Do know their horned dams, and butting lambs The flocks of sheep, and thus they patter on, Unfailingly each to its proper teat, As nature intends. Lastly, with any grain, Thou'lt see that no one kernel in one kind Is so far like another, that there still Is not in shapes some difference running through. By a like law we see how earth is pied With shells and conchs, where, with soft waves, the sea Beats on the thirsty sands of curving shores. Wherefore again, again, since seeds of things Exist by nature, nor were wrought with hands After a fixed pattern of one other, They needs must flitter to and fro with shapes In types dissimilar to one another. ***** Easy enough by thought of mind to solve Why fires of lightning more can penetrate Than these of ours from pitch-pine born on earth. For thou canst say lightning's celestial fire, So subtle, is formed of figures finer far, And passes thus through holes which this our fire, Born from the wood, created from the pine, Cannot. Again, light passes through the horn On the lantern's side, while rain is dashed away. And why?--unless those bodies of light should be Finer than those of water's genial showers. We see how quickly through a colander The wines will flow; how, on the other hand, The sluggish olive-oil delays: no doubt, Because 'tis wrought of elements more large, Or else more crook'd and intertangled. Thus It comes that the primordials cannot be So suddenly sundered one from other, and seep, One through each several hole of anything.