  From out the serene regions of the sky;  But wheresoever in a host more dense  The clouds foregather, thence more often comes  A crash with mighty rumbling. And, again,  Clouds cannot be of so condensed a frame  As stones and timbers, nor again so fine  As mists and flying smoke; for then perforce  They'd either fall, borne down by their brute weight,  Like stones, or, like the smoke, they'd powerless be  To keep their mass, or to retain within  Frore snows and storms of hail. And they give forth  O'er skiey levels of the spreading world  A sound on high, as linen-awning, stretched  O'er mighty theatres, gives forth at times  A cracking roar, when much 'tis beaten about  Betwixt the poles and cross-beams. Sometimes, too,  Asunder rent by wanton gusts, it raves  And imitates the tearing sound of sheets  Of paper--even this kind of noise thou mayst  In thunder hear--or sound as when winds whirl  With lashings and do buffet about in air  A hanging cloth and flying paper-sheets.  For sometimes, too, it chances that the clouds  Cannot together crash head-on, but rather  Move side-wise and with motions contrary  Graze each the other's body without speed,  From whence that dry sound grateth on our ears,  So long drawn-out, until the clouds have passed  From out their close positions.
 And, again,  In following wise all things seem oft to quake  At shock of heavy thunder, and mightiest walls  Of the wide reaches of the upper world  There on the instant to have sprung apart,  Riven asunder, what time a gathered blast  Of the fierce hurricane hath all at once  Twisted its way into a mass of clouds,  And, there enclosed, ever more and more  Compelleth by its spinning whirl the cloud  To grow all hollow with a thickened crust  Surrounding; for thereafter, when the force  And the keen onset of the wind have weakened  That crust, lo, then the cloud, to-split in twain,  Gives forth a hideous crash with bang and boom.  No marvel this; since oft a bladder small,  Filled up with air, will, when of sudden burst,  Give forth a like large sound.
 There's reason, too,  Why clouds make sounds, as through them blow the winds:  We see, borne down the sky, oft shapes of clouds  Rough-edged or branched many forky ways;  And 'tis the same, as when the sudden flaws  Of north-west wind through the dense forest blow,  Making the leaves to sough and limbs to crash.  It happens too at times that roused force  Of the fierce hurricane to-rends the cloud,  Breaking right through it by a front assault;  For what a blast of wind may do up there  Is manifest from facts when here on earth  A blast more gentle yet uptwists tall trees  And sucks them madly from their deepest roots.  Besides, among the clouds are waves, and these  Give, as they roughly break, a rumbling roar;  As when along deep streams or the great sea  Breaks the loud surf. It happens, too, whenever  Out from one cloud into another falls  The fiery energy of thunderbolt,  That straightaway the cloud, if full of wet,  Extinguishes the fire with mighty noise;  As iron, white from the hot furnaces,  Sizzles, when speedily we've plunged its glow  Down the cold water. Further, if a cloud  More dry receive the fire, 'twill suddenly  Kindle to flame and burn with monstrous sound,  As if a flame with whirl of winds should range  Along the laurel-tressed mountains far,  Upburning with its vast assault those trees;  Nor is there aught that in the crackling flame  Consumes with sound more terrible to man  Than Delphic laurel of Apollo lord.  Oft, too, the multitudinous crash of ice  And down-pour of swift hail gives forth a sound  Among the mighty clouds on high; for when  The wind hath packed them close, each mountain mass  Of rain-cloud, there congealed utterly  And mixed with hail-stones, breaks and booms...
 Likewise, it lightens, when the clouds have struck,  By their collision, forth the seeds of fire:  As if a stone should smite a stone or steel,  For light then too leaps forth and fire then scatters  The shining sparks. But with our ears we get  The thunder after eyes behold the flash,  Because forever things arrive the ears  More tardily than the eyes--as thou mayst see  From this example too: when markest thou  Some man far yonder felling a great tree  With double-edged ax, it comes to pass  Thine eye beholds the swinging stroke before  The blow gives forth a sound athrough thine ears:  Thus also we behold the flashing ere  We hear the thunder, which discharged is  At same time with the fire and by same cause,  Born of the same collision.
 In following wise  The clouds suffuse with leaping light the lands,  And the storm flashes with tremulous elan:  When the wind hath invaded a cloud, and, whirling there,  Hath wrought (as I have shown above) the cloud  Into a hollow with a thickened crust,  It becomes hot of own velocity:  Just as thou seest how motion will o'erheat  And set ablaze all objects,--verily  A leaden ball, hurtling through length of space,  Even melts. Therefore, when this same wind a-fire  Hath split black cloud, it scatters the fire-seeds,  Which, so to say, have been pressed out by force  Of sudden from the cloud;--and these do make  The pulsing flashes of flame; thence followeth  The detonation which attacks our ears  More tardily than aught which comes along  Unto the sight of eyeballs. This takes place--  As know thou mayst--at times when clouds are dense  And one upon the other piled aloft  With wonderful upheavings--nor be thou  Deceived because we see how broad their base  From underneath, and not how high they tower.  For make thine observations at a time  When winds shall bear athwart the horizon's blue  Clouds like to mountain-ranges moving on,  Or when about the sides of mighty peaks  Thou seest them one upon the other massed  And burdening downward, anchored in high repose,  With the winds sepulchred on all sides round:  Then canst thou know their mighty masses, then  Canst view their caverns, as if builded there  Of beetling crags; which, when the hurricanes  In gathered storm have filled utterly,  Then, prisoned in clouds, they rave around  With mighty roarings, and within those dens  Bluster like savage beasts, and now from here,  And now from there, send growlings through the clouds,  And seeking an outlet, whirl themselves about,  And roll from 'mid the clouds the seeds of fire,  And heap them multitudinously there,  And in the hollow furnaces within  Wheel flame around, until from bursted cloud  In forky flashes they have gleamed forth.
 Again, from following cause it comes to pass  That yon swift golden hue of liquid fire  Darts downward to the earth: because the clouds  Themselves must hold abundant seeds of fire;  For, when they be without all moisture, then  They be for most part of a flamy hue  And a resplendent. And, indeed, they must  Even from the light of sun unto themselves  Take multitudinous seeds, and so perforce  Redden and pour their bright fires all abroad.  And therefore, when the wind hath driven and thrust,  Hath forced and squeezed into one spot these clouds,  They pour abroad the seeds of fire pressed out,  Which make to flash these colours of the flame.  Likewise, it lightens also when the clouds  Grow rare and thin along the sky; for, when  The wind with gentle touch unravels them  And breaketh asunder as they move, those seeds  Which make the lightnings must by nature fall;  At such an hour the horizon lightens round  Without the hideous terror of dread noise  And skiey uproar.
 To proceed apace,  What sort of nature thunderbolts possess  Is by their strokes made manifest and by  The brand-marks of their searing heat on things,  And by the scorched scars exhaling round  The heavy fumes of sulphur. For all these  Are marks, O not of wind or rain, but fire.  Again, they often enkindle even the roofs  Of houses and inside the very rooms  With swift flame hold a fierce dominion.  Know thou that nature fashioned this fire  Subtler than fires all other, with minute  And dartling bodies,--a fire 'gainst which there's naught  Can in the least hold out: the thunderbolt,  The mighty, passes through the hedging walls  Of houses, like to voices or a shout,--  Through stones, through bronze it passes, and it melts  Upon the instant bronze and gold; and makes,  Likewise, the wines sudden to vanish forth,  The wine-jars intact,--because, ye see,  Its heat arriving renders loose and porous  Readily all the wine--jar's earthen sides,  And winding its way within, it scattereth  The elements primordial of the wine  With speedy dissolution--process which  Even in an age the fiery steam of sun  Could not accomplish, however puissant he  With his hot coruscations: so much more  Agile and overpowering is this force.
 Now in what manner engendered are these things,  How fashioned of such impetuous strength  As to cleave towers asunder, and houses all  To overtopple, and to wrench apart  Timbers and beams, and heroes' monuments  To pile in ruins and upheave amain,  And to take breath forever out of men,  And to o'erthrow the cattle everywhere,--  Yes, by what force the lightnings do all this,  All this and more, I will unfold to thee,  Nor longer keep thee in mere promises.
 The bolts of thunder, then, must be conceived  As all begotten in those crasser clouds  Up-piled aloft; for, from the sky serene  And from the clouds of lighter density,  None are sent forth forever. That 'tis so  Beyond a doubt, fact plain to sense declares:  To wit, at such a time the densed clouds  So mass themselves through all the upper air  That we might think that round about all murk  Had parted forth from Acheron and filled  The mighty vaults of sky--so grievously,  As gathers thus the storm-clouds' gruesome might,  Do faces of black horror hang on high--  When tempest begins its thunderbolts to forge.  Besides, full often also out at sea  A blackest thunderhead, like cataract  Of pitch hurled down from heaven, and far away  Bulging with murkiness, down on the waves  Falls with vast uproar, and draws on amain  The darkling tempests big with thunderbolts  And hurricanes, itself the while so crammed  Tremendously with fires and winds, that even  Back on the lands the people shudder round  And seek for cover. Therefore, as I said,  The storm must be conceived as o'er our head  Towering most high; for never would the clouds  O'erwhelm the lands with such a massy dark,  Unless up-builded heap on lofty heap,  To shut the round sun off. Nor could the clouds,  As on they come, engulf with rain so vast  As thus to make the rivers overflow  And fields to float, if ether were not thus  Furnished with lofty-piled clouds. Lo, then,  Here be all things fulfilled with winds and fires--  Hence the long lightnings and the thunders loud.  For, verily, I've taught thee even now  How cavernous clouds hold seeds innumerable  Of fiery exhalations, and they must  From off the sunbeams and the heat of these  Take many still. And so, when that same wind  (Which, haply, into one region of the sky  Collects those clouds) hath pressed from out the same  The many fiery seeds, and with that fire  Hath at the same time inter-mixed itself,  O then and there that wind, a whirlwind now,  Deep in the belly of the cloud spins round  In narrow confines, and sharpens there inside  In glowing furnaces the thunderbolt.  For in a two-fold manner is that wind  Enkindled all: it trembles into heat  Both by its own velocity and by  Repeated touch of fire. Thereafter, when  The energy of wind is heated through  And the fierce impulse of the fire hath sped  Deeply within, O then the thunderbolt,  Now ripened, so to say, doth suddenly  Splinter the cloud, and the aroused flash  Leaps onward, lumining with forky light  All places round. And followeth anon  A clap so heavy that the skiey vaults,  As if asunder burst, seem from on high  To engulf the earth. Then fearfully a quake  Pervades the lands, and 'long the lofty skies  Run the far rumblings. For at such a time  Nigh the whole tempest quakes, shook through and through,  And roused are the roarings,--from which shock  Comes such resounding and abounding rain,  That all the murky ether seems to turn  Now into rain, and, as it tumbles down,  To summon the fields back to primeval floods:  So big the rains that be sent down on men  By burst of cloud and by the hurricane,  What time the thunder-clap, from burning bolt  That cracks the cloud, flies forth along. At times  The force of wind, excited from without,  Smiteth into a cloud already hot  With a ripe thunderbolt. And when that wind  Hath splintered that cloud, then down there cleaves forthwith  Yon fiery coil of flame which still we call,  Even with our fathers' word, a thunderbolt.  The same thing haps toward every other side  Whither that force hath swept. It happens, too,  That sometimes force of wind, though hurtled forth  Without all fire, yet in its voyage through space  Igniteth, whilst it comes along, along,--  Losing some larger bodies which cannot  Pass, like the others, through the bulks of air,--  And, scraping together out of air itself  Some smaller bodies, carries them along,  And these, commingling, by their flight make fire:  Much in the manner as oft a leaden ball  Grows hot upon its aery course, the while  It loseth many bodies of stark cold  And taketh into itself along the air  New particles of fire. It happens, too,  That force of blow itself arouses fire,  When force of wind, a-cold and hurtled forth  Without all fire, hath strook somewhere amain--  No marvel, because, when with terrific stroke  'Thas smitten, the elements of fiery-stuff  Can stream together from out the very wind  And, simultaneously, from out that thing  Which then and there receives the stroke: as flies  The fire when with the steel we hack the stone;  Nor yet, because the force of steel's a-cold,  Rush the less speedily together there  Under the stroke its seeds of radiance hot.  And therefore, thuswise must an object too  Be kindled by a thunderbolt, if haply  'Thas been adapt and suited to the flames.  Yet force of wind must not be rashly deemed  As altogether and entirely cold--  That force which is discharged from on high  With such stupendous power; but if 'tis not  Upon its course already kindled with fire,  It yet arriveth warmed and mixed with heat.
 And, now, the speed and stroke of thunderbolt  Is so tremendous, and with glide so swift  Those thunderbolts rush on and down, because  Their roused force itself collects itself  First always in the clouds, and then prepares  For the huge effort of their going-forth;  Next, when the cloud no longer can retain  The increment of their fierce impetus,  Their force is pressed out, and therefore flies  With impetus so wondrous, like to shots  Hurled from the powerful Roman catapults.  Note, too, this force consists of elements  Both small and smooth, nor is there aught that can  With ease resist such nature. For it darts  Between and enters through the pores of things;  And so it never falters in delay  Despite innumerable collisions, but  Flies shooting onward with a swift elan.  Next, since by nature always every weight  Bears downward, doubled is the swiftness then  And that elan is still more wild and dread,  When, verily, to weight are added blows,  So that more madly and more fiercely then  The thunderbolt shakes into shivers all  That blocks its path, following on its way.  Then, too, because it comes along, along  With one continuing elan, it must  Take on velocity anew, anew,  Which still increases as it goes, and ever  Augments the bolt's vast powers and to the blow  Gives larger vigour; for it forces all,  All of the thunder's seeds of fire, to sweep  In a straight line unto one place, as 'twere,--  Casting them one by other, as they roll,  Into that onward course. Again, perchance,  In coming along, it pulls from out the air  Some certain bodies, which by their own blows  Enkindle its velocity. And, lo,  It comes through objects leaving them unharmed,  It goes through many things and leaves them whole,  Because the liquid fire flieth along  Athrough their pores. And much it does transfix,  When these primordial atoms of the bolt  Have fallen upon the atoms of these things  Precisely where the intertwined atoms  Are held together. And, further, easily  Brass it unbinds and quickly fuseth gold,  Because its force is so minutely made  Of tiny parts and elements so smooth  That easily they wind their way within,  And, when once in, quickly unbind all knots  And loosen all the bonds of union there.
 And most in autumn is shaken the house of heaven,  The house so studded with the glittering stars,  And the whole earth around--most too in spring  When flowery times unfold themselves: for, lo,  In the cold season is there lack of fire,  And winds are scanty in the hot, and clouds  Have not so dense a bulk. But when, indeed,  The seasons of heaven are betwixt these twain,  The divers causes of the thunderbolt  Then all concur; for then both cold and heat  Are mixed in the cross-seas of the year,  So that a discord rises among things  And air in vast tumultuosity  Billows, infuriate with the fires and winds--  Of which the both are needed by the cloud  For fabrication of the thunderbolt.  For the first part of heat and last of cold  Is the time of spring; wherefore must things unlike  Do battle one with other, and, when mixed,  Tumultuously rage. And when rolls round  The latest heat mixed with the earliest chill--  The time which bears the name of autumn--then  Likewise fierce cold-spells wrestle with fierce heats.  On this account these seasons of the year  Are nominated "cross-seas."--And no marvel  If in those times the thunderbolts prevail  And storms are roused turbulent in heaven,  Since then both sides in dubious warfare rage  Tumultuously, the one with flames, the other  With winds and with waters mixed with winds.
 This, this it is, O Memmius, to see through  The very nature of fire-fraught thunderbolt;  O this it is to mark by what blind force  It maketh each effect, and not, O not  To unwind Etrurian scrolls oracular,  Inquiring tokens of occult will of gods,  Even as to whence the flying flame hath come,  Or to which half of heaven it turns, or how  Through walled places it hath wound its way,  Or, after proving its dominion there,  How it hath speeded forth from thence amain,  Or what the thunderstroke portends of ill  From out high heaven. But if Jupiter  And other gods shake those refulgent vaults  With dread reverberations and hurl fire  Whither it pleases each, why smite they not  Mortals of reckless and revolting crimes,  That such may pant from a transpierced breast  Forth flames of the red levin--unto men  A drastic lesson?--why is rather he--  O he self-conscious of no foul offence--  Involved in flames, though innocent, and clasped  Up-caught in skiey whirlwind and in fire?  Nay, why, then, aim they at eternal wastes,  And spend themselves in vain?--perchance, even so  To exercise their arms and strengthen shoulders?  Why suffer they the Father's javelin  To be so blunted on the earth? And why  Doth he himself allow it, nor spare the same  Even for his enemies? O why most oft  Aims he at lofty places? Why behold we  Marks of his lightnings most on mountain tops?  Then for what reason shoots he at the sea?--  What sacrilege have waves and bulk of brine  And floating fields of foam been guilty of?  Besides, if 'tis his will that we beware  Against the lightning-stroke, why feareth he  To grant us power for to behold the shot?  And, contrariwise, if wills he to o'erwhelm us,  Quite off our guard, with fire, why thunders he  Off in yon quarter, so that we may shun?  Why rouseth he beforehand darkling air  And the far din and rumblings? And O how  Canst thou believe he shoots at one same time  Into diverse directions? Or darest thou  Contend that never hath it come to pass  That divers strokes have happened at one time?  But oft and often hath it come to pass,  And often still it must, that, even as showers  And rains o'er many regions fall, so too  Dart many thunderbolts at one same time.  Again, why never hurtles Jupiter  A bolt upon the lands nor pours abroad  Clap upon clap, when skies are cloudless all?  Or, say, doth he, so soon as ever the clouds  Have come thereunder, then into the same  Descend in person, that from thence he may  Near-by decide upon the stroke of shaft?  And, lastly, why, with devastating bolt  Shakes he asunder holy shrines of gods  And his own thrones of splendour, and to-breaks  The well-wrought idols of divinities,  And robs of glory his own images  By wound of violence?
 But to return apace,  Easy it is from these same facts to know  In just what wise those things (which from their sort  The Greeks have named "bellows") do come down,  Discharged from on high, upon the seas.  For it haps that sometimes from the sky descends  Upon the seas a column, as if pushed,  Round which the surges seethe, tremendously  Aroused by puffing gusts; and whatso'er  Of ships are caught within that tumult then  Come into extreme peril, dashed along.  This haps when sometimes wind's aroused force  Can't burst the cloud it tries to, but down-weighs  That cloud, until 'tis like a column from sky  Upon the seas pushed downward--gradually,  As if a Somewhat from on high were shoved  By fist and nether thrust of arm, and lengthened  Far to the waves. And when the force of wind  Hath rived this cloud, from out the cloud it rushes  Down on the seas, and starts among the waves  A wondrous seething, for the eddying whirl  Descends and downward draws along with it  That cloud of ductile body. And soon as ever  'Thas shoved unto the levels of the main  That laden cloud, the whirl suddenly then  Plunges its whole self into the waters there  And rouses all the sea with monstrous roar,  Constraining it to seethe. It happens too  That very vortex of the wind involves  Itself in clouds, scraping from out the air  The seeds of cloud, and counterfeits, as 'twere,  The "bellows" pushed from heaven. And when this shape  Hath dropped upon the lands and burst apart,  It belches forth immeasurable might  Of whirlwind and of blast. Yet since 'tis formed  At most but rarely, and on land the hills  Must block its way, 'tis seen more oft out there  On the broad prospect of the level main  Along the free horizons.
 Into being  The clouds condense, when in this upper space  Of the high heaven have gathered suddenly,  As round they flew, unnumbered particles--  World's rougher ones, which can, though interlinked  With scanty couplings, yet be fastened firm,  The one on other caught. These particles  First cause small clouds to form; and, thereupon,  These catch the one on other and swarm in a flock  And grow by their conjoining, and by winds  Are borne along, along, until collects  The tempest fury. Happens, too, the nearer  The mountain summits neighbour to the sky,  The more unceasingly their far crags smoke  With the thick darkness of swart cloud, because  When first the mists do form, ere ever the eyes  Can there behold them (tenuous as they be),  The carrier-winds will drive them up and on  Unto the topmost summits of the mountain;  And then at last it happens, when they be  In vaster throng upgathered, that they can  By this very condensation lie revealed,  And that at same time they are seen to surge  From very vertex of the mountain up  Into far ether. For very fact and feeling,  As we up-climb high mountains, proveth clear  That windy are those upward regions free.  Besides, the clothes hung-out along the shore,  When in they take the clinging moisture, prove  That nature lifts from over all the sea  Unnumbered particles. Whereby the more  'Tis manifest that many particles  Even from the salt upheavings of the main  Can rise together to augment the bulk  Of massed clouds. For moistures in these twain  Are near akin. Besides, from out all rivers,  As well as from the land itself, we see  Up-rising mists and steam, which like a breath  Are forced out from them and borne aloft,  To curtain heaven with their murk, and make,  By slow foregathering, the skiey clouds.  For, in addition, lo, the heat on high  Of constellated ether burdens down  Upon them, and by sort of condensation  Weaveth beneath the azure firmament  The reek of darkling cloud. It happens, too,  That hither to the skies from the Beyond  Do come those particles which make the clouds  And flying thunderheads. For I have taught  That this their number is innumerable  And infinite the sum of the Abyss,  And I have shown with what stupendous speed  Those bodies fly and how they're wont to pass  Amain through incommunicable space.  Therefore, 'tis not exceeding strange, if oft  In little time tempest and darkness cover  With bulking thunderheads hanging on high  The oceans and the lands, since everywhere  Through all the narrow tubes of yonder ether,  Yea, so to speak, through all the breathing-holes  Of the great upper-world encompassing,  There be for the primordial elements  Exits and entrances.
 Now come, and how  The rainy moisture thickens into being  In the lofty clouds, and how upon the lands  'Tis then discharged in down-pour of large showers,  I will unfold. And first triumphantly  Will I persuade thee that up-rise together,  With clouds themselves, full many seeds of water  From out all things, and that they both increase--  Both clouds and water which is in the clouds--  In like proportion, as our frames increase  In like proportion with our blood, as well  As sweat or any moisture in our members.  Besides, the clouds take in from time to time  Much moisture risen from the broad marine,--  Whilst the winds bear them o'er the mighty sea,  Like hanging fleeces of white wool. Thuswise,  Even from all rivers is there lifted up  Moisture into the clouds. And when therein  The seeds of water so many in many ways  Have come together, augmented from all sides,  The close-jammed clouds then struggle to discharge  Their rain-storms for a two-fold reason: lo,  The wind's force crowds them, and the very excess  Of storm-clouds (massed in a vaster throng)  Giveth an urge and pressure from above  And makes the rains out-pour. Besides when, too,  The clouds are winnowed by the winds, or scattered  Smitten on top by heat of sun, they send  Their rainy moisture, and distil their drops,  Even as the wax, by fiery warmth on top,  Wasteth and liquefies abundantly.  But comes the violence of the bigger rains  When violently the clouds are weighted down  Both by their cumulated mass and by  The onset of the wind. And rains are wont  To endure awhile and to abide for long,  When many seeds of waters are aroused,  And clouds on clouds and racks on racks outstream  In piled layers and are borne along  From every quarter, and when all the earth  Smoking exhales her moisture. At such a time  When sun with beams amid the tempest-murk  Hath shone against the showers of black rains,  Then in the swart clouds there emerges bright  The radiance of the bow.
 And as to things  Not mentioned here which of themselves do grow  Or of themselves are gendered, and all things  Which in the clouds condense to being--all,  Snow and the winds, hail and the hoar-frosts chill,  And freezing, mighty force--of lakes and pools  The mighty hardener, and mighty check  Which in the winter curbeth everywhere  The rivers as they go--'tis easy still,  Soon to discover and with mind to see  How they all happen, whereby gendered,  When once thou well hast understood just what  Functions have been vouchsafed from of old  Unto the procreant atoms of the world.  Now come, and what the law of earthquakes is  Hearken, and first of all take care to know  That the under-earth, like to the earth around us,  Is full of windy caverns all about;  And many a pool and many a grim abyss  She bears within her bosom, ay, and cliffs  And jagged scarps; and many a river, hid  Beneath her chine, rolls rapidly along  Its billows and plunging boulders. For clear fact  Requires that earth must be in every part  Alike in constitution. Therefore, earth,  With these things underneath affixed and set,  Trembleth above, jarred by big down-tumblings,  When time hath undermined the huge caves,  The subterranean. Yea, whole mountains fall,  And instantly from spot of that big jar  There quiver the tremors far and wide abroad.  And with good reason: since houses on the street  Begin to quake throughout, when jarred by a cart  Of no large weight; and, too, the furniture  Within the house up-bounds, when a paving-block  Gives either iron rim of the wheels a jolt.  It happens, too, when some prodigious bulk  Of age-worn soil is rolled from mountain slopes  Into tremendous pools of water dark,  That the reeling land itself is rocked about  By the water's undulations; as a basin  Sometimes won't come to rest until the fluid  Within it ceases to be rocked about  In random undulations.
 And besides,  When subterranean winds, up-gathered there  In the hollow deeps, bulk forward from one spot,  And press with the big urge of mighty powers  Against the lofty grottos, then the earth  Bulks to that quarter whither push amain  The headlong winds. Then all the builded houses  Above ground--and the more, the higher up-reared  Unto the sky--lean ominously, careening  Into the same direction; and the beams,  Wrenched forward, over-hang, ready to go.  Yet dread men to believe that there awaits  The nature of the mighty world a time  Of doom and cataclysm, albeit they see  So great a bulk of lands to bulge and break!  And lest the winds blew back again, no force  Could rein things in nor hold from sure career  On to disaster. But now because those winds  Blow back and forth in alternation strong,  And, so to say, rallying charge again,  And then repulsed retreat, on this account  Earth oftener threatens than she brings to pass  Collapses dire. For to one side she leans,  Then back she sways; and after tottering  Forward, recovers then her seats of poise.  Thus, this is why whole houses rock, the roofs  More than the middle stories, middle more  Than lowest, and the lowest least of all.
 Arises, too, this same great earth-quaking,  When wind and some prodigious force of air,  Collected from without or down within  The old telluric deeps, have hurled themselves  Amain into those caverns sub-terrene,  And there at first tumultuously chafe  Among the vasty grottos, borne about  In mad rotations, till their lashed force  Aroused out-bursts abroad, and then and there,  Riving the deep earth, makes a mighty chasm--  What once in Syrian Sidon did befall,  And once in Peloponnesian Aegium,  Twain cities which such out-break of wild air  And earth's convulsion, following hard upon,  O'erthrew of old. And many a walled town,  Besides, hath fall'n by such omnipotent  Convulsions on the land, and in the sea  Engulfed hath sunken many a city down  With all its populace. But if, indeed,  They burst not forth, yet is the very rush  Of the wild air and fury-force of wind  Then dissipated, like an ague-fit,  Through the innumerable pores of earth,  To set her all a-shake--even as a chill,  When it hath gone into our marrow-bones,  Sets us convulsively, despite ourselves,  A-shivering and a-shaking. Therefore, men  With two-fold terror bustle in alarm  Through cities to and fro: they fear the roofs  Above the head; and underfoot they dread  The caverns, lest the nature of the earth  Suddenly rend them open, and she gape,  Herself asunder, with tremendous maw,  And, all confounded, seek to chock it full  With her own ruins. Let men, then, go on  Feigning at will that heaven and earth shall be  Inviolable, entrusted evermore  To an eternal weal: and yet at times  The very force of danger here at hand  Prods them on some side with this goad of fear--  This among others--that the earth, withdrawn  Abruptly from under their feet, be hurried down,  Down into the abyss, and the Sum-of-Things  Be following after, utterly fordone,  Till be but wrack and wreckage of a world.
EXTRAORDINARY AND PARADOXICAL TELLURIC  PHENOMENA
 In chief, men marvel nature renders not  Bigger and bigger the bulk of ocean, since  So vast the down-rush of the waters be,  And every river out of every realm  Cometh thereto; and add the random rains  And flying tempests, which spatter every sea  And every land bedew; add their own springs:  Yet all of these unto the ocean's sum  Shall be but as the increase of a drop.  Wherefore 'tis less a marvel that the sea,  The mighty ocean, increaseth not. Besides,  Sun with his heat draws off a mighty part:  Yea, we behold that sun with burning beams  To dry our garments dripping all with wet;  And many a sea, and far out-spread beneath,  Do we behold. Therefore, however slight  The portion of wet that sun on any spot  Culls from the level main, he still will take  From off the waves in such a wide expanse  Abundantly. Then, further, also winds,  Sweeping the level waters, can bear off  A mighty part of wet, since we behold  Oft in a single night the highways dried  By winds, and soft mud crusted o'er at dawn.  Again, I've taught thee that the clouds bear off  Much moisture too, up-taken from the reaches  Of the mighty main, and sprinkle it about  O'er all the zones, when rain is on the lands  And winds convey the aery racks of vapour.  Lastly, since earth is porous through her frame,  And neighbours on the seas, girdling their shores,  The water's wet must seep into the lands  From briny ocean, as from lands it comes  Into the seas. For brine is filtered off,  And then the liquid stuff seeps back again  And all re-poureth at the river-heads,  Whence in fresh-water currents it returns  Over the lands, adown the channels which  Were cleft erstwhile and erstwhile bore along  The liquid-footed floods.
 And now the cause  Whereby athrough the throat of Aetna's Mount  Such vast tornado-fires out-breathe at times,  I will unfold: for with no middling might  Of devastation the flamy tempest rose  And held dominion in Sicilian fields:  Drawing upon itself the upturned faces  Of neighbouring clans, what time they saw afar  The skiey vaults a-fume and sparkling all,  And filled their bosoms with dread anxiety  Of what new thing nature were travailing at.
 In these affairs it much behooveth thee  To look both wide and deep, and far abroad  To peer to every quarter, that thou mayst  Remember how boundless is the Sum-of-Things,  And mark how infinitely small a part  Of the whole Sum is this one sky of ours--  O not so large a part as is one man  Of the whole earth. And plainly if thou viewest  This cosmic fact, placing it square in front,  And plainly understandest, thou wilt leave  Wondering at many things. For who of us  Wondereth if some one gets into his joints  A fever, gathering head with fiery heat,  Or any other dolorous disease  Along his members? For anon the foot  Grows blue and bulbous; often the sharp twinge  Seizes the teeth, attacks the very eyes;  Out-breaks the sacred fire, and, crawling on  Over the body, burneth every part  It seizeth on, and works its hideous way  Along the frame. No marvel this, since, lo,  Of things innumerable be seeds enough,  And this our earth and sky do bring to us  Enough of bane from whence can grow the strength  Of maladies uncounted. Thuswise, then,  We must suppose to all the sky and earth  Are ever supplied from out the infinite  All things, O all in stores enough whereby  The shaken earth can of a sudden move,  And fierce typhoons can over sea and lands  Go tearing on, and Aetna's fires o'erflow,  And heaven become a flame-burst. For that, too,  Happens at times, and the celestial vaults  Glow into fire, and rainy tempests rise  In heavier congregation, when, percase,  The seeds of water have foregathered thus  From out the infinite. "Aye, but passing huge  The fiery turmoil of that conflagration!"  So sayst thou; well, huge many a river seems  To him that erstwhile ne'er a larger saw;  Thus, huge seems tree or man; and everything  Which mortal sees the biggest of each class,  That he imagines to be "huge"; though yet  All these, with sky and land and sea to boot,  Are all as nothing to the sum entire  Of the all-Sum.
 But now I will unfold  At last how yonder suddenly angered flame  Out-blows abroad from vasty furnaces  Aetnaean. First, the mountain's nature is  All under-hollow, propped about, about  With caverns of basaltic piers. And, lo,  In all its grottos be there wind and air--  For wind is made when air hath been uproused  By violent agitation. When this air  Is heated through and through, and, raging round,  Hath made the earth and all the rocks it touches  Horribly hot, and hath struck off from them  Fierce fire of swiftest flame, it lifts itself  And hurtles thus straight upwards through its throat  Into high heav'n, and thus bears on afar  Its burning blasts and scattereth afar  Its ashes, and rolls a smoke of pitchy murk  And heaveth the while boulders of wondrous weight--  Leaving no doubt in thee that 'tis the air's  Tumultuous power. Besides, in mighty part,  The sea there at the roots of that same mount  Breaks its old billows and sucks back its surf.  And grottos from the sea pass in below  Even to the bottom of the mountain's throat.  Herethrough thou must admit there go...
 And the conditions force [the water and air]  Deeply to penetrate from the open sea,  And to out-blow abroad, and to up-bear  Thereby the flame, and to up-cast from deeps  The boulders, and to rear the clouds of sand.  For at the top be "bowls," as people there  Are wont to name what we at Rome do call  The throats and mouths.
 There be, besides, some thing  Of which 'tis not enough one only cause  To state--but rather several, whereof one  Will be the true: lo, if thou shouldst espy  Lying afar some fellow's lifeless corse,  'Twere meet to name all causes of a death,  That cause of his death might thereby be named:  For prove thou mayst he perished not by steel,  By cold, nor even by poison nor disease,  Yet somewhat of this sort hath come to him  We know--And thus we have to say the same  In divers cases.
 Toward the summer, Nile  Waxeth and overfloweth the champaign,  Unique in all the landscape, river sole  Of the Aegyptians. In mid-season heats  Often and oft he waters Aegypt o'er,  Either because in summer against his mouths  Come those northwinds which at that time of year  Men name the Etesian blasts, and, blowing thus  Upstream, retard, and, forcing back his waves,  Fill him o'erfull and force his flow to stop.  For out of doubt these blasts which driven be  From icy constellations of the pole  Are borne straight up the river. Comes that river  From forth the sultry places down the south,  Rising far up in midmost realm of day,  Among black generations of strong men  With sun-baked skins. 'Tis possible, besides,  That a big bulk of piled sand may bar  His mouths against his onward waves, when sea,  Wild in the winds, tumbles the sand to inland;  Whereby the river's outlet were less free,  Likewise less headlong his descending floods.  It may be, too, that in this season rains  Are more abundant at its fountain head,  Because the Etesian blasts of those northwinds  Then urge all clouds into those inland parts.  And, soothly, when they're thus foregathered there,  Urged yonder into midmost realm of day,  Then, crowded against the lofty mountain sides,  They're massed and powerfully pressed. Again,  Perchance, his waters wax, O far away,  Among the Aethiopians' lofty mountains,  When the all-beholding sun with thawing beams  Drives the white snows to flow into the vales.
 Now come; and unto thee I will unfold,  As to the Birdless spots and Birdless tarns,  What sort of nature they are furnished with.  First, as to name of "birdless,"--that derives  From very fact, because they noxious be  Unto all birds. For when above those spots  In horizontal flight the birds have come,  Forgetting to oar with wings, they furl their sails,  And, with down-drooping of their delicate necks,  Fall headlong into earth, if haply such  The nature of the spots, or into water,  If haply spreads thereunder Birdless tarn.  Such spot's at Cumae, where the mountains smoke,  Charged with the pungent sulphur, and increased  With steaming springs. And such a spot there is  Within the walls of Athens, even there  On summit of Acropolis, beside  Fane of Tritonian Pallas bountiful,  Where never cawing crows can wing their course,  Not even when smoke the altars with good gifts,--  But evermore they flee--yet not from wrath  Of Pallas, grieved at that espial old,  As poets of the Greeks have sung the tale;  But very nature of the place compels.  In Syria also--as men say--a spot  Is to be seen, where also four-foot kinds,  As soon as ever they've set their steps within,  Collapse, o'ercome by its essential power,  As if there slaughtered to the under-gods.  Lo, all these wonders work by natural law,  And from what causes they are brought to pass  The origin is manifest; so, haply,  Let none believe that in these regions stands  The gate of Orcus, nor us then suppose,  Haply, that thence the under-gods draw down  Souls to dark shores of Acheron--as stags,  The wing-footed, are thought to draw to light,  By sniffing nostrils, from their dusky lairs  The wriggling generations of wild snakes.  How far removed from true reason is this,  Perceive thou straight; for now I'll try to say  Somewhat about the very fact.
 And, first,  This do I say, as oft I've said before:  In earth are atoms of things of every sort;  And know, these all thus rise from out the earth--  Many life-giving which be good for food,  And many which can generate disease  And hasten death, O many primal seeds  Of many things in many modes--since earth  Contains them mingled and gives forth discrete.  And we have shown before that certain things  Be unto certain creatures suited more  For ends of life, by virtue of a nature,  A texture, and primordial shapes, unlike  For kinds alike. Then too 'tis thine to see  How many things oppressive be and foul  To man, and to sensation most malign:  Many meander miserably through ears;  Many in-wind athrough the nostrils too,  Malign and harsh when mortal draws a breath;  Of not a few must one avoid the touch;  Of not a few must one escape the sight;  And some there be all loathsome to the taste;  And many, besides, relax the languid limbs  Along the frame, and undermine the soul  In its abodes within. To certain trees  There hath been given so dolorous a shade  That often they gender achings of the head,  If one but be beneath, outstretched on the sward.  There is, again, on Helicon's high hills  A tree that's wont to kill a man outright  By fetid odour of its very flower.  And when the pungent stench of the night-lamp,  Extinguished but a moment since, assails  The nostrils, then and there it puts to sleep  A man afflicted with the falling sickness  And foamings at the mouth. A woman, too,  At the heavy castor drowses back in chair,  And from her delicate fingers slips away  Her gaudy handiwork, if haply she  Hath got the whiff at menstruation-time.  Once more, if thou delayest in hot baths,  When thou art over-full, how readily  From stool in middle of the steaming water  Thou tumblest in a fit! How readily  The heavy fumes of charcoal wind their way  Into the brain, unless beforehand we  Of water 've drunk. But when a burning fever,  O'ermastering man, hath seized upon his limbs,  Then odour of wine is like a hammer-blow.  And seest thou not how in the very earth  Sulphur is gendered and bitumen thickens  With noisome stench?--What direful stenches, too,  Scaptensula out-breathes from down below,  When men pursue the veins of silver and gold,  With pick-axe probing round the hidden realms  Deep in the earth?--Or what of deadly bane  The mines of gold exhale? O what a look,  And what a ghastly hue they give to men!  And seest thou not, or hearest, how they're wont  In little time to perish, and how fail  The life-stores in those folk whom mighty power  Of grim necessity confineth there  In such a task? Thus, this telluric earth  Out-streams with all these dread effluvia  And breathes them out into the open world  And into the visible regions under heaven.
 Thus, too, those Birdless places must up-send  An essence bearing death to winged things,  Which from the earth rises into the breezes  To poison part of skiey space, and when  Thither the winged is on pennons borne,  There, seized by the unseen poison, 'tis ensnared,  And from the horizontal of its flight  Drops to the spot whence sprang the effluvium.  And when 'thas there collapsed, then the same power  Of that effluvium takes from all its limbs  The relics of its life. That power first strikes  The creatures with a wildering dizziness,  And then thereafter, when they're once down-fallen  Into the poison's very fountains, then  Life, too, they vomit out perforce, because  So thick the stores of bane around them fume.
 Again, at times it happens that this power,  This exhalation of the Birdless places,  Dispels the air betwixt the ground and birds,  Leaving well-nigh a void. And thither when  In horizontal flight the birds have come,  Forthwith their buoyancy of pennons limps,  All useless, and each effort of both wings  Falls out in vain. Here, when without all power  To buoy themselves and on their wings to lean,  Lo, nature constrains them by their weight to slip  Down to the earth, and lying prostrate there  Along the well-nigh empty void, they spend  Their souls through all the openings of their frame.
 Further, the water of wells is colder then  At summer time, because the earth by heat  Is rarefied, and sends abroad in air  Whatever seeds it peradventure have  Of its own fiery exhalations.  The more, then, the telluric ground is drained  Of heat, the colder grows the water hid  Within the earth. Further, when all the earth  Is by the cold compressed, and thus contracts  And, so to say, concretes, it happens, lo,  That by contracting it expresses then  Into the wells what heat it bears itself.
 'Tis said at Hammon's fane a fountain is,  In daylight cold and hot in time of night.  This fountain men be-wonder over-much,  And think that suddenly it seethes in heat  By intense sun, the subterranean, when  Night with her terrible murk hath cloaked the lands--  What's not true reasoning by a long remove:  I' faith when sun o'erhead, touching with beams  An open body of water, had no power  To render it hot upon its upper side,  Though his high light possess such burning glare,  How, then, can he, when under the gross earth,  Make water boil and glut with fiery heat?--  And, specially, since scarcely potent he  Through hedging walls of houses to inject  His exhalations hot, with ardent rays.  What, then's, the principle? Why, this, indeed:  The earth about that spring is porous more  Than elsewhere the telluric ground, and be  Many the seeds of fire hard by the water;  On this account, when night with dew-fraught shades  Hath whelmed the earth, anon the earth deep down  Grows chill, contracts; and thuswise squeezes out  Into the spring what seeds she holds of fire  (As one might squeeze with fist), which render hot  The touch and steam of the fluid. Next, when sun,  Up-risen, with his rays has split the soil  And rarefied the earth with waxing heat,  Again into their ancient abodes return  The seeds of fire, and all the Hot of water  Into the earth retires; and this is why  The fountain in the daylight gets so cold.  Besides, the water's wet is beat upon  By rays of sun, and, with the dawn, becomes  Rarer in texture under his pulsing blaze;  And, therefore, whatso seeds it holds of fire  It renders up, even as it renders oft  The frost that it contains within itself  And thaws its ice and looseneth the knots.  There is, moreover, a fountain cold in kind  That makes a bit of tow (above it held)  Take fire forthwith and shoot a flame; so, too,  A pitch-pine torch will kindle and flare round  Along its waves, wherever 'tis impelled  Afloat before the breeze. No marvel, this:  Because full many seeds of heat there be  Within the water; and, from earth itself  Out of the deeps must particles of fire  Athrough the entire fountain surge aloft,  And speed in exhalations into air  Forth and abroad (yet not in numbers enow  As to make hot the fountain). And, moreo'er,  Some force constrains them, scattered through the water,  Forthwith to burst abroad, and to combine  In flame above. Even as a fountain far  There is at Aradus amid the sea,  Which bubbles out sweet water and disparts  From round itself the salt waves; and, behold,  In many another region the broad main  Yields to the thirsty mariners timely help,  Belching sweet waters forth amid salt waves.  Just so, then, can those seeds of fire burst forth  Athrough that other fount, and bubble out  Abroad against the bit of tow; and when  They there collect or cleave unto the torch,  Forthwith they readily flash aflame, because  The tow and torches, also, in themselves  Have many seeds of latent fire. Indeed,  And seest thou not, when near the nightly lamps  Thou bringest a flaxen wick, extinguished  A moment since, it catches fire before  'Thas touched the flame, and in same wise a torch?  And many another object flashes aflame  When at a distance, touched by heat alone,  Before 'tis steeped in veritable fire.  This, then, we must suppose to come to pass  In that spring also.
 Now to other things!  And I'll begin to treat by what decree  Of nature it came to pass that iron can be  By that stone drawn which Greeks the magnet call  After the country's name (its origin  Being in country of Magnesian folk).  This stone men marvel at; and sure it oft  Maketh a chain of rings, depending, lo,  From off itself! Nay, thou mayest see at times  Five or yet more in order dangling down  And swaying in the delicate winds, whilst one  Depends from other, cleaving to under-side,  And ilk one feels the stone's own power and bonds--  So over-masteringly its power flows down.
 In things of this sort, much must be made sure  Ere thou account of the thing itself canst give,  And the approaches roundabout must be;  Wherefore the more do I exact of thee  A mind and ears attent.
 First, from all things  We see soever, evermore must flow,  Must be discharged and strewn about, about,  Bodies that strike the eyes, awaking sight.  From certain things flow odours evermore,  As cold from rivers, heat from sun, and spray  From waves of ocean, eater-out of walls  Along the coasts. Nor ever cease to seep  The varied echoings athrough the air.  Then, too, there comes into the mouth at times  The wet of a salt taste, when by the sea  We roam about; and so, whene'er we watch  The wormwood being mixed, its bitter stings.  To such degree from all things is each thing  Borne streamingly along, and sent about  To every region round; and nature grants  Nor rest nor respite of the onward flow,  Since 'tis incessantly we feeling have,  And all the time are suffered to descry  And smell all things at hand, and hear them sound.
 Now will I seek again to bring to mind  How porous a body all things have--a fact  Made manifest in my first canto, too.  For, truly, though to know this doth import  For many things, yet for this very thing  On which straightway I'm going to discourse,  'Tis needful most of all to make it sure  That naught's at hand but body mixed with void.  A first ensample: in grottos, rocks o'erhead  Sweat moisture and distil the oozy drops;  Likewise, from all our body seeps the sweat;  There grows the beard, and along our members all  And along our frame the hairs. Through all our veins  Disseminates the foods, and gives increase  And aliment down to the extreme parts,  Even to the tiniest finger-nails. Likewise,  Through solid bronze the cold and fiery heat  We feel to pass; likewise, we feel them pass  Through gold, through silver, when we clasp in hand  The brimming goblets. And, again, there flit  Voices through houses' hedging walls of stone;  Odour seeps through, and cold, and heat of fire  That's wont to penetrate even strength of iron.  Again, where corselet of the sky girds round
 And at same time, some Influence of bane,  When from Beyond 'thas stolen into [our world].  And tempests, gathering from the earth and sky,  Back to the sky and earth absorbed retire--  With reason, since there's naught that's fashioned not  With body porous.
 Furthermore, not all  The particles which be from things thrown off  Are furnished with same qualities for sense,  Nor be for all things equally adapt.  A first ensample: the sun doth bake and parch  The earth; but ice he thaws, and with his beams  Compels the lofty snows, up-reared white  Upon the lofty hills, to waste away;  Then, wax, if set beneath the heat of him,  Melts to a liquid. And the fire, likewise,  Will melt the copper and will fuse the gold,  But hides and flesh it shrivels up and shrinks.  The water hardens the iron just off the fire,  But hides and flesh (made hard by heat) it softens.  The oleaster-tree as much delights  The bearded she-goats, verily as though  'Twere nectar-steeped and shed ambrosia;  Than which is naught that burgeons into leaf  More bitter food for man. A hog draws back  For marjoram oil, and every unguent fears  Fierce poison these unto the bristled hogs,  Yet unto us from time to time they seem,  As 'twere, to give new life. But, contrariwise,  Though unto us the mire be filth most foul,  To hogs that mire doth so delightsome seem  That they with wallowing from belly to back  Are never cloyed.
 A point remains, besides,  Which best it seems to tell of, ere I go  To telling of the fact at hand itself.  Since to the varied things assigned be  The many pores, those pores must be diverse  In nature one from other, and each have  Its very shape, its own direction fixed.  And so, indeed, in breathing creatures be  The several senses, of which each takes in  Unto itself, in its own fashion ever,  Its own peculiar object. For we mark  How sounds do into one place penetrate,  Into another flavours of all juice,  And savour of smell into a third. Moreover,  One sort through rocks we see to seep, and, lo,  One sort to pass through wood, another still  Through gold, and others to go out and off  Through silver and through glass. For we do see  Through some pores form-and-look of things to flow,  Through others heat to go, and some things still  To speedier pass than others through same pores.  Of verity, the nature of these same paths,  Varying in many modes (as aforesaid)  Because of unlike nature and warp and woof  Of cosmic things, constrains it so to be.
 Wherefore, since all these matters now have been  Established and settled well for us  As premises prepared, for what remains  'Twill not be hard to render clear account  By means of these, and the whole cause reveal  Whereby the magnet lures the strength of iron.  First, stream there must from off the lode-stone seeds  Innumerable, a very tide, which smites  By blows that air asunder lying betwixt  The stone and iron. And when is emptied out  This space, and a large place between the two  Is made a void, forthwith the primal germs  Of iron, headlong slipping, fall conjoined  Into the vacuum, and the ring itself  By reason thereof doth follow after and go  Thuswise with all its body. And naught there is  That of its own primordial elements  More thoroughly knit or tighter linked coheres  Than nature and cold roughness of stout iron.  Wherefore, 'tis less a marvel what I said,  That from such elements no bodies can  From out the iron collect in larger throng  And be into the vacuum borne along,  Without the ring itself do follow after.  And this it does, and followeth on until  'Thath reached the stone itself and cleaved to it  By links invisible. Moreover, likewise,  The motion's assisted by a thing of aid  (Whereby the process easier becomes),--  Namely, by this: as soon as rarer grows  That air in front of the ring, and space between  Is emptied more and made a void, forthwith  It happens all the air that lies behind  Conveys it onward, pushing from the rear.  For ever doth the circumambient air  Drub things unmoved, but here it pushes forth  The iron, because upon one side the space  Lies void and thus receives the iron in.  This air, whereof I am reminding thee,  Winding athrough the iron's abundant pores  So subtly into the tiny parts thereof,  Shoves it and pushes, as wind the ship and sails.  The same doth happen in all directions forth:  From whatso side a space is made a void,  Whether from crosswise or above, forthwith  The neighbour particles are borne along  Into the vacuum; for of verity,  They're set a-going by poundings from elsewhere,  Nor by themselves of own accord can they  Rise upwards into the air. Again, all things  Must in their framework hold some air, because  They are of framework porous, and the air  Encompasses and borders on all things.  Thus, then, this air in iron so deeply stored  Is tossed evermore in vexed motion,  And therefore drubs upon the ring sans doubt  And shakes it up inside....
 In sooth, that ring is thither borne along  To where 'thas once plunged headlong--thither, lo,  Unto the void whereto it took its start.
 It happens, too, at times that nature of iron  Shrinks from this stone away, accustomed  By turns to flee and follow. Yea, I've seen  Those Samothracian iron rings leap up,  And iron filings in the brazen bowls  Seethe furiously, when underneath was set  The magnet stone. So strongly iron seems  To crave to flee that rock. Such discord great  Is gendered by the interposed brass,  Because, forsooth, when first the tide of brass  Hath seized upon and held possession of  The iron's open passage-ways, thereafter  Cometh the tide of the stone, and in that iron  Findeth all spaces full, nor now hath holes  To swim through, as before. 'Tis thus constrained  With its own current 'gainst the iron's fabric  To dash and beat; by means whereof it spues  Forth from itself--and through the brass stirs up--  The things which otherwise without the brass  It sucks into itself. In these affairs  Marvel thou not that from this stone the tide  Prevails not likewise other things to move  With its own blows: for some stand firm by weight,  As gold; and some cannot be moved forever,  Because so porous in their framework they  That there the tide streams through without a break,  Of which sort stuff of wood is seen to be.  Therefore, when iron (which lies between the two)  Hath taken in some atoms of the brass,  Then do the streams of that Magnesian rock  Move iron by their smitings.
 Yet these things  Are not so alien from others, that I  Of this same sort am ill prepared to name  Ensamples still of things exclusively  To one another adapt. Thou seest, first,  How lime alone cementeth stones: how wood  Only by glue-of-bull with wood is joined--  So firmly too that oftener the boards  Crack open along the weakness of the grain  Ere ever those taurine bonds will lax their hold.  The vine-born juices with the water-springs  Are bold to mix, though not the heavy pitch  With the light oil-of-olive. And purple dye  Of shell-fish so uniteth with the wool's  Body alone that it cannot be ta'en  Away forever--nay, though thou gavest toil  To restore the same with the Neptunian flood,  Nay, though all ocean willed to wash it out  With all its waves. Again, gold unto gold  Doth not one substance bind, and only one?  And is not brass by tin joined unto brass?  And other ensamples how many might one find!  What then? Nor is there unto thee a need  Of such long ways and roundabout, nor boots it  For me much toil on this to spend. More fit  It is in few words briefly to embrace  Things many: things whose textures fall together  So mutually adapt, that cavities  To solids correspond, these cavities  Of this thing to the solid parts of that,  And those of that to solid parts of this--  Such joinings are the best. Again, some things  Can be the one with other coupled and held,  Linked by hooks and eyes, as 'twere; and this  Seems more the fact with iron and this stone.  Now, of diseases what the law, and whence  The Influence of bane upgathering can  Upon the race of man and herds of cattle  Kindle a devastation fraught with death,  I will unfold. And, first, I've taught above  That seeds there be of many things to us  Life-giving, and that, contrariwise, there must  Fly many round bringing disease and death.  When these have, haply, chanced to collect  And to derange the atmosphere of earth,  The air becometh baneful. And, lo, all  That Influence of bane, that pestilence,  Or from Beyond down through our atmosphere,  Like clouds and mists, descends, or else collects  From earth herself and rises, when, a-soak  And beat by rains unseasonable and suns,  Our earth hath then contracted stench and rot.  Seest thou not, also, that whoso arrive  In region far from fatherland and home  Are by the strangeness of the clime and waters  Distempered?--since conditions vary much.  For in what else may we suppose the clime  Among the Britons to differ from Aegypt's own  (Where totters awry the axis of the world),  Or in what else to differ Pontic clime  From Gades' and from climes adown the south,  On to black generations of strong men  With sun-baked skins? Even as we thus do see  Four climes diverse under the four main-winds  And under the four main-regions of the sky,  So, too, are seen the colour and face of men  Vastly to disagree, and fixed diseases  To seize the generations, kind by kind:  There is the elephant-disease which down  In midmost Aegypt, hard by streams of Nile,  Engendered is--and never otherwhere.  In Attica the feet are oft attacked,  And in Achaean lands the eyes. And so  The divers spots to divers parts and limbs  Are noxious; 'tis a variable air  That causes this. Thus when an atmosphere,  Alien by chance to us, begins to heave,  And noxious airs begin to crawl along,  They creep and wind like unto mist and cloud,  Slowly, and everything upon their way  They disarrange and force to change its state.  It happens, too, that when they've come at last  Into this atmosphere of ours, they taint  And make it like themselves and alien.  Therefore, asudden this devastation strange,  This pestilence, upon the waters falls,  Or settles on the very crops of grain  Or other meat of men and feed of flocks.  Or it remains a subtle force, suspense  In the atmosphere itself; and when therefrom  We draw our inhalations of mixed air,  Into our body equally its bane  Also we must suck in. In manner like,  Oft comes the pestilence upon the kine,  And sickness, too, upon the sluggish sheep.  Nor aught it matters whether journey we  To regions adverse to ourselves and change  The atmospheric cloak, or whether nature  Herself import a tainted atmosphere  To us or something strange to our own use  Which can attack us soon as ever it come.
THE PLAGUE ATHENS
 'Twas such a manner of disease, 'twas such  Mortal miasma in Cecropian lands  Whilom reduced the plains to dead men's bones,  Unpeopled the highways, drained of citizens  The Athenian town. For coming from afar,  Rising in lands of Aegypt, traversing  Reaches of air and floating fields of foam,  At last on all Pandion's folk it swooped;  Whereat by troops unto disease and death  Were they o'er-given. At first, they'd bear about  A skull on fire with heat, and eyeballs twain  Red with suffusion of blank glare. Their throats,  Black on the inside, sweated oozy blood;  And the walled pathway of the voice of man  Was clogged with ulcers; and the very tongue,  The mind's interpreter, would trickle gore,  Weakened by torments, tardy, rough to touch.  Next when that Influence of bane had chocked,  Down through the throat, the breast, and streamed had  E'en into sullen heart of those sick folk,  Then, verily, all the fences of man's life  Began to topple. From the mouth the breath  Would roll a noisome stink, as stink to heaven  Rotting cadavers flung unburied out.  And, lo, thereafter, all the body's strength  And every power of mind would languish, now  In very doorway of destruction.  And anxious anguish and ululation (mixed  With many a groan) companioned alway  The intolerable torments. Night and day,  Recurrent spasms of vomiting would rack  Alway their thews and members, breaking down  With sheer exhaustion men already spent.  And yet on no one's body couldst thou mark  The skin with o'er-much heat to burn aglow,  But rather the body unto touch of hands  Would offer a warmish feeling, and thereby  Show red all over, with ulcers, so to say,  Inbranded, like the "sacred fires" o'erspread  Along the members. The inward parts of men,  In truth, would blaze unto the very bones;  A flame, like flame in furnaces, would blaze  Within the stomach. Nor couldst aught apply  Unto their members light enough and thin  For shift of aid--but coolness and a breeze  Ever and ever. Some would plunge those limbs  On fire with bane into the icy streams,  Hurling the body naked into the waves;  Many would headlong fling them deeply down  The water-pits, tumbling with eager mouth  Already agape. The insatiable thirst  That whelmed their parched bodies, lo, would make  A goodly shower seem like to scanty drops.  Respite of torment was there none. Their frames  Forspent lay prone. With silent lips of fear  Would Medicine mumble low, the while she saw  So many a time men roll their eyeballs round,  Staring wide-open, unvisited of sleep,  The heralds of old death. And in those months  Was given many another sign of death:  The intellect of mind by sorrow and dread  Deranged, the sad brow, the countenance  Fierce and delirious, the tormented ears  Beset with ringings, the breath quick and short  Or huge and intermittent, soaking sweat  A-glisten on neck, the spittle in fine gouts  Tainted with colour of crocus and so salt,  The cough scarce wheezing through the rattling throat.  Aye, and the sinews in the fingered hands  Were sure to contract, and sure the jointed frame  To shiver, and up from feet the cold to mount  Inch after inch: and toward the supreme hour  At last the pinched nostrils, nose's tip  A very point, eyes sunken, temples hollow,  Skin cold and hard, the shuddering grimace,  The pulled and puffy flesh above the brows!--  O not long after would their frames lie prone  In rigid death. And by about the eighth  Resplendent light of sun, or at the most  On the ninth flaming of his flambeau, they  Would render up the life. If any then  Had 'scaped the doom of that destruction, yet  Him there awaited in the after days  A wasting and a death from ulcers vile  And black discharges of the belly, or else  Through the clogged nostrils would there ooze along  Much fouled blood, oft with an aching head:  Hither would stream a man's whole strength and flesh.  And whoso had survived that virulent flow  Of the vile blood, yet into thews of him  And into his joints and very genitals  Would pass the old disease. And some there were,  Dreading the doorways of destruction  So much, lived on, deprived by the knife  Of the male member; not a few, though lopped  Of hands and feet, would yet persist in life,  And some there were who lost their eyeballs: O  So fierce a fear of death had fallen on them!  And some, besides, were by oblivion  Of all things seized, that even themselves they knew  No longer. And though corpse on corpse lay piled  Unburied on ground, the race of birds and beasts  Would or spring back, scurrying to escape  The virulent stench, or, if they'd tasted there,  Would languish in approaching death. But yet  Hardly at all during those many suns  Appeared a fowl, nor from the woods went forth  The sullen generations of wild beasts--  They languished with disease and died and died.  In chief, the faithful dogs, in all the streets  Outstretched, would yield their breath distressfully  For so that Influence of bane would twist  Life from their members. Nor was found one sure  And universal principle of cure:  For what to one had given the power to take  The vital winds of air into his mouth,  And to gaze upward at the vaults of sky,  The same to others was their death and doom.
 In those affairs, O awfullest of all,  O pitiable most was this, was this:  Whoso once saw himself in that disease  Entangled, ay, as damned unto death,  Would lie in wanhope, with a sullen heart,  Would, in fore-vision of his funeral,  Give up the ghost, O then and there. For, lo,  At no time did they cease one from another  To catch contagion of the greedy plague,--  As though but woolly flocks and horned herds;  And this in chief would heap the dead on dead:  For who forbore to look to their own sick,  O these (too eager of life, of death afeard)  Would then, soon after, slaughtering Neglect  Visit with vengeance of evil death and base--  Themselves deserted and forlorn of help.  But who had stayed at hand would perish there  By that contagion and the toil which then  A sense of honour and the pleading voice  Of weary watchers, mixed with voice of wail  Of dying folk, forced them to undergo.  This kind of death each nobler soul would meet.  The funerals, uncompanioned, forsaken,  Like rivals contended to be hurried through.
 And men contending to ensepulchre  Pile upon pile the throng of their own dead:  And weary with woe and weeping wandered home;  And then the most would take to bed from grief.  Nor could be found not one, whom nor disease  Nor death, nor woe had not in those dread times  Attacked.
 By now the shepherds and neatherds all,  Yea, even the sturdy guiders of curved ploughs,  Began to sicken, and their bodies would lie  Huddled within back-corners of their huts,  Delivered by squalor and disease to death.  O often and often couldst thou then have seen  On lifeless children lifeless parents prone,  Or offspring on their fathers', mothers' corpse  Yielding the life. And into the city poured  O not in least part from the countryside  That tribulation, which the peasantry  Sick, sick, brought thither, thronging from every quarter,  Plague-stricken mob. All places would they crowd,  All buildings too; whereby the more would death  Up-pile a-heap the folk so crammed in town.  Ah, many a body thirst had dragged and rolled  Along the highways there was lying strewn  Besides Silenus-headed water-fountains,--  The life-breath choked from that too dear desire  Of pleasant waters. Ah, everywhere along  The open places of the populace,  And along the highways, O thou mightest see  Of many a half-dead body the sagged limbs,  Rough with squalor, wrapped around with rags,  Perish from very nastiness, with naught  But skin upon the bones, well-nigh already  Buried--in ulcers vile and obscene filth.  All holy temples, too, of deities  Had Death becrammed with the carcasses;  And stood each fane of the Celestial Ones  Laden with stark cadavers everywhere--  Places which warders of the shrines had crowded  With many a guest. For now no longer men  Did mightily esteem the old Divine,  The worship of the gods: the woe at hand  Did over-master. Nor in the city then  Remained those rites of sepulture, with which  That pious folk had evermore been wont  To buried be. For it was wildered all  In wild alarms, and each and every one  With sullen sorrow would bury his own dead,  As present shift allowed. And sudden stress  And poverty to many an awful act  Impelled; and with a monstrous screaming they  Would, on the frames of alien funeral pyres,  Place their own kin, and thrust the torch beneath  Oft brawling with much bloodshed round about  Rather than quit dead bodies loved in life.