De Rerum Natura
Lucretius
Lucretius. De Rerum Natura. William Ellery Leonard. E. P. Dutton. 1916.
- O who can build with puissant breast a song
- Worthy the majesty of these great finds?
- Or who in words so strong that he can frame
- The fit laudations for deserts of him
- Who left us heritors of such vast prizes,
- By his own breast discovered and sought out?-
- There shall be none, methinks, of mortal stock.
- For if must needs be named for him the name
- Demanded by the now known majesty
- Of these high matters, then a god was he,-
- Hear me, illustrious Memmius- a god;
- Who first and chief found out that plan of life
- Which now is called philosophy, and who
- By cunning craft, out of such mighty waves,
- Out of such mighty darkness, moored life
- In havens so serene, in light so clear.
- Compare those old discoveries divine
- Of others: lo, according to the tale,
- Ceres established for mortality
- The grain, and Bacchus juice of vine-born grape,
- Though life might yet without these things abide,
- Even as report saith now some peoples live.
- But man's well-being was impossible
- Without a breast all free. Wherefore the more
- That man doth justly seem to us a god,
- From whom sweet solaces of life, afar
- Distributed o'er populous domains,
- Now soothe the minds of men. But if thou thinkest
- Labours of Hercules excel the same,
- Much farther from true reasoning thou farest.
- For what could hurt us now that mighty maw
- Of Nemeaean Lion, or what the Boar
- Who bristled in Arcadia? Or, again,
- O what could Cretan Bull, or Hydra, pest
- Of Lerna, fenced with vipers venomous?
- Or what the triple-breasted power of her
- The three-fold Geryon...
- The sojourners in the Stymphalian fens
- So dreadfully offend us, or the Steeds
- Of Thracian Diomedes breathing fire
- From out their nostrils off along the zones
- Bistonian and Ismarian? And the Snake,
- The dread fierce gazer, guardian of the golden
- And gleaming apples of the Hesperides,
- Coiled round the tree-trunk with tremendous bulk,
- O what, again, could he inflict on us
- Along the Atlantic shore and wastes of sea?-
- Where neither one of us approacheth nigh
- Nor no barbarian ventures. And the rest
- Of all those monsters slain, even if alive,
- Unconquered still, what injury could they do?
- None, as I guess. For so the glutted earth
- Swarms even now with savage beasts, even now
- Is filled with anxious terrors through the woods
- And mighty mountains and the forest deeps-
- Quarters 'tis ours in general to avoid.
- But lest the breast be purged, what conflicts then,
- What perils, must bosom, in our own despite!
- O then how great and keen the cares of lust
- That split the man distraught! How great the fears!
- And lo, the pride, grim greed, and wantonness-
- How great the slaughters in their train! and lo,
- Debaucheries and every breed of sloth!
- Therefore that man who subjugated these,
- And from the mind expelled, by words indeed,
- Not arms, O shall it not be seemly him
- To dignify by ranking with the gods?-
- And all the more since he was wont to give,
- Concerning the immortal gods themselves,
- Many pronouncements with a tongue divine,
- And to unfold by his pronouncements all
- The nature of the world.
- And walking now
- In his own footprints, I do follow through
- His reasonings, and with pronouncements teach
- The covenant whereby all things are framed,
- How under that covenant they must abide
- Nor ever prevail to abrogate the aeons'
- Inexorable decrees,- how (as we've found),
- In class of mortal objects, o'er all else,
- The mind exists of earth-born frame create
- And impotent unscathed to abide
- Across the mighty aeons, and how come
- In sleep those idol-apparitions,
- That so befool intelligence when we
- Do seem to view a man whom life has left.
- Thus far we've gone; the order of my plan
- Hath brought me now unto the point where I
- Must make report how, too, the universe
- Consists of mortal body, born in time,
- And in what modes that congregated stuff
- Established itself as earth and sky,
- Ocean, and stars, and sun, and ball of moon;
- And then what living creatures rose from out
- The old telluric places, and what ones
- Were never born at all; and in what mode
- The human race began to name its things
- And use the varied speech from man to man;
- And in what modes hath bosomed in their breasts
- That awe of gods, which halloweth in all lands
- Fanes, altars, groves, lakes, idols of the gods.
- Also I shall untangle by what power
- The steersman nature guides the sun's courses,
- And the meanderings of the moon, lest we,
- Percase, should fancy that of own free will
- They circle their perennial courses round,
- Timing their motions for increase of crops
- And living creatures, or lest we should think
- They roll along by any plan of gods.
- For even those men who have learned full well
- That godheads lead a long life free of care,
- If yet meanwhile they wonder by what plan
- Things can go on (and chiefly yon high things
- Observed o'erhead on the ethereal coasts),
- Again are hurried back unto the fears
- Of old religion and adopt again
- Harsh masters, deemed almighty,- wretched men,
- Unwitting what can be and what cannot,
- And by what law to each its scope prescribed,
- Its boundary stone that clings so deep in Time.
- But for the rest,- lest we delay thee here
- Longer by empty promises- behold,
- Before all else, the seas, the lands, the sky:
- O Memmius, their threefold nature, lo,
- Their bodies three, three aspects so unlike,
- Three frames so vast, a single day shall give
- Unto annihilation! Then shall crash
- That massive form and fabric of the world
- Sustained so many aeons! Nor do I
- Fail to perceive how strange and marvellous
- This fact must strike the intellect of man,-
- Annihilation of the sky and earth
- That is to be,- and with what toil of words
- 'Tis mine to prove the same; as happens oft
- When once ye offer to man's listening ears
- Something before unheard of, but may not
- Subject it to the view of eyes for him
- Nor put it into hand- the sight and touch,
- Whereby the opened highways of belief
- Lead most directly into human breast
- And regions of intelligence. But yet
- I will speak out. The fact itself, perchance,
- Will force belief in these my words, and thou
- Mayst see, in little time, tremendously
- With risen commotions of the lands all things
- Quaking to pieces- which afar from us
- May she, the steersman Nature, guide: and may
- Reason, O rather than the fact itself,
- Persuade us that all things can be o'erthrown
- And sink with awful-sounding breakage down!
- But ere on this I take a step to utter
- Oracles holier and soundlier based
- Than ever the Pythian pronounced for men
- From out the tripod and the Delphian laurel,
- I will unfold for thee with learned words
- Many a consolation, lest perchance,
- Still bridled by religion, thou suppose
- Lands, sun, and sky, sea, constellations, moon,
- Must dure forever, as of frame divine-
- And so conclude that it is just that those,
- (After the manner of the Giants), should all
- Pay the huge penalties for monstrous crime,
- Who by their reasonings do overshake
- The ramparts of the universe and wish
- There to put out the splendid sun of heaven,
- Branding with mortal talk immortal things-
- Though these same things are even so far removed
- From any touch of deity and seem
- So far unworthy of numbering with the gods,
- That well they may be thought to furnish rather
- A goodly instance of the sort of things
- That lack the living motion, living sense.
- For sure 'tis quite beside the mark to think
- That judgment and the nature of the mind
- In any kind of body can exist-
- Just as in ether can't exist a tree,
- Nor clouds in the salt sea, nor in the fields
- Can fishes live, nor blood in timber be,
- Nor sap in boulders: fixed and arranged
- Where everything may grow and have its place.
- Thus nature of mind cannot arise alone
- Without the body, nor have its being far
- From thews and blood. Yet if 'twere possible?-
- Much rather might this very power of mind
- Be in the head, the shoulders, or the heels,
- And, born in any part soever, yet
- In the same man, in the same vessel abide
- But since within this body even of ours
- Stands fixed and appears arranged sure
- Where soul and mind can each exist and grow,
- Deny we must the more that they can dure
- Outside the body and the breathing form
- In rotting clods of earth, in the sun's fire,
- In water, or in ether's skiey coasts.
- Therefore these things no whit are furnished
- With sense divine, since never can they be
- With life-force quickened.
- Likewise, thou canst ne'er
- Believe the sacred seats of gods are here
- In any regions of this mundane world;
- Indeed, the nature of the gods, so subtle,
- So far removed from these our senses, scarce
- Is seen even by intelligence of mind.
- And since they've ever eluded touch and thrust
- Of human hands, they cannot reach to grasp
- Aught tangible to us. For what may not
- Itself be touched in turn can never touch.
- Wherefore, besides, also their seats must be
- Unlike these seats of ours,- even subtle too,
- As meet for subtle essence- as I'll prove
- Hereafter unto thee with large discourse.
- Further, to say that for the sake of men
- They willed to prepare this world's magnificence,
- And that 'tis therefore duty and behoof
- To praise the work of gods as worthy praise,
- And that 'tis sacrilege for men to shake
- Ever by any force from out their seats
- What hath been stablished by the Forethought old
- To everlasting for races of mankind,
- And that 'tis sacrilege to assault by words
- And overtopple all from base to beam,-
- Memmius, such notions to concoct and pile,
- Is verily- to dote. Our gratefulness,
- O what emoluments could it confer
- Upon Immortals and upon the Blessed
- That they should take a step to manage aught
- For sake of us? Or what new factor could,
- After so long a time, inveigle them-
- The hitherto reposeful- to desire
- To change their former life? For rather he
- Whom old things chafe seems likely to rejoice
- At new; but one that in fore-passed time
- Hath chanced upon no ill, through goodly years,
- O what could ever enkindle in such an one
- Passion for strange experiment? Or what
- The evil for us, if we had ne'er been born?-
- As though, forsooth, in darkling realms and woe
- Our life were lying till should dawn at last
- The day-spring of creation! Whosoever
- Hath been begotten wills perforce to stay
- In life, so long as fond delight detains;
- But whoso ne'er hath tasted love of life,
- And ne'er was in the count of living things,
- What hurts it him that he was never born?
- Whence, further, first was planted in the gods
- The archetype for gendering the world
- And the fore-notion of what man is like,
- So that they knew and pre-conceived with mind
- Just what they wished to make? Or how were known
- Ever the energies of primal germs,
- And what those germs, by interchange of place,
- Could thus produce, if nature's self had not
- Given example for creating all?
- For in such wise primordials of things,
- Many in many modes, astir by blows
- From immemorial aeons, in motion too
- By their own weights, have evermore been wont
- To be so borne along and in all modes
- To meet together and to try all sorts
- Which, by combining one with other, they
- Are powerful to create, that thus it is
- No marvel now, if they have also fallen
- Into arrangements such, and if they've passed
- Into vibrations such, as those whereby
- This sum of things is carried on to-day
- By fixed renewal.
- But knew I never what
- The seeds primordial were, yet would I dare
- This to affirm, even from deep judgments based
- Upon the ways and conduct of the skies-
- This to maintain by many a fact besides-
- That in no wise the nature of all things
- For us was fashioned by a power divine-
- So great the faults it stands encumbered with.
- First, mark all regions which are overarched
- By the prodigious reaches of the sky:
- One yawning part thereof the mountain-chains
- And forests of the beasts do have and hold;
- And cliffs, and desert fens, and wastes of sea
- (Which sunder afar the beaches of the lands)
- Possess it merely; and, again, thereof
- Well-nigh two-thirds intolerable heat
- And a perpetual fall of frost doth rob
- From mortal kind. And what is left to till,
- Even that the force of nature would o'errun
- With brambles, did not human force oppose,-
- Long wont for livelihood to groan and sweat
- Over the two-pronged mattock and to cleave
- The soil in twain by pressing on the plough.
- . . . . . .
- Unless, by the ploughshare turning the fruitful clods
- And kneading the mould, we quicken into birth,
- [The crops] spontaneously could not come up
- Into the free bright air. Even then sometimes,
- When things acquired by the sternest toil
- Are now in leaf, are now in blossom all,
- Either the skiey sun with baneful heats
- Parches, or sudden rains or chilling rime
- Destroys, or flaws of winds with furious whirl
- Torment and twist. Beside these matters, why
- Doth nature feed and foster on land and sea
- The dreadful breed of savage beasts, the foes
- Of the human clan? Why do the seasons bring
- Distempers with them? Wherefore stalks at large
- Death, so untimely? Then, again, the babe,
- Like to the castaway of the raging surf,
- Lies naked on the ground, speechless, in want
- Of every help for life, when nature first
- Hath poured him forth upon the shores of light
- With birth-pangs from within the mother's womb,
- And with a plaintive wail he fills the place,-
- As well befitting one for whom remains
- In life a journey through so many ills.
- But all the flocks and herds and all wild beasts
- Come forth and grow, nor need the little rattles,
- Nor must be treated to the humouring nurse's
- Dear, broken chatter; nor seek they divers clothes
- To suit the changing skies; nor need, in fine,
- Nor arms, nor lofty ramparts, wherewithal
- Their own to guard- because the earth herself
- And nature, artificer of the world, bring forth
- Aboundingly all things for all.
- And first,
- Since body of earth and water, air's light breath,
- And fiery exhalations (of which four
- This sum of things is seen to be compact)
- So all have birth and perishable frame,
- Thus the whole nature of the world itself
- Must be conceived as perishable too.
- For, verily, those things of which we see
- The parts and members to have birth in time
- And perishable shapes, those same we mark
- To be invariably born in time
- And born to die. And therefore when I see
- The mightiest members and the parts of this
- Our world consumed and begot again,
- 'Tis mine to know that also sky above
- And earth beneath began of old in time
- And shall in time go under to disaster.
- And lest in these affairs thou deemest me
- To have seized upon this point by sleight to serve
- My own caprice- because I have assumed
- That earth and fire are mortal things indeed,
- And have not doubted water and the air
- Both perish too and have affirmed the same
- To be again begotten and wax big-
- Mark well the argument: in first place, lo,
- Some certain parts of earth, grievously parched
- By unremitting suns, and trampled on
- By a vast throng of feet, exhale abroad
- A powdery haze and flying clouds of dust,
- Which the stout winds disperse in the whole air.
- A part, moreover, of her sod and soil
- Is summoned to inundation by the rains;
- And rivers graze and gouge the banks away.
- Besides, whatever takes a part its own
- In fostering and increasing [aught]...
- . . . . . .
- Is rendered back; and since, beyond a doubt,
- Earth, the all-mother, is beheld to be
- Likewise the common sepulchre of things,
- Therefore thou seest her minished of her plenty,
- And then again augmented with new growth.
- And for the rest, that sea, and streams, and springs
- Forever with new waters overflow,
- And that perennially the fluids well,
- Needeth no words- the mighty flux itself
- Of multitudinous waters round about
- Declareth this. But whatso water first
- Streams up is ever straightway carried off,
- And thus it comes to pass that all in all
- There is no overflow; in part because
- The burly winds (that over-sweep amain)
- And skiey sun (that with his rays dissolves)
- Do minish the level seas; in part because
- The water is diffused underground
- Through all the lands. The brine is filtered off,
- And then the liquid stuff seeps back again
- And all regathers at the river-heads,
- Whence in fresh-water currents on it flows
- Over the lands, adown the channels which
- Were cleft erstwhile and erstwhile bore along
- The liquid-footed floods.
- Now, then, of air
- I'll speak, which hour by hour in all its body
- Is changed innumerably. For whatso'er
- Streams up in dust or vapour off of things,
- The same is all and always borne along
- Into the mighty ocean of the air;
- And did not air in turn restore to things
- Bodies, and thus recruit them as they stream,
- All things by this time had resolved been
- And changed into air. Therefore it never
- Ceases to be engendered off of things
- And to return to things, since verily
- In constant flux do all things stream.
- Likewise,
- The abounding well-spring of the liquid light,
- The ethereal sun, doth flood the heaven o'er
- With constant flux of radiance ever new,
- And with fresh light supplies the place of light,
- Upon the instant. For whatever effulgence
- Hath first streamed off, no matter where it falls,
- Is lost unto the sun. And this 'tis thine
- To know from these examples: soon as clouds
- Have first begun to under-pass the sun,
- And, as it were, to rend the rays of light
- In twain, at once the lower part of them
- Is lost entire, and earth is overcast
- Where'er the thunderheads are rolled along-
- So know thou mayst that things forever need
- A fresh replenishment of gleam and glow,
- And each effulgence, foremost flashed forth,
- Perisheth one by one. Nor otherwise
- Can things be seen in sunlight, lest alway
- The fountain-head of light supply new light.
- Indeed your earthly beacons of the night,
- The hanging lampions and the torches, bright
- With darting gleams and dense with livid soot,
- Do hurry in like manner to supply
- With ministering heat new light amain;
- Are all alive to quiver with their fires,-
- Are so alive, that thus the light ne'er leaves
- The spots it shines on, as if rent in twain:
- So speedily is its destruction veiled
- By the swift birth of flame from all the fires.
- Thus, then, we must suppose that sun and moon
- And stars dart forth their light from under-births
- Ever and ever new, and whatso flames
- First rise do perish always one by one-
- Lest, haply, thou shouldst think they each endure
- Inviolable.
- Again, perceivest not
- How stones are also conquered by Time?-
- Not how the lofty towers ruin down,
- And boulders crumble?- Not how shrines of gods
- And idols crack outworn?- Nor how indeed
- The holy Influence hath yet no power
- There to postpone the Terminals of Fate,
- Or headway make 'gainst Nature's fixed decrees?
- Again, behold we not the monuments
- Of heroes, now in ruins, asking us,
- In their turn likewise, if we don't believe
- They also age with eld? Behold we not
- The rended basalt ruining amain
- Down from the lofty mountains, powerless
- To dure and dree the mighty forces there
- Of finite time?- for they would never fall
- Rended asudden, if from infinite Past
- They had prevailed against all engin'ries
- Of the assaulting aeons, with no crash.
- Again, now look at This, which round, above,
- Contains the whole earth in its one embrace:
- If from itself it procreates all things-
- As some men tell- and takes them to itself
- When once destroyed, entirely must it be
- Of mortal birth and body; for whate'er
- From out itself giveth to other things
- Increase and food, the same perforce must be
- Minished, and then recruited when it takes
- Things back into itself.
- Besides all this,
- If there had been no origin-in-birth
- Of lands and sky, and they had ever been
- The everlasting, why, ere Theban war
- And obsequies of Troy, have other bards
- Not also chanted other high affairs?
- Whither have sunk so oft so many deeds
- Of heroes? Why do those deeds live no more,
- Ingrafted in eternal monuments
- Of glory? Verily, I guess, because
- The Sum is new, and of a recent date
- The nature of our universe, and had
- Not long ago its own exordium.
- Wherefore, even now some arts are being still
- Refined, still increased: now unto ships
- Is being added many a new device;
- And but the other day musician-folk
- Gave birth to melic sounds of organing;
- And, then, this nature, this account of things
- Hath been discovered latterly, and I
- Myself have been discovered only now,
- As first among the first, able to turn
- The same into ancestral Roman speech.
- Yet if, percase, thou deemest that ere this
- Existed all things even the same, but that
- Perished the cycles of the human race
- In fiery exhalations, or cities fell
- By some tremendous quaking of the world,
- Or rivers in fury, after constant rains,
- Had plunged forth across the lands of earth
- And whelmed the towns- then, all the more must thou
- Confess, defeated by the argument,
- That there shall be annihilation too
- Of lands and sky. For at a time when things
- Were being taxed by maladies so great,
- And so great perils, if some cause more fell
- Had then assailed them, far and wide they would
- Have gone to disaster and supreme collapse.
- And by no other reasoning are we
- Seen to be mortal, save that all of us
- Sicken in turn with those same maladies
- With which have sickened in the past those men
- Whom nature hath removed from life.
- Again,
- Whatever abides eternal must indeed
- Either repel all strokes, because 'tis made
- Of solid body, and permit no entrance
- Of aught with power to sunder from within
- The parts compact- as are those seeds of stuff
- Whose nature we've exhibited before;
- Or else be able to endure through time
- For this: because they are from blows exempt,
- As is the void, the which abides untouched,
- Unsmit by any stroke; or else because
- There is no room around, whereto things can,
- As 'twere, depart in dissolution all,-
- Even as the sum of sums eternal is,
- Without or place beyond whereto things may
- Asunder fly, or bodies which can smite,
- And thus dissolve them by the blows of might.
- But not of solid body, as I've shown,
- Exists the nature of the world, because
- In things is intermingled there a void;
- Nor is the world yet as the void, nor are,
- Moreover, bodies lacking which, percase,
- Rising from out the infinite, can fell
- With fury-whirlwinds all this sum of things,
- Or bring upon them other cataclysm
- Of peril strange; and yonder, too, abides
- The infinite space and the profound abyss-
- Whereinto, lo, the ramparts of the world
- Can yet be shivered. Or some other power
- Can pound upon them till they perish all.
- Thus is the door of doom, O nowise barred
- Against the sky, against the sun and earth
- And deep-sea waters, but wide open stands
- And gloats upon them, monstrous and agape.
- Wherefore, again, 'tis needful to confess
- That these same things are born in time; for things
- Which are of mortal body could indeed
- Never from infinite past until to-day
- Have spurned the multitudinous assaults
- Of the immeasurable aeons old.
- Again, since battle so fiercely one with other
- The four most mighty members the world,
- Aroused in an all unholy war,
- Seest not that there may be for them an end
- Of the long strife?- Or when the skiey sun
- And all the heat have won dominion o'er
- The sucked-up waters all?- And this they try
- Still to accomplish, though as yet they fail,-
- For so aboundingly the streams supply
- New store of waters that 'tis rather they
- Who menace the world with inundations vast
- From forth the unplumbed chasms of the sea.
- But vain- since winds (that over-sweep amain)
- And skiey sun (that with his rays dissolves)
- Do minish the level seas and trust their power
- To dry up all, before the waters can
- Arrive at the end of their endeavouring.
- Breathing such vasty warfare, they contend
- In balanced strife the one with other still
- Concerning mighty issues,- though indeed
- The fire was once the more victorious,
- And once- as goes the tale- the water won
- A kingdom in the fields. For fire o'ermastered
- And licked up many things and burnt away,
- What time the impetuous horses of the Sun
- Snatched Phaethon headlong from his skiey road
- Down the whole ether and over all the lands.
- But the omnipotent Father in keen wrath
- Then with the sudden smite of thunderbolt
- Did hurl the mighty-minded hero off
- Those horses to the earth. And Sol, his sire,
- Meeting him as he fell, caught up in hand
- The ever-blazing lampion of the world,
- And drave together the pell-mell horses there
- And yoked them all a-tremble, and amain,
- Steering them over along their own old road,
- Restored the cosmos,- as forsooth we hear
- From songs of ancient poets of the Greeks-
- A tale too far away from truth, meseems.
- For fire can win when from the infinite
- Has risen a larger throng of particles
- Of fiery stuff; and then its powers succumb,
- Somehow subdued again, or else at last
- It shrivels in torrid atmospheres the world.
- And whilom water too began to win-
- As goes the story- when it overwhelmed
- The lives of men with billows; and thereafter,
- When all that force of water-stuff which forth
- From out the infinite had risen up
- Did now retire, as somehow turned aside,
- The rain-storms stopped, and streams their fury checked.
- But in what modes that conflux of first-stuff
- Did found the multitudinous universe
- Of earth, and sky, and the unfathomed deeps
- Of ocean, and courses of the sun and moon,
- I'll now in order tell. For of a truth
- Neither by counsel did the primal germs
- 'Stablish themselves, as by keen act of mind,
- Each in its proper place; nor did they make,
- Forsooth, a compact how each germ should move;
- But, lo, because primordials of things,
- Many in many modes, astir by blows
- From immemorial aeons, in motion too
- By their own weights, have evermore been wont
- To be so borne along and in all modes
- To meet together and to try all sorts
- Which, by combining one with other, they
- Are powerful to create: because of this
- It comes to pass that those primordials,
- Diffused far and wide through mighty aeons,
- The while they unions try, and motions too,
- Of every kind, meet at the last amain,
- And so become oft the commencements fit
- Of mighty things- earth, sea, and sky, and race
- Of living creatures.
- In that long-ago
- The wheel of the sun could nowhere be discerned
- Flying far up with its abounding blaze,
- Nor constellations of the mighty world,
- Nor ocean, nor heaven, nor even earth nor air.
- Nor aught of things like unto things of ours
- Could then be seen- but only some strange storm
- And a prodigious hurly-burly mass
- Compounded of all kinds of primal germs,
- Whose battling discords in disorder kept
- Interstices, and paths, coherencies,
- And weights, and blows, encounterings, and motions,
- Because, by reason of their forms unlike
- And varied shapes, they could not all thuswise
- Remain conjoined nor harmoniously
- Have interplay of movements. But from there
- Portions began to fly asunder, and like
- With like to join, and to block out a world,
- And to divide its members and dispose
- Its mightier parts- that is, to set secure
- The lofty heavens from the lands, and cause
- The sea to spread with waters separate,
- And fires of ether separate and pure
- Likewise to congregate apart.
- For, lo,
- First came together the earthy particles
- (As being heavy and intertangled) there
- In the mid-region, and all began to take
- The lowest abodes; and ever the more they got
- One with another intertangled, the more
- They pressed from out their mass those particles
- Which were to form the sea, the stars, the sun,
- And moon, and ramparts of the mighty world-
- For these consist of seeds more smooth and round
- And of much smaller elements than earth.
- And thus it was that ether, fraught with fire,
- First broke away from out the earthen parts,
- Athrough the innumerable pores of earth,
- And raised itself aloft, and with itself
- Bore lightly off the many starry fires;
- And not far otherwise we often see
- . . . . . .
- And the still lakes and the perennial streams
- Exhale a mist, and even as earth herself
- Is seen at times to smoke, when first at dawn
- The light of the sun, the many-rayed, begins
- To redden into gold, over the grass
- Begemmed with dew. When all of these are brought
- Together overhead, the clouds on high
- With now concreted body weave a cover
- Beneath the heavens. And thuswise ether too,
- Light and diffusive, with concreted body
- On all sides spread, on all sides bent itself
- Into a dome, and, far and wide diffused
- On unto every region on all sides,
- Thus hedged all else within its greedy clasp.
- Hard upon ether came the origins
- Of sun and moon, whose globes revolve in air
- Midway between the earth and mightiest ether,-
- For neither took them, since they weighed too little
- To sink and settle, but too much to glide
- Along the upmost shores; and yet they are
- In such a wise midway between the twain
- As ever to whirl their living bodies round,
- And ever to dure as parts of the wide Whole;
- In the same fashion as certain members may
- In us remain at rest, whilst others move.
- When, then, these substances had been withdrawn,
- Amain the earth, where now extend the vast
- Cerulean zones of all the level seas,
- Caved in, and down along the hollows poured
- The whirlpools of her brine; and day by day
- The more the tides of ether and rays of sun
- On every side constrained into one mass
- The earth by lashing it again, again,
- Upon its outer edges (so that then,
- Being thus beat upon, 'twas all condensed
- About its proper centre), ever the more
- The salty sweat, from out its body squeezed,
- Augmented ocean and the fields of foam
- By seeping through its frame, and all the more
- Those many particles of heat and air
- Escaping, began to fly aloft, and form,
- By condensation there afar from earth,
- The high refulgent circuits of the heavens.
- The plains began to sink, and windy slopes
- Of the high mountains to increase; for rocks
- Could not subside, nor all the parts of ground
- Settle alike to one same level there.
- Thus, then, the massy weight of earth stood firm
- With now concreted body, when (as 'twere)
- All of the slime of the world, heavy and gross,
- Had run together and settled at the bottom,
- Like lees or bilge. Then ocean, then the air,
- Then ether herself, the fraught-with-fire, were all
- Left with their liquid bodies pure and free,
- And each more lighter than the next below;
- And ether, most light and liquid of the three,
- Floats on above the long aerial winds,
- Nor with the brawling of the winds of air
- Mingles its liquid body. It doth leave
- All there- those under-realms below her heights-
- There to be overset in whirlwinds wild,-
- Doth leave all there to brawl in wayward gusts,
- Whilst, gliding with a fixed impulse still,
- Itself it bears its fires along. For, lo,
- That ether can flow thus steadily on, on,
- With one unaltered urge, the Pontus proves-
- That sea which floweth forth with fixed tides,
- Keeping one onward tenor as it glides.
- Now let us sing what makes the stars to move.
- In first place, if the mighty sphere of heaven
- Revolveth round, then needs we must aver
- That on the upper and the under pole
- Presses a certain air, and from without
- Confines them and encloseth at each end;
- And that, moreover, another air above
- Streams on athwart the top of the sphere and tends
- In same direction as are rolled along
- The glittering stars of the eternal world;
- Or that another still streams on below
- To whirl the sphere from under up and on
- In opposite direction- as we see
- The rivers turn the wheels and water-scoops.
- It may be also that the heavens do all
- Remain at rest, whilst yet are borne along
- The lucid constellations; either because
- Swift tides of ether are by sky enclosed,
- And whirl around, seeking a passage out,
- And everywhere make roll the starry fires
- Through the Summanian regions of the sky;
- Or else because some air, streaming along
- From an eternal quarter off beyond,
- Whileth the driven fires, or, then, because
- The fires themselves have power to creep along,
- Going wherever their food invites and calls,
- And feeding their flaming bodies everywhere
- Throughout the sky. Yet which of these is cause
- In this our world 'tis hard to say for sure;
- But what can be throughout the universe,
- In divers worlds on divers plan create,
- This only do I show, and follow on
- To assign unto the motions of the stars
- Even several causes which 'tis possible
- Exist throughout the universal All;
- Of which yet one must be the cause even here
- Which maketh motion for our constellations.
- Yet to decide which one of them it be
- Is not the least the business of a man
- Advancing step by cautious step, as I.