第66章

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 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.