De Rerum Natura: Proemium

Life giving and sustaining mother of men
And the race of gods, Rome’s progenitor stirring
The ocean whose palms shore ships
And Earth’s veins to sweeten our fruits,
Since it is your work that conceives the genus
Of every animate species born to see suns,
(The winds are winging before you,
The clouds that beckon your advent,
While the earth paints the water with lilies,
While the slopping of the sea grows still
And the pleasure of the sky reflects on light.)
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