They are borne back again into their old Religious fears, and adopt pitiless lords, Whom in their misery they believe to be Almighty; for they are ignorant of what can And what cannot exist; in fine they know not Upon what principle each thing has its powers Limited, and its deep-set boundary stone. But now, lest I detain you with more promises, In the first place consider, Memmius, The seas, the land, the sky, whose threefold nature, Three bodies, three forms so dissimilar, And three such wondrous textures, a single day Shall give to destruction, and the world’s vast mass And fabric, for so many years upheld, Shall fall to ruin. Nor am I unaware How novel and strange, when first it strikes the mind, Must appear this destruction of earth and heaven That is to be, and for myself how difficult It will prove to convince you by mere words, As happens when one brings to a man’s ears Some notion unfamiliar hitherto, If yet one cannot thrust it visibly Beneath his eyes, or place it in his hands; For the paved highway of belief through touch And sight leads straightest into the human heart And the precincts of the mind. Yet none the less I will speak out. Reality itself It may be will bring credence to my words, And in a little while you will behold The earth terribly quaking, and all things Shattered to ruins. But may pilot fortune Steer far from us such disaster, and may reason Convince us rather than reality That the whole universe may well collapse, Tumbling together with a dread crash and roar.