De Rerum Natura

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.

. . . . . .

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