Lucius Seneca - Yale Required Reading - Collected Works (Vol. 2)

A blast more gentle yet uptwists tall trees

And sucks them madly from their deepest roots.

Besides, among the clouds are waves, and these

Give, as they roughly break, a rumbling roar;

As when along deep streams or the great sea

Breaks the loud surf. It happens, too, whenever

Out from one cloud into another falls

The fiery energy of thunderbolt,

That straightaway the cloud, if full of wet,

Extinguishes the fire with mighty noise;

As iron, white from the hot furnaces,

Sizzles, when speedily we've plunged its glow

Down the cold water. Further, if a cloud

More dry receive the fire, 'twill suddenly

Kindle to flame and burn with monstrous sound,

As if a flame with whirl of winds should range

Along the laurel-tressed mountains far,

Upburning with its vast assault those trees;

Nor is there aught that in the crackling flame

Consumes with sound more terrible to man

Than Delphic laurel of Apollo lord.

Oft, too, the multitudinous crash of ice

And down-pour of swift hail gives forth a sound

Among the mighty clouds on high; for when

The wind hath packed them close, each mountain mass

Of rain-cloud, there congealed utterly

And mixed with hail-stones, breaks and booms...

Likewise, it lightens, when the clouds have struck,

By their collision, forth the seeds of fire:

As if a stone should smite a stone or steel,

For light then too leaps forth and fire then scatters

The shining sparks. But with our ears we get

The thunder after eyes behold the flash,

Because forever things arrive the ears

More tardily than the eyes—as thou mayst see

From this example too: when markest thou

Some man far yonder felling a great tree

With double-edged ax, it comes to pass

Thine eye beholds the swinging stroke before

The blow gives forth a sound athrough thine ears:

Thus also we behold the flashing ere

We hear the thunder, which discharged is

At same time with the fire and by same cause,

Born of the same collision.

In following wise

The clouds suffuse with leaping light the lands,

And the storm flashes with tremulous elan:

When the wind hath invaded a cloud, and, whirling there,

Hath wrought (as I have shown above) the cloud

Into a hollow with a thickened crust,

It becomes hot of own velocity:

Just as thou seest how motion will o'erheat

And set ablaze all objects,—verily

A leaden ball, hurtling through length of space,

Even melts. Therefore, when this same wind a-fire

Hath split black cloud, it scatters the fire-seeds,

Which, so to say, have been pressed out by force

Of sudden from the cloud;—and these do make

The pulsing flashes of flame; thence followeth

The detonation which attacks our ears

More tardily than aught which comes along

Unto the sight of eyeballs. This takes place—

As know thou mayst—at times when clouds are dense

And one upon the other piled aloft

With wonderful upheavings—nor be thou

Deceived because we see how broad their base

From underneath, and not how high they tower.

For make thine observations at a time

When winds shall bear athwart the horizon's blue

Clouds like to mountain-ranges moving on,

Or when about the sides of mighty peaks

Thou seest them one upon the other massed

And burdening downward, anchored in high repose,

With the winds sepulchred on all sides round:

Then canst thou know their mighty masses, then

Canst view their caverns, as if builded there

Of beetling crags; which, when the hurricanes

In gathered storm have filled utterly,

Then, prisoned in clouds, they rave around

With mighty roarings, and within those dens

Bluster like savage beasts, and now from here,

And now from there, send growlings through the clouds,

And seeking an outlet, whirl themselves about,

And roll from 'mid the clouds the seeds of fire,

And heap them multitudinously there,

And in the hollow furnaces within

Wheel flame around, until from bursted cloud

In forky flashes they have gleamed forth.

Again, from following cause it comes to pass

That yon swift golden hue of liquid fire

Darts downward to the earth: because the clouds

Themselves must hold abundant seeds of fire;

For, when they be without all moisture, then

They be for most part of a flamy hue

And a resplendent. And, indeed, they must

Even from the light of sun unto themselves

Take multitudinous seeds, and so perforce

Redden and pour their bright fires all abroad.

And therefore, when the wind hath driven and thrust,

Hath forced and squeezed into one spot these clouds,

They pour abroad the seeds of fire pressed out,

Which make to flash these colours of the flame.

Likewise, it lightens also when the clouds

Grow rare and thin along the sky; for, when

The wind with gentle touch unravels them

And breaketh asunder as they move, those seeds

Which make the lightnings must by nature fall;

At such an hour the horizon lightens round

Without the hideous terror of dread noise

And skiey uproar.

To proceed apace,

What sort of nature thunderbolts possess

Is by their strokes made manifest and by

The brand-marks of their searing heat on things,

And by the scorched scars exhaling round

The heavy fumes of sulphur. For all these

Are marks, O not of wind or rain, but fire.

Again, they often enkindle even the roofs

Of houses and inside the very rooms

With swift flame hold a fierce dominion.

Know thou that nature fashioned this fire

Subtler than fires all other, with minute

And dartling bodies,—a fire 'gainst which there's naught

Can in the least hold out: the thunderbolt,

The mighty, passes through the hedging walls

Of houses, like to voices or a shout,—

Through stones, through bronze it passes, and it melts

Upon the instant bronze and gold; and makes,

Likewise, the wines sudden to vanish forth,

The wine-jars intact,—because, ye see,

Its heat arriving renders loose and porous

Readily all the wine—jar's earthen sides,

And winding its way within, it scattereth

The elements primordial of the wine

With speedy dissolution—process which

Even in an age the fiery steam of sun

Could not accomplish, however puissant he

With his hot coruscations: so much more

Agile and overpowering is this force.

Now in what manner engendered are these things,

How fashioned of such impetuous strength

As to cleave towers asunder, and houses all

To overtopple, and to wrench apart

Timbers and beams, and heroes' monuments

To pile in ruins and upheave amain,

And to take breath forever out of men,

And to o'erthrow the cattle everywhere,—

Yes, by what force the lightnings do all this,

All this and more, I will unfold to thee,

Nor longer keep thee in mere promises.

The bolts of thunder, then, must be conceived

As all begotten in those crasser clouds

Up-piled aloft; for, from the sky serene

And from the clouds of lighter density,

None are sent forth forever. That 'tis so

Beyond a doubt, fact plain to sense declares:

To wit, at such a time the densed clouds

So mass themselves through all the upper air

That we might think that round about all murk

Had parted forth from Acheron and filled

The mighty vaults of sky—so grievously,

As gathers thus the storm-clouds' gruesome might,

Do faces of black horror hang on high—