Left with their liquid bodies pure and free, And each more lighter than the next below; And ether, most light and liquid of the three, Floats on above the long aerial winds, Nor with the brawling of the winds of air Mingles its liquid body. It doth leave All there--those under-realms below her heights-- There to be overset in whirlwinds wild,-- Doth leave all there to brawl in wayward gusts, Whilst, gliding with a fixed impulse still, Itself it bears its fires along. For, lo, That ether can flow thus steadily on, on, With one unaltered urge, the Pontus proves-- That sea which floweth forth with fixed tides, Keeping one onward tenor as it glides.
And that the earth may there abide at rest In the mid-region of the world, it needs Must vanish bit by bit in weight and lessen, And have another substance underneath, Conjoined to it from its earliest age In linked unison with the vasty world's Realms of the air in which it roots and lives.
On this account, the earth is not a load, Nor presses down on winds of air beneath; Even as unto a man his members be Without all weight--the head is not a load Unto the neck; nor do we feel the whole Weight of the body to centre in the feet.
But whatso weights come on us from without, Weights laid upon us, these harass and chafe, Though often far lighter. For to such degree It matters always what the innate powers Of any given thing may be. The earth Was, then, no alien substance fetched amain, And from no alien firmament cast down On alien air; but was conceived, like air, In the first origin of this the world, As a fixed portion of the same, as now Our members are seen to be a part of us.
Besides, the earth, when of a sudden shook By the big thunder, doth with her motion shake All that's above her--which she ne'er could do By any means, were earth not bounden fast Unto the great world's realms of air and sky: For they cohere together with common roots, Conjoined both, even from their earliest age, In linked unison. Aye, seest thou not That this most subtle energy of soul Supports our body, though so heavy a weight,-- Because, indeed, 'tis with it so conjoined In linked unison? What power, in sum, Can raise with agile leap our body aloft, Save energy of mind which steers the limbs?
Now seest thou not how powerful may be A subtle nature, when conjoined it is With heavy body, as air is with the earth Conjoined, and energy of mind with us?
Now let us sing what makes the stars to move.
In first place, if the mighty sphere of heaven Revolveth round, then needs we must aver That on the upper and the under pole Presses a certain air, and from without Confines them and encloseth at each end; And that, moreover, another air above Streams on athwart the top of the sphere and tends In same direction as are rolled along The glittering stars of the eternal world; Or that another still streams on below To whirl the sphere from under up and on In opposite direction--as we see The rivers turn the wheels and water-scoops.
It may be also that the heavens do all Remain at rest, whilst yet are borne along The lucid constellations; either because Swift tides of ether are by sky enclosed, And whirl around, seeking a passage out, And everywhere make roll the starry fires Through the Summanian regions of the sky; Or else because some air, streaming along From an eternal quarter off beyond, Whileth the driven fires, or, then, because The fires themselves have power to creep along, Going wherever their food invites and calls, And feeding their flaming bodies everywhere Throughout the sky. Yet which of these is cause In this our world 'tis hard to say for sure; But what can be throughout the universe, In divers worlds on divers plan create, This only do I show, and follow on To assign unto the motions of the stars Even several causes which 'tis possible Exist throughout the universal All; Of which yet one must be the cause even here Which maketh motion for our constellations.
Yet to decide which one of them it be Is not the least the business of a man Advancing step by cautious step, as I.
Nor can the sun's wheel larger be by much Nor its own blaze much less than either seems Unto our senses. For from whatso spaces Fires have the power on us to cast their beams And blow their scorching exhalations forth Against our members, those same distances Take nothing by those intervals away From bulk of flames; and to the sight the fire Is nothing shrunken. Therefore, since the heat And the outpoured light of skiey sun Arrive our senses and caress our limbs, Form too and bigness of the sun must look Even here from earth just as they really be, So that thou canst scarce nothing take or add.
And whether the journeying moon illuminate The regions round with bastard beams, or throw From off her proper body her own light,-- Whichever it be, she journeys with a form Naught larger than the form doth seem to be Which we with eyes of ours perceive. For all The far removed objects of our gaze Seem through much air confused in their look Ere minished in their bigness. Wherefore, moon, Since she presents bright look and clear-cut form, May there on high by us on earth be seen Just as she is with extreme bounds defined, And just of the size. And lastly, whatso fires Of ether thou from earth beholdest, these Thou mayst consider as possibly of size The least bit less, or larger by a hair Than they appear--since whatso fires we view Here in the lands of earth are seen to change From time to time their size to less or more Only the least, when more or less away, So long as still they bicker clear, and still Their glow's perceived.
Nor need there be for men Astonishment that yonder sun so small Can yet send forth so great a light as fills Oceans and all the lands and sky aflood, And with its fiery exhalations steeps The world at large. For it may be, indeed, That one vast-flowing well-spring of the whole Wide world from here hath opened and out-gushed, And shot its light abroad; because thuswise The elements of fiery exhalations From all the world around together come, And thuswise flow into a bulk so big That from one single fountain-head may stream This heat and light. And seest thou not, indeed, How widely one small water-spring may wet The meadow-lands at times and flood the fields?
'Tis even possible, besides, that heat From forth the sun's own fire, albeit that fire Be not a great, may permeate the air With the fierce hot--if but, perchance, the air Be of condition and so tempered then As to be kindled, even when beat upon Only by little particles of heat-- Just as we sometimes see the standing grain Or stubble straw in conflagration all From one lone spark. And possibly the sun, Agleam on high with rosy lampion, Possesses about him with invisible heats A plenteous fire, by no effulgence marked, So that he maketh, he, the Fraught-with-fire, Increase to such degree the force of rays.
Nor is there one sure cause revealed to men How the sun journeys from his summer haunts On to the mid-most winter turning-points In Capricorn, the thence reverting veers Back to solstitial goals of Cancer; nor How 'tis the moon is seen each month to cross That very distance which in traversing The sun consumes the measure of a year.
I say, no one clear reason hath been given For these affairs. Yet chief in likelihood Seemeth the doctrine which the holy thought Of great Democritus lays down: that ever The nearer the constellations be to earth The less can they by whirling of the sky Be borne along, because those skiey powers Of speed aloft do vanish and decrease In under-regions, and the sun is thus Left by degrees behind amongst those signs That follow after, since the sun he lies Far down below the starry signs that blaze; And the moon lags even tardier than the sun: In just so far as is her course removed From upper heaven and nigh unto the lands, In just so far she fails to keep the pace With starry signs above; for just so far As feebler is the whirl that bears her on, (Being, indeed, still lower than the sun), In just so far do all the starry signs, Circling around, o'ertake her and o'erpass.
Therefore it happens that the moon appears More swiftly to return to any sign Along the Zodiac, than doth the sun, Because those signs do visit her again More swiftly than they visit the great sun.
It can be also that two streams of air Alternately at fixed periods Blow out from transverse regions of the world, Of which the one may thrust the sun away From summer-signs to mid-most winter goals And rigors of the cold, and the other then May cast him back from icy shades of chill Even to the heat-fraught regions and the signs That blaze along the Zodiac. So, too, We must suppose the moon and all the stars, Which through the mighty and sidereal years Roll round in mighty orbits, may be sped By streams of air from regions alternate.
Seest thou not also how the clouds be sped By contrary winds to regions contrary, The lower clouds diversely from the upper?
Then, why may yonder stars in ether there Along their mighty orbits not be borne By currents opposite the one to other?
But night o'erwhelms the lands with vasty murk Either when sun, after his diurnal course, Hath walked the ultimate regions of the sky And wearily hath panted forth his fires, Shivered by their long journeying and wasted By traversing the multitudinous air, Or else because the self-same force that drave His orb along above the lands compels Him then to turn his course beneath the lands.
Matuta also at a fixed hour Spreadeth the roseate morning out along The coasts of heaven and deploys the light, Either because the self-same sun, returning Under the lands, aspires to seize the sky, Striving to set it blazing with his rays Ere he himself appear, or else because Fires then will congregate and many seeds Of heat are wont, even at a fixed time, To stream together--gendering evermore New suns and light. Just so the story goes That from the Idaean mountain-tops are seen Dispersed fires upon the break of day Which thence combine, as 'twere, into one ball And form an orb. Nor yet in these affairs Is aught for wonder that these seeds of fire Can thus together stream at time so fixed And shape anew the splendour of the sun.
For many facts we see which come to pass At fixed time in all things: burgeon shrubs At fixed time, and at a fixed time They cast their flowers; and Eld commands the teeth, At time as surely fixed, to drop away, And Youth commands the growing boy to bloom With the soft down and let from both his cheeks The soft beard fall. And lastly, thunder-bolts, Snow, rains, clouds, winds, at seasons of the year Nowise unfixed, all do come to pass.
For where, even from their old primordial start Causes have ever worked in such a way, And where, even from the world's first origin, Thuswise have things befallen, so even now After a fixed order they come round In sequence also.
Likewise, days may wax Whilst the nights wane, and daylight minished be Whilst nights do take their augmentations, Either because the self-same sun, coursing Under the lands and over in two arcs, A longer and a briefer, doth dispart The coasts of ether and divides in twain His orbit all unequally, and adds, As round he's borne, unto the one half there As much as from the other half he's ta'en, Until he then arrives that sign of heaven Where the year's node renders the shades of night Equal unto the periods of light.
For when the sun is midway on his course Between the blasts of northwind and of south, Heaven keeps his two goals parted equally, By virtue of the fixed position old Of the whole starry Zodiac, through which That sun, in winding onward, takes a year, Illumining the sky and all the lands With oblique light--as men declare to us Who by their diagrams have charted well Those regions of the sky which be adorned With the arranged signs of Zodiac.
Or else, because in certain parts the air Under the lands is denser, the tremulous Bright beams of fire do waver tardily, Nor easily can penetrate that air Nor yet emerge unto their rising-place: For this it is that nights in winter time Do linger long, ere comes the many-rayed Round Badge of the day. Or else because, as said, In alternating seasons of the year Fires, now more quick, and now more slow, are wont To stream together,--the fires which make the sun To rise in some one spot--therefore it is That those men seem to speak the truth [who hold A new sun is with each new daybreak born].
The moon she possibly doth shine because Strook by the rays of sun, and day by day May turn unto our gaze her light, the more She doth recede from orb of sun, until, Facing him opposite across the world, She hath with full effulgence gleamed abroad, And, at her rising as she soars above, Hath there observed his setting; thence likewise She needs must hide, as 'twere, her light behind By slow degrees, the nearer now she glides, Along the circle of the Zodiac, From her far place toward fires of yonder sun,-- As those men hold who feign the moon to be Just like a ball and to pursue a course Betwixt the sun and earth. There is, again, Some reason to suppose that moon may roll With light her very own, and thus display The varied shapes of her resplendence there.
For near her is, percase, another body, Invisible, because devoid of light, Borne on and gliding all along with her, Which in three modes may block and blot her disk.
Again, she may revolve upon herself, Like to a ball's sphere--if perchance that be-- One half of her dyed o'er with glowing light, And by the revolution of that sphere She may beget for us her varying shapes, Until she turns that fiery part of her Full to the sight and open eyes of men; Thence by slow stages round and back she whirls, Withdrawing thus the luminiferous part Of her sphered mass and ball, as, verily, The Babylonian doctrine of Chaldees, Refuting the art of Greek astrologers, Labours, in opposition, to prove sure-- As if, forsooth, the thing for which each fights, Might not alike be true,--or aught there were Wherefore thou mightest risk embracing one More than the other notion. Then, again, Why a new moon might not forevermore Created be with fixed successions there Of shapes and with configurations fixed, And why each day that bright created moon Might not miscarry and another be, In its stead and place, engendered anew, 'Tis hard to show by reason, or by words To prove absurd--since, lo, so many things Can be create with fixed successions: Spring-time and Venus come, and Venus' boy, The winged harbinger, steps on before, And hard on Zephyr's foot-prints Mother Flora, Sprinkling the ways before them, filleth all With colours and with odours excellent; Whereafter follows arid Heat, and he Companioned is by Ceres, dusty one, And by the Etesian Breezes of the north; Then cometh Autumn on, and with him steps Lord Bacchus, and then other Seasons too And other Winds do follow--the high roar Of great Volturnus, and the Southwind strong With thunder-bolts. At last earth's Shortest-Day Bears on to men the snows and brings again The numbing cold. And Winter follows her, His teeth with chills a-chatter. Therefore, 'tis The less a marvel, if at fixed time A moon is thus begotten and again At fixed time destroyed, since things so many Can come to being thus at fixed time.
Likewise, the sun's eclipses and the moon's Far occultations rightly thou mayst deem As due to several causes. For, indeed, Why should the moon be able to shut out Earth from the light of sun, and on the side To earthward thrust her high head under sun, Opposing dark orb to his glowing beams-- And yet, at same time, one suppose the effect Could not result from some one other body Which glides devoid of light forevermore?
Again, why could not sun, in weakened state, At fixed time for-lose his fires, and then, When he has passed on along the air Beyond the regions, hostile to his flames, That quench and kill his fires, why could not he Renew his light? And why should earth in turn Have power to rob the moon of light, and there, Herself on high, keep the sun hid beneath, Whilst the moon glideth in her monthly course Athrough the rigid shadows of the cone?-- And yet, at same time, some one other body Not have the power to under-pass the moon, Or glide along above the orb of sun, Breaking his rays and outspread light asunder?
And still, if moon herself refulgent be With her own sheen, why could she not at times In some one quarter of the mighty world Grow weak and weary, whilst she passeth through Regions unfriendly to the beams her own?
ORIGINS OF VEGETABLE AND ANIMAL LIFE And now to what remains!--Since I've resolved By what arrangements all things come to pass Through the blue regions of the mighty world,-- How we can know what energy and cause Started the various courses of the sun And the moon's goings, and by what far means They can succumb, the while with thwarted light, And veil with shade the unsuspecting lands, When, as it were, they blink, and then again With open eye survey all regions wide, Resplendent with white radiance--I do now Return unto the world's primeval age And tell what first the soft young fields of earth With earliest parturition had decreed To raise in air unto the shores of light And to entrust unto the wayward winds.
In the beginning, earth gave forth, around The hills and over all the length of plains, The race of grasses and the shining green; The flowery meadows sparkled all aglow With greening colour, and thereafter, lo, Unto the divers kinds of trees was given An emulous impulse mightily to shoot, With a free rein, aloft into the air.
As feathers and hairs and bristles are begot The first on members of the four-foot breeds And on the bodies of the strong-y-winged, Thus then the new Earth first of all put forth Grasses and shrubs, and afterward begat The mortal generations, there upsprung-- Innumerable in modes innumerable-- After diverging fashions. For from sky These breathing-creatures never can have dropped, Nor the land-dwellers ever have come up Out of sea-pools of salt. How true remains, How merited is that adopted name Of earth--"The Mother!"--since from out the earth Are all begotten. And even now arise From out the loams how many living things-- Concreted by the rains and heat of the sun.
Wherefore 'tis less a marvel, if they sprang In Long Ago more many, and more big, Matured of those days in the fresh young years Of earth and ether. First of all, the race Of the winged ones and parti-coloured birds, Hatched out in spring-time, left their eggs behind; As now-a-days in summer tree-crickets Do leave their shiny husks of own accord, Seeking their food and living. Then it was This earth of thine first gave unto the day The mortal generations; for prevailed Among the fields abounding hot and wet.
And hence, where any fitting spot was given, There 'gan to grow womb-cavities, by roots Affixed to earth. And when in ripened time The age of the young within (that sought the air And fled earth's damps) had burst these wombs, O then Would Nature thither turn the pores of earth And make her spurt from open veins a juice Like unto milk; even as a woman now Is filled, at child-bearing, with the sweet milk, Because all that swift stream of aliment Is thither turned unto the mother-breasts.
There earth would furnish to the children food; Warmth was their swaddling cloth, the grass their bed Abounding in soft down. Earth's newness then Would rouse no dour spells of the bitter cold, Nor extreme heats nor winds of mighty powers-- For all things grow and gather strength through time In like proportions; and then earth was young.
Wherefore, again, again, how merited Is that adopted name of Earth--The Mother!-- Since she herself begat the human race, And at one well-nigh fixed time brought forth Each breast that ranges raving round about Upon the mighty mountains and all birds Aerial with many a varied shape.
But, lo, because her bearing years must end, She ceased, like to a woman worn by eld.
For lapsing aeons change the nature of The whole wide world, and all things needs must take One status after other, nor aught persists Forever like itself. All things depart; Nature she changeth all, compelleth all To transformation. Lo, this moulders down, A-slack with weary eld, and that, again, Prospers in glory, issuing from contempt.
In suchwise, then, the lapsing aeons change The nature of the whole wide world, and earth Taketh one status after other. And what She bore of old, she now can bear no longer, And what she never bore, she can to-day.
In those days also the telluric world Strove to beget the monsters that upsprung With their astounding visages and limbs-- The Man-woman--a thing betwixt the twain, Yet neither, and from either sex remote-- Some gruesome Boggles orphaned of the feet, Some widowed of the hands, dumb Horrors too Without a mouth, or blind Ones of no eye, Or Bulks all shackled by their legs and arms Cleaving unto the body fore and aft, Thuswise, that never could they do or go, Nor shun disaster, nor take the good they would.
And other prodigies and monsters earth Was then begetting of this sort--in vain, Since Nature banned with horror their increase, And powerless were they to reach unto The coveted flower of fair maturity, Or to find aliment, or to intertwine In works of Venus. For we see there must Concur in life conditions manifold, If life is ever by begetting life To forge the generations one by one: First, foods must be; and, next, a path whereby The seeds of impregnation in the frame May ooze, released from the members all; Last, the possession of those instruments Whereby the male with female can unite, The one with other in mutual ravishments.
And in the ages after monsters died, Perforce there perished many a stock, unable By propagation to forge a progeny.
For whatsoever creatures thou beholdest Breathing the breath of life, the same have been Even from their earliest age preserved alive By cunning, or by valour, or at least By speed of foot or wing. And many a stock Remaineth yet, because of use to man, And so committed to man's guardianship.
Valour hath saved alive fierce lion-breeds And many another terrorizing race, Cunning the foxes, flight the antlered stags.
Light-sleeping dogs with faithful heart in breast, However, and every kind begot from seed Of beasts of draft, as, too, the woolly flocks And horned cattle, all, my Memmius, Have been committed to guardianship of men.
For anxiously they fled the savage beasts, And peace they sought and their abundant foods, Obtained with never labours of their own, Which we secure to them as fit rewards For their good service. But those beasts to whom Nature has granted naught of these same things-- Beasts quite unfit by own free will to thrive And vain for any service unto us In thanks for which we should permit their kind To feed and be in our protection safe-- Those, of a truth, were wont to be exposed, Enshackled in the gruesome bonds of doom, As prey and booty for the rest, until Nature reduced that stock to utter death.
But Centaurs ne'er have been, nor can there be Creatures of twofold stock and double frame, Compact of members alien in kind, Yet formed with equal function, equal force In every bodily part--a fact thou mayst, However dull thy wits, well learn from this: The horse, when his three years have rolled away, Flowers in his prime of vigour; but the boy Not so, for oft even then he gropes in sleep After the milky nipples of the breasts, An infant still. And later, when at last The lusty powers of horses and stout limbs, Now weak through lapsing life, do fail with age, Lo, only then doth youth with flowering years Begin for boys, and clothe their ruddy cheeks With the soft down. So never deem, percase, That from a man and from the seed of horse, The beast of draft, can Centaurs be composed Or e'er exist alive, nor Scyllas be-- The half-fish bodies girdled with mad dogs-- Nor others of this sort, in whom we mark Members discordant each with each; for ne'er At one same time they reach their flower of age Or gain and lose full vigour of their frame, And never burn with one same lust of love, And never in their habits they agree, Nor find the same foods equally delightsome-- Sooth, as one oft may see the bearded goats Batten upon the hemlock which to man Is violent poison. Once again, since flame Is wont to scorch and burn the tawny bulks Of the great lions as much as other kinds Of flesh and blood existing in the lands, How could it be that she, Chimaera lone, With triple body--fore, a lion she; And aft, a dragon; and betwixt, a goat-- Might at the mouth from out the body belch Infuriate flame? Wherefore, the man who feigns Such beings could have been engendered When earth was new and the young sky was fresh (Basing his empty argument on new) May babble with like reason many whims Into our ears: he'll say, perhaps, that then Rivers of gold through every landscape flowed, That trees were wont with precious stones to flower, Or that in those far aeons man was born With such gigantic length and lift of limbs As to be able, based upon his feet, Deep oceans to bestride or with his hands To whirl the firmament around his head.
For though in earth were many seeds of things In the old time when this telluric world First poured the breeds of animals abroad, Still that is nothing of a sign that then Such hybrid creatures could have been begot And limbs of all beasts heterogeneous Have been together knit; because, indeed, The divers kinds of grasses and the grains And the delightsome trees--which even now Spring up abounding from within the earth-- Can still ne'er be begotten with their stems Begrafted into one; but each sole thing Proceeds according to its proper wont And all conserve their own distinctions based In nature's fixed decree.
ORIGINS AND SAVAGE PERIOD OF MANKIND But mortal man Was then far hardier in the old champaign, As well he should be, since a hardier earth Had him begotten; builded too was he Of bigger and more solid bones within, And knit with stalwart sinews through the flesh, Nor easily seized by either heat or cold, Or alien food or any ail or irk.
And whilst so many lustrums of the sun Rolled on across the sky, men led a life After the roving habit of wild beasts.
Not then were sturdy guiders of curved ploughs, And none knew then to work the fields with iron, Or plant young shoots in holes of delved loam, Or lop with hooked knives from off high trees The boughs of yester-year. What sun and rains To them had given, what earth of own accord Created then, was boon enough to glad Their simple hearts. Mid acorn-laden oaks Would they refresh their bodies for the nonce; And the wild berries of the arbute-tree, Which now thou seest to ripen purple-red In winter time, the old telluric soil Would bear then more abundant and more big.
And many coarse foods, too, in long ago The blooming freshness of the rank young world Produced, enough for those poor wretches there.
And rivers and springs would summon them of old To slake the thirst, as now from the great hills The water's down-rush calls aloud and far The thirsty generations of the wild.
So, too, they sought the grottos of the Nymphs-- The woodland haunts discovered as they ranged-- From forth of which they knew that gliding rills With gush and splash abounding laved the rocks, The dripping rocks, and trickled from above Over the verdant moss; and here and there Welled up and burst across the open flats.
As yet they knew not to enkindle fire Against the cold, nor hairy pelts to use And clothe their bodies with the spoils of beasts; But huddled in groves, and mountain-caves, and woods, And 'mongst the thickets hid their squalid backs, When driven to flee the lashings of the winds And the big rains. Nor could they then regard The general good, nor did they know to use In common any customs, any laws: Whatever of booty fortune unto each Had proffered, each alone would bear away, By instinct trained for self to thrive and live.
And Venus in the forests then would link The lovers' bodies; for the woman yielded Either from mutual flame, or from the man's Impetuous fury and insatiate lust, Or from a bribe--as acorn-nuts, choice pears, Or the wild berries of the arbute-tree.
And trusting wondrous strength of hands and legs, They'd chase the forest-wanderers, the beasts; And many they'd conquer, but some few they fled, A-skulk into their hiding-places...***** With the flung stones and with the ponderous heft Of gnarled branch. And by the time of night O'ertaken, they would throw, like bristly boars, Their wildman's limbs naked upon the earth, Rolling themselves in leaves and fronded boughs.
Nor would they call with lamentations loud Around the fields for daylight and the sun, Quaking and wand'ring in shadows of the night; But, silent and buried in a sleep, they'd wait Until the sun with rosy flambeau brought The glory to the sky. From childhood wont Ever to see the dark and day begot In times alternate, never might they be Wildered by wild misgiving, lest a night Eternal should possess the lands, with light Of sun withdrawn forever. But their care Was rather that the clans of savage beasts Would often make their sleep-time horrible For those poor wretches; and, from home y-driven, They'd flee their rocky shelters at approach Of boar, the spumy-lipped, or lion strong, And in the midnight yield with terror up To those fierce guests their beds of out-spread leaves.
And yet in those days not much more than now Would generations of mortality Leave the sweet light of fading life behind.
Indeed, in those days here and there a man, More oftener snatched upon, and gulped by fangs, Afforded the beasts a food that roared alive, Echoing through groves and hills and forest-trees, Even as he viewed his living flesh entombed Within a living grave; whilst those whom flight Had saved, with bone and body bitten, shrieked, Pressing their quivering palms to loathsome sores, With horrible voices for eternal death-- Until, forlorn of help, and witless what Might medicine their wounds, the writhing pangs Took them from life. But not in those far times Would one lone day give over unto doom A soldiery in thousands marching on Beneath the battle-banners, nor would then The ramping breakers of the main seas dash Whole argosies and crews upon the rocks.
But ocean uprisen would often rave in vain, Without all end or outcome, and give up Its empty menacings as lightly too; Nor soft seductions of a serene sea Could lure by laughing billows any man Out to disaster: for the science bold Of ship-sailing lay dark in those far times.
Again, 'twas then that lack of food gave o'er Men's fainting limbs to dissolution: now 'Tis plenty overwhelms. Unwary, they Oft for themselves themselves would then outpour The poison; now, with nicer art, themselves They give the drafts to others.
BEGINNINGS OF CIVILIZATION Afterwards, When huts they had procured and pelts and fire, And when the woman, joined unto the man, Withdrew with him into one dwelling place, ***** Were known; and when they saw an offspring born From out themselves, then first the human race Began to soften. For 'twas now that fire Rendered their shivering frames less staunch to bear,