Likewise the occultations of the sun And the moon’s vanishings you must suppose May be produced by many different causes. For why should the moon be able to shut out The earth from the sun’s light, and lift her head On high to obstruct him from the earthward side, Blocking his fiery beams with her dark orb, And yet at the same time some other body Gliding on without light continually Should be supposed unable to do this? Why too should not the sun at a fixed time Grow faint and lose his fires, and then again Revive his light, when he has had to pass Through tracts of air so hostile to his flames That awhile his fires are quenched by them and perish? And why should the earth have power in turn to rob The moon of light, and likewise keep the sun Suppressed, while in her monthly course the moon Glides through the clear-cut shadows of the cone, And yet at the same time some other body Should not have power to pass under the moon, Or glide above the sun’s orb, breaking off The beams of light he sheds? And furthermore, If the moon shines with her own radiance, Why in a certain region of the world Might she not grow faint, while she makes her way Through tracts that are unfriendly to her light? Now since I have demonstrated how each thing Might come to pass throughout the azure spaces Of the great heaven, how we may know what force Can cause the varying motions of the sun, And wanderings of the moon, and in what way Their light being intercepted they might vanish Covering with darkness the astonished earth, When as it were they close their eye of light, And opening it again, survey all places Radiant with shining brightness,--therefore now I will go back to the world’s infancy And the tender age of the world’s fields, and show What in their first fecundity they resolved To raise into the borders of the light And give in charge unto the wayward winds.