The ceaseless mutability of the created elements has been thus magnificently described:—
“For know, whatever was created needs
To be sustain’d and fed; of elements
The grosser feeds the purer, earth the sea,
Earth and the sea feed air, the air those fires
Ethereal, and as lowest first the Moon;
Whence in her visage round those spots, unpurg’d
Vapours not yet into her substance turn’d.
Nor doth the Moon no nourishment exhale
From her moist continent to higher orbs.