On the Nature of Things Part 16

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 s.p.a.ce, 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 pa.s.s In that spring also.

Now to other things!

And I'll begin to treat by what decree Of nature it came to pa.s.s 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 pa.s.s; likewise, we feel them pa.s.s Through gold, through silver, when we clasp in hand The br.i.m.m.i.n.g 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 fas.h.i.+oned 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 a.s.signed 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 fas.h.i.+on 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 pa.s.s through wood, another still Through gold, and others to go out and off Through silver and through gla.s.s. 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 pa.s.s 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 s.p.a.ce, 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 a.s.sisted 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 s.p.a.ce between Is emptied more and made a void, forthwith It happens all the air that lies behind Conveys it onward, pus.h.i.+ng from the rear.

For ever doth the circ.u.mambient air Drub things unmoved, but here it pushes forth The iron, because upon one side the s.p.a.ce 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 s.h.i.+p and sails.

The same doth happen in all directions forth: From whatso side a s.p.a.ce 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 Encompa.s.ses 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 bra.s.s, Because, forsooth, when first the tide of bra.s.s Hath seized upon and held possession of The iron's open pa.s.sage-ways, thereafter Cometh the tide of the stone, and in that iron Findeth all s.p.a.ces 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 bra.s.s stirs up-- The things which otherwise without the bra.s.s 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 bra.s.s, 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 sh.e.l.l-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 bra.s.s by tin joined unto bra.s.s?

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 eyeb.a.l.l.s 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 s.h.i.+ft 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 p.r.o.ne. With silent lips of fear Would Medicine mumble low, the while she saw So many a time men roll their eyeb.a.l.l.s 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 s.h.i.+ver, 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 p.r.o.ne 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 pa.s.s 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 eyeb.a.l.l.s: 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.