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.