Things, Celalba mine, have I seen strange:
the sundering of clouds, winds swear and shout,
high towers their foundations bend to kiss,
the earth its very bowels vomit out;

sturdy bridges break, like tender reeds,
prodigious streams, fierce rivers swelled by rain,
poorly traversed by ingenuity,
by mountains even worse their surge restrained;

the days of Noah, people perched atop
the tallest pine trees that approach the sky
the strong beech trees in their enormity.

Shepherds, dogs, herd animals and huts
I saw afloat, with neither form nor life,
and I feared nothing but my misery.