Vapours

Scarce stand the vessels hauled upon the beach, / and bent on marriages the young men vie / to till new settlements, while I to each / due law dispense and dwelling place supply, / when from a tainted quarter of the sky / rank vapours, gathering, on my comrades seize, / and a foul pestilence creeps down from high / on mortal limbs and standing crops and trees, / a season black with death, and pregnant with disease.

The atmosphere is supposed to extend itself about five miles round this globe of earth, and within that space move all kind of vapours exhaled by the sun's force, or protruded by the subterraneous heat.