De Rerum Natura

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