Elsewhere Dante describes the lightning as fleeing its proper place when it strikes the earth:
“‘but lightning, fleeing its proper site, ne’er
darted as dost thou who art returning thither.’”[39]
And again:
“‘so from this course sometimes departeth the
creature that hath power, thus thrust, to swerve
to-ward some other part,
(even as fire may be seen to dart down from
the cloud) if its first rush be wrenched aside
to earth by false seeming pleasure.’”[40]
The same thought of the tendency of fire to rise and of earth to sink is found in Chaucer’s translation of Boethius:[41]
“Thou bindest the elements by noumbres proporcionables, ... that the fyr, that is purest, ne flee nat over hye, ne that the hevinesse ne drawe nat adoun over-lowe the erthes that ben plounged in the wateres.”
Chaucer does not make specific mention of the spheres of the elements, but he tells us plainly that each element has been assigned its proper region from which it may not escape:
“For with that faire cheyne of love he bond
The fyr, the eyr, the water, and the lond
In certeyn boundes, that they may nat flee;”[42]
The position of the elements in the universe is nevertheless made clear without specific reference to their respective spheres. The spirit of the slain Troilus ascends through the spheres to the seventh heaven, leaving behind the elements:
“And whan that he was slayn in this manere,
His lighte goost ful blisfully is went
Up to the holownesse of the seventh spere,
In converse letinge every element.”[43]