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.
