The sea and the earth, the breaking forth and the breaking up, are joined by the καί <“and”> in verse 334, to which corresponds the τε <“also”> in verse 338.

Let us now hear the antistrophe to all this. It names the flock of birds in the air, the animal life in the water, the bull and stallion in the mountains. The living thing, lightly dreaming, whose cycle of life reverberates in itself and in its environs, constantly renews itself, streaming out over itself in ever new forms, and yet it remains in its own single route, it is familiar with the place where it spends the night and roams. As a living thing, it is fitted into the sway of the sea and the earth. Into this life that revolves within itself, its ambit, structure, and ground unfamiliar to them, humans cast their snares and nets; they tear this life away from its own order, enclose it in their paddocks and pens, and force it beneath the yoke. In one arena, breaking forth and breaking up; in the other, capturing and subjugating.—

At this point, before the transition to the second strophe and its antistrophe, we must insert a remark in order to ward off a widespread misinterpretation of this entire poem that lies in wait for modern humanity. We have already alluded to the fact that [119|164] this is not a matter of describing and clarifying the domains and behavior of the human, who is one being among many; instead, this is a poetic projection of human Being on the basis of its extreme possibilities and limits. In this way, we have also warded off the other opinion, according to which the ode recounts the development of humanity from a wild huntsman and a traveler by dugout canoe, to a builder of cities and person of culture. These are notions from cultural anthropology and the psychology of primitives. They arise from falsely transferring a science of nature that is already untrue in itself to human Being. The fundamental error that underlies such ways of thinking is the opinion that the inception of history is primitive and backward, clumsy and weak.