And part of the soil is called to wash away In storms and streams shave close and gnaw the rocks. Besides, whatever the earth feeds and grows Is restored to earth. And since she surely is The womb of all things and their common grave, Earth must dwindle, you see and take on growth again.

So potent was religion in persuading to evil deeds.

Pleasant it to behold great encounters of warfare arrayed over the plains, with no part of yours in peril.

Mother of Aeneas, pleasure of men and gods. -Aeneadum genetrix, hominum divomque voluptas

Globed from the atoms falling slow or swift I see the suns, I see the systems lift Their forms; and even the systems and the suns Shall go back slowly to the eternal drift.

I return to the newborn world, and the soft-soil fields, What their first birthing lifted to the shores Of light, and trusted to the wayward winds. First the Earth gave the shimmer of greenery And grasses to deck the hills; then over the meadows The flowering fields are bright with the color of springtime, And for all the trees that shoot into the air.

Do we not see all humans unaware Of what they want, and always searching everywhere, And changing place, as if to drop the load they bear?