De Rerum Natura
Lucretius
Lucretius. De Rerum Natura. William Ellery Leonard. E. P. Dutton. 1916.
- Add too: these germs he feigns are far too frail-
- If they be germs primordial furnished forth
- With but same nature as the things themselves,
- And travail and perish equally with those,
- And no rein curbs them from annihilation.
- For which will last against the grip and crush
- Under the teeth of death? the fire? the moist?
- Or else the air? which then? the blood? the bones?
- No one, methinks, when every thing will be
- At bottom as mortal as whate'er we mark
- To perish by force before our gazing eyes.
- But my appeal is to the proofs above
- That things cannot fall back to naught, nor yet
- From naught increase. And now again, since food
- Augments and nourishes the human frame,
- 'Tis thine to know our veins and blood and bones
- And thews are formed of particles unlike
- To them in kind; or if they say all foods
- Are of mixed substance having in themselves
- Small bodies of thews, and bones, and also veins
- And particles of blood, then every food,
- Solid or liquid, must itself be thought
- As made and mixed of things unlike in kind-
- Of bones, of thews, of ichor and of blood.
- Again, if all the bodies which upgrow
- From earth, are first within the earth, then earth
- Must be compound of alien substances.
- Which spring and bloom abroad from out the earth.
- Transfer the argument, and thou may'st use
- The selfsame words: if flame and smoke and ash
- Still lurk unseen within the wood, the wood
- Must be compound of alien substances
- Which spring from out the wood.
- Right here remains
- A certain slender means to skulk from truth,
- Which Anaxagoras takes unto himself,
- Who holds that all things lurk commixed with all
- While that one only comes to view, of which
- The bodies exceed in number all the rest,
- And lie more close to hand and at the fore-
- A notion banished from true reason far.
- For then 'twere meet that kernels of the grains
- Should oft, when crunched between the might of stones,
- Give forth a sign of blood, or of aught else
- Which in our human frame is fed; and that
- Rock rubbed on rock should yield a gory ooze.
- Likewise the herbs ought oft to give forth drops
- Of sweet milk, flavoured like the uddered sheep's;
- Indeed we ought to find, when crumbling up
- The earthy clods, there herbs, and grains, and leaves,
- All sorts dispersed minutely in the soil;
- Lastly we ought to find in cloven wood
- Ashes and smoke and bits of fire there hid.
- But since fact teaches this is not the case,
- 'Tis thine to know things are not mixed with things
- Thuswise; but seeds, common to many things,
- Commixed in many ways, must lurk in things.
- "But often it happens on skiey hills" thou sayest,
- "That neighbouring tops of lofty trees are rubbed
- One against other, smote by the blustering south,
- Till all ablaze with bursting flower of flame."
- Good sooth- yet fire is not ingraft in wood,
- But many are the seeds of heat, and when
- Rubbing together they together flow,
- They start the conflagrations in the forests.
- Whereas if flame, already fashioned, lay
- Stored up within the forests, then the fires
- Could not for any time be kept unseen,
- But would be laying all the wildwood waste
- And burning all the boscage. Now dost see
- (Even as we said a little space above)
- How mightily it matters with what others,
- In what positions these same primal germs
- Are bound together? And what motions, too,
- They give and get among themselves? how, hence,
- The same, if altered 'mongst themselves, can body
- Both igneous and ligneous objects forth-
- Precisely as these words themselves are made
- By somewhat altering their elements,
- Although we mark with name indeed distinct
- The igneous from the ligneous. Once again,
- If thou suppose whatever thou beholdest,
- Among all visible objects, cannot be,
- Unless thou feign bodies of matter endowed
- With a like nature,- by thy vain device
- For thee will perish all the germs of things:
- 'Twill come to pass they'll laugh aloud, like men,
- Shaken asunder by a spasm of mirth,
- Or moisten with salty tear-drops cheeks and chins.
- Now learn of what remains! More keenly hear!
- And for myself, my mind is not deceived
- How dark it is: But the large hope of praise
- Hath strook with pointed thyrsus through my heart;
- On the same hour hath strook into my breast
- Sweet love of the Muses, wherewith now instinct,
- I wander afield, thriving in sturdy thought,
- Through unpathed haunts of the Pierides,
- Trodden by step of none before. I joy
- To come on undefiled fountains there,
- To drain them deep; I joy to pluck new flowers,
- To seek for this my head a signal crown
- From regions where the Muses never yet
- Have garlanded the temples of a man:
- First, since I teach concerning mighty things,
- And go right on to loose from round the mind
- The tightened coils of dread religion;
- Next, since, concerning themes so dark, I frame
- Songs so pellucid, touching all throughout
- Even with the Muses' charm- which, as 'twould seem,
- Is not without a reasonable ground:
- But as physicians, when they seek to give
- Young boys the nauseous wormwood, first do touch
- The brim around the cup with the sweet juice
- And yellow of the honey, in order that
- The thoughtless age of boyhood be cajoled
- As far as the lips, and meanwhile swallow down
- The wormwood's bitter draught, and, though befooled,
- Be yet not merely duped, but rather thus
- Grow strong again with recreated health:
- So now I too (since this my doctrine seems
- In general somewhat woeful unto those
- Who've had it not in hand, and since the crowd
- Starts back from it in horror) have desired
- To expound our doctrine unto thee in song
- Soft-speaking and Pierian, and, as 'twere,
- To touch it with sweet honey of the Muse-
- If by such method haply I might hold
- The mind of thee upon these lines of ours,
- Till thou see through the nature of all things,
- And how exists the interwoven frame.
- But since I've taught that bodies of matter, made
- Completely solid, hither and thither fly
- Forevermore unconquered through all time,
- Now come, and whether to the sum of them
- There be a limit or be none, for thee
- Let us unfold; likewise what has been found
- To be the wide inane, or room, or space
- Wherein all things soever do go on,
- Let us examine if it finite be
- All and entire, or reach unmeasured round
- And downward an illimitable profound.
- Thus, then, the All that is is limited
- In no one region of its onward paths,
- For then 'tmust have forever its beyond.
- And a beyond 'tis seen can never be
- For aught, unless still further on there be
- A somewhat somewhere that may bound the same-
- So that the thing be seen still on to where
- The nature of sensation of that thing
- Can follow it no longer. Now because
- Confess we must there's naught beside the sum,
- There's no beyond, and so it lacks all end.
- It matters nothing where thou post thyself,
- In whatsoever regions of the same;
- Even any place a man has set him down
- Still leaves about him the unbounded all
- Outward in all directions; or, supposing
- A moment the all of space finite to be,
- If some one farthest traveller runs forth
- Unto the extreme coasts and throws ahead
- A flying spear, is't then thy wish to think
- It goes, hurled off amain, to where 'twas sent
- And shoots afar, or that some object there
- Can thwart and stop it? For the one or other
- Thou must admit and take. Either of which
- Shuts off escape for thee, and does compel
- That thou concede the all spreads everywhere,
- Owning no confines. Since whether there be
- Aught that may block and check it so it comes
- Not where 'twas sent, nor lodges in its goal,
- Or whether borne along, in either view
- 'Thas started not from any end. And so
- I'll follow on, and whereso'er thou set
- The extreme coasts, I'll query, "what becomes
- Thereafter of thy spear?" 'Twill come to pass
- That nowhere can a world's-end be, and that
- The chance for further flight prolongs forever
- The flight itself. Besides, were all the space
- Of the totality and sum shut in
- With fixed coasts, and bounded everywhere,
- Then would the abundance of world's matter flow
- Together by solid weight from everywhere
- Still downward to the bottom of the world,
- Nor aught could happen under cope of sky,
- Nor could there be a sky at all or sun-
- Indeed, where matter all one heap would lie,
- By having settled during infinite time.
- But in reality, repose is given
- Unto no bodies 'mongst the elements,
- Because there is no bottom whereunto
- They might, as 'twere, together flow, and where
- They might take up their undisturbed abodes.
- In endless motion everything goes on
- Forevermore; out of all regions, even
- Out of the pit below, from forth the vast,
- Are hurtled bodies evermore supplied.
- The nature of room, the space of the abyss
- Is such that even the flashing thunderbolts
- Can neither speed upon their courses through,
- Gliding across eternal tracts of time,
- Nor, further, bring to pass, as on they run,
- That they may bate their journeying one whit:
- Such huge abundance spreads for things around-
- Room off to every quarter, without end.
- Lastly, before our very eyes is seen
- Thing to bound thing: air hedges hill from hill,
- And mountain walls hedge air; land ends the sea,
- And sea in turn all lands; but for the All
- Truly is nothing which outside may bound.
- That, too, the sum of things itself may not
- Have power to fix a measure of its own,
- Great nature guards, she who compels the void
- To bound all body, as body all the void,
- Thus rendering by these alternates the whole
- An infinite; or else the one or other,
- Being unbounded by the other, spreads,
- Even by its single nature, ne'ertheless
- Immeasurably forth....
- Nor sea, nor earth, nor shining vaults of sky,
- Nor breed of mortals, nor holy limbs of gods
- Could keep their place least portion of an hour:
- For, driven apart from out its meetings fit,
- The stock of stuff, dissolved, would be borne
- Along the illimitable inane afar,
- Or rather, in fact, would ne'er have once combined
- And given a birth to aught, since, scattered wide,
- It could not be united. For of 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 since, being many and changed in many modes
- Along the All, they're driven abroad and vexed
- By blow on blow, even from all time of old,
- They thus at last, after attempting all
- The kinds of motion and conjoining, come
- Into those great arrangements out of which
- This sum of things established is create,
- By which, moreover, through the mighty years,
- It is preserved, when once it has been thrown
- Into the proper motions, bringing to pass
- That ever the streams refresh the greedy main
- With river-waves abounding, and that earth,
- Lapped in warm exhalations of the sun,
- Renews her broods, and that the lusty race
- Of breathing creatures bears and blooms, and that
- The gliding fires of ether are alive-
- What still the primal germs nowise could do,
- Unless from out the infinite of space
- Could come supply of matter, whence in season
- They're wont whatever losses to repair.
- For as the nature of breathing creatures wastes,
- Losing its body, when deprived of food:
- So all things have to be dissolved as soon
- As matter, diverted by what means soever
- From off its course, shall fail to be on hand.
- Nor can the blows from outward still conserve,
- On every side, whatever sum of a world
- Has been united in a whole. They can
- Indeed, by frequent beating, check a part,
- Till others arriving may fulfil the sum;
- But meanwhile often are they forced to spring
- Rebounding back, and, as they spring, to yield,
- Unto those elements whence a world derives,
- Room and a time for flight, permitting them
- To be from off the massy union borne
- Free and afar. Wherefore, again, again:
- Needs must there come a many for supply;
- And also, that the blows themselves shall be
- Unfailing ever, must there ever be
- An infinite force of matter all sides round.
- And in these problems, shrink, my Memmius, far
- From yielding faith to that notorious talk:
- That all things inward to the centre press;
- And thus the nature of the world stands firm
- With never blows from outward, nor can be
- Nowhere disparted- since all height and depth
- Have always inward to the centre pressed
- (If thou art ready to believe that aught
- Itself can rest upon itself ); or that
- The ponderous bodies which be under earth
- Do all press upwards and do come to rest
- Upon the earth, in some way upside down,
- Like to those images of things we see
- At present through the waters. They contend,
- With like procedure, that all breathing things
- Head downward roam about, and yet cannot
- Tumble from earth to realms of sky below,
- No more than these our bodies wing away
- Spontaneously to vaults of sky above;
- That, when those creatures look upon the sun,
- We view the constellations of the night;
- And that with us the seasons of the sky
- They thus alternately divide, and thus
- Do pass the night coequal to our days,
- But a vain error has given these dreams to fools,
- Which they've embraced with reasoning perverse
- For centre none can be where world is still
- Boundless, nor yet, if now a centre were,
- Could aught take there a fixed position more
- Than for some other cause 'tmight be dislodged.
- For all of room and space we call the void
- Must both through centre and non-centre yield
- Alike to weights where'er their motions tend.
- Nor is there any place, where, when they've come,
- Bodies can be at standstill in the void,
- Deprived of force of weight; nor yet may void
- Furnish support to any,- nay, it must,
- True to its bent of nature, still give way.
- Thus in such manner not at all can things
- Be held in union, as if overcome
- By craving for a centre.
- But besides,
- Seeing they feign that not all bodies press
- To centre inward, rather only those
- Of earth and water (liquid of the sea,
- And the big billows from the mountain slopes,
- And whatsoever are encased, as 'twere,
- In earthen body), contrariwise, they teach
- How the thin air, and with it the hot fire,
- Is borne asunder from the centre, and how,
- For this all ether quivers with bright stars,
- And the sun's flame along the blue is fed
- (Because the heat, from out the centre flying,
- All gathers there), and how, again, the boughs
- Upon the tree-tops could not sprout their leaves,
- Unless, little by little, from out the earth
- For each were nutriment...
- . . . . . .
- Lest, after the manner of the winged flames,
- The ramparts of the world should flee away,
- Dissolved amain throughout the mighty void,
- And lest all else should likewise follow after,
- Aye, lest the thundering vaults of heaven should burst
- And splinter upward, and the earth forthwith
- Withdraw from under our feet, and all its bulk,
- Among its mingled wrecks and those of heaven,
- With slipping asunder of the primal seeds,
- Should pass, along the immeasurable inane,
- Away forever, and, that instant, naught
- Of wrack and remnant would be left, beside
- The desolate space, and germs invisible.
- For on whatever side thou deemest first
- The primal bodies lacking, lo, that side
- Will be for things the very door of death:
- Wherethrough the throng of matter all will dash,
- Out and abroad.
- These points, if thou wilt ponder,
- Then, with but paltry trouble led along...
- . . . . . .
- For one thing after other will grow clear,
- Nor shall the blind night rob thee of the road,
- To hinder thy gaze on nature's Farthest-forth.
- Thus things for things shall kindle torches new.
- 'Tis sweet, when, down the mighty main, the winds
- Roll up its waste of waters, from the land
- To watch another's labouring anguish far,
- Not that we joyously delight that man
- Should thus be smitten, but because 'tis sweet
- To mark what evils we ourselves be spared;
- 'Tis sweet, again, to view the mighty strife
- Of armies embattled yonder o'er the plains,
- Ourselves no sharers in the peril; but naught
- There is more goodly than to hold the high
- Serene plateaus, well fortressed by the wise,
- Whence thou may'st look below on other men
- And see them ev'rywhere wand'ring, all dispersed
- In their lone seeking for the road of life;
- Rivals in genius, or emulous in rank,
- Pressing through days and nights with hugest toil
- For summits of power and mastery of the world.
- O wretched minds of men! O blinded hearts!
- In how great perils, in what darks of life
- Are spent the human years, however brief!-
- O not to see that nature for herself
- Barks after nothing, save that pain keep off,
- Disjoined from the body, and that mind enjoy
- Delightsome feeling, far from care and fear!
- Therefore we see that our corporeal life
- Needs little, altogether, and only such
- As takes the pain away, and can besides
- Strew underneath some number of delights.
- More grateful 'tis at times (for nature craves
- No artifice nor luxury), if forsooth
- There be no golden images of boys
- Along the halls, with right hands holding out
- The lamps ablaze, the lights for evening feasts,
- And if the house doth glitter not with gold
- Nor gleam with silver, and to the lyre resound
- No fretted and gilded ceilings overhead,
- Yet still to lounge with friends in the soft grass
- Beside a river of water, underneath
- A big tree's boughs, and merrily to refresh
- Our frames, with no vast outlay- most of all
- If the weather is laughing and the times of the year
- Besprinkle the green of the grass around with flowers.
- Nor yet the quicker will hot fevers go,
- If on a pictured tapestry thou toss,
- Or purple robe, than if 'tis thine to lie
- Upon the poor man's bedding. Wherefore, since
- Treasure, nor rank, nor glory of a reign
- Avail us naught for this our body, thus
- Reckon them likewise nothing for the mind:
- Save then perchance, when thou beholdest forth
- Thy legions swarming round the Field of Mars,
- Rousing a mimic warfare- either side
- Strengthened with large auxiliaries and horse,
- Alike equipped with arms, alike inspired;
- Or save when also thou beholdest forth
- Thy fleets to swarm, deploying down the sea:
- For then, by such bright circumstance abashed,
- Religion pales and flees thy mind; O then
- The fears of death leave heart so free of care.
- But if we note how all this pomp at last
- Is but a drollery and a mocking sport,
- And of a truth man's dread, with cares at heels,
- Dreads not these sounds of arms, these savage swords
- But among kings and lords of all the world
- Mingles undaunted, nor is overawed
- By gleam of gold nor by the splendour bright
- Of purple robe, canst thou then doubt that this
- Is aught, but power of thinking?- when, besides
- The whole of life but labours in the dark.
- For just as children tremble and fear all
- In the viewless dark, so even we at times
- Dread in the light so many things that be
- No whit more fearsome than what children feign,
- Shuddering, will be upon them in the dark.
- This terror then, this darkness of the mind,
- Not sunrise with its flaring spokes of light,
- Nor glittering arrows of morning can disperse,
- But only nature's aspect and her law.
- Now come: I will untangle for thy steps
- Now by what motions the begetting bodies
- Of the world-stuff beget the varied world,
- And then forever resolve it when begot,
- And by what force they are constrained to this,
- And what the speed appointed unto them
- Wherewith to travel down the vast inane:
- Do thou remember to yield thee to my words.
- For truly matter coheres not, crowds not tight,
- Since we behold each thing to wane away,
- And we observe how all flows on and off,
- As 'twere, with age-old time, and from our eyes
- How eld withdraws each object at the end,
- Albeit the sum is seen to bide the same,
- Unharmed, because these motes that leave each thing
- Diminish what they part from, but endow
- With increase those to which in turn they come,
- Constraining these to wither in old age,
- And those to flower at the prime (and yet
- Biding not long among them). Thus the sum
- Forever is replenished, and we live
- As mortals by eternal give and take.
- The nations wax, the nations wane away;
- In a brief space the generations pass,
- And like to runners hand the lamp of life
- One unto other.
- But if thou believe
- That the primordial germs of things can stop,
- And in their stopping give new motions birth,
- Afar thou wanderest from the road of truth.
- For since they wander through the void inane,
- All the primordial germs of things must needs
- Be borne along, either by weight their own,
- Or haply by another's blow without.
- For, when, in their incessancy so oft
- They meet and clash, it comes to pass amain
- They leap asunder, face to face: not strange-
- Being most hard, and solid in their weights,
- And naught opposing motion, from behind.
- And that more clearly thou perceive how all
- These mites of matter are darted round about,
- Recall to mind how nowhere in the sum
- Of All exists a bottom,- nowhere is
- A realm of rest for primal bodies; since
- (As amply shown and proved by reason sure)
- Space has no bound nor measure, and extends
- Unmetered forth in all directions round.
- Since this stands certain, thus 'tis out of doubt
- No rest is rendered to the primal bodies
- Along the unfathomable inane; but rather,
- Inveterately plied by motions mixed,
- Some, at their jamming, bound aback and leave
- Huge gaps between, and some from off the blow
- Are hurried about with spaces small between.
- And all which, brought together with slight gaps,
- In more condensed union bound aback,
- Linked by their own all inter-tangled shapes,-
- These form the irrefragable roots of rocks
- And the brute bulks of iron, and what else
- Is of their kind...
- The rest leap far asunder, far recoil,
- Leaving huge gaps between: and these supply
- For us thin air and splendour-lights of the sun.
- And many besides wander the mighty void-
- Cast back from unions of existing things,
- Nowhere accepted in the universe,
- And nowise linked in motions to the rest.
- And of this fact (as I record it here)
- An image, a type goes on before our eyes
- Present each moment; for behold whenever
- The sun's light and the rays, let in, pour down
- Across dark halls of houses: thou wilt see
- The many mites in many a manner mixed
- Amid a void in the very light of the rays,
- And battling on, as in eternal strife,
- And in battalions contending without halt,
- In meetings, partings, harried up and down.
- From this thou mayest conjecture of what sort
- The ceaseless tossing of primordial seeds
- Amid the mightier void- at least so far
- As small affair can for a vaster serve,
- And by example put thee on the spoor
- Of knowledge. For this reason too 'tis fit
- Thou turn thy mind the more unto these bodies
- Which here are witnessed tumbling in the light:
- Namely, because such tumblings are a sign
- That motions also of the primal stuff
- Secret and viewless lurk beneath, behind.
- For thou wilt mark here many a speck, impelled
- By viewless blows, to change its little course,
- And beaten backwards to return again,
- Hither and thither in all directions round.
- Lo, all their shifting movement is of old,
- From the primeval atoms; for the same
- Primordial seeds of things first move of self,
- And then those bodies built of unions small
- And nearest, as it were, unto the powers
- Of the primeval atoms, are stirred up
- By impulse of those atoms' unseen blows,
- And these thereafter goad the next in size:
- Thus motion ascends from the primevals on,
- And stage by stage emerges to our sense,
- Until those objects also move which we
- Can mark in sunbeams, though it not appears
- What blows do urge them.
- Now what the speed to matter's atoms given
- Thou mayest in few, my Memmius, learn from this:
- When first the dawn is sprinkling with new light
- The lands, and all the breed of birds abroad
- Flit round the trackless forests, with liquid notes
- Filling the regions along the mellow air,
- We see 'tis forthwith manifest to man
- How suddenly the risen sun is wont
- At such an hour to overspread and clothe
- The whole with its own splendour; but the sun's
- Warm exhalations and this serene light
- Travel not down an empty void; and thus
- They are compelled more slowly to advance,
- Whilst, as it were, they cleave the waves of air;
- Nor one by one travel these particles
- Of the warm exhalations, but are all
- Entangled and enmassed, whereby at once
- Each is restrained by each, and from without
- Checked, till compelled more slowly to advance.
- But the primordial atoms with their old
- Simple solidity, when forth they travel
- Along the empty void, all undelayed
- By aught outside them there, and they, each one
- Being one unit from nature of its parts,
- Are borne to that one place on which they strive
- Still to lay hold, must then, beyond a doubt,
- Outstrip in speed, and be more swiftly borne
- Than light of sun, and over regions rush,
- Of space much vaster, in the self-same time
- The sun's effulgence widens round the sky.
- . . . . . .
- Nor to pursue the atoms one by one,
- To see the law whereby each thing goes on.
- But some men, ignorant of matter, think,
- Opposing this, that not without the gods,
- In such adjustment to our human ways,
- Can nature change the seasons of the years,
- And bring to birth the grains and all of else
- To which divine Delight, the guide of life,
- Persuades mortality and leads it on,
- That, through her artful blandishments of love,
- It propagate the generations still,
- Lest humankind should perish. When they feign
- That gods have stablished all things but for man,
- They seem in all ways mightily to lapse
- From reason's truth: for ev'n if ne'er I knew
- What seeds primordial are, yet would I dare
- This to affirm, ev'n from deep judgment based
- Upon the ways and conduct of the skies-
- This to maintain by many a fact besides-
- That in no wise the nature of the world
- For us was builded by a power divine-
- So great the faults it stands encumbered with:
- The which, my Memmius, later on, for thee
- We will clear up. Now as to what remains
- Concerning motions we'll unfold our thought.
- Now is the place, meseems, in these affairs
- To prove for thee this too: nothing corporeal
- Of its own force can e'er be upward borne,
- Or upward go- nor let the bodies of flames
- Deceive thee here: for they engendered are
- With urge to upwards, taking thus increase,
- Whereby grow upwards shining grains and trees,
- Though all the weight within them downward bears.
- Nor, when the fires will leap from under round
- The roofs of houses, and swift flame laps up
- Timber and beam, 'tis then to be supposed
- They act of own accord, no force beneath
- To urge them up. 'Tis thus that blood, discharged
- From out our bodies, spurts its jets aloft
- And spatters gore. And hast thou never marked
- With what a force the water will disgorge
- Timber and beam? The deeper, straight and down,
- We push them in, and, many though we be,
- The more we press with main and toil, the more
- The water vomits up and flings them back,
- That, more than half their length, they there emerge,
- Rebounding. Yet we never doubt, meseems,
- That all the weight within them downward bears
- Through empty void. Well, in like manner, flames
- Ought also to be able, when pressed out,
- Through winds of air to rise aloft, even though
- The weight within them strive to draw them down.
- Hast thou not seen, sweeping so far and high,
- The meteors, midnight flambeaus of the sky,
- How after them they draw long trails of flame
- Wherever Nature gives a thoroughfare?
- How stars and constellations drop to earth,
- Seest not? Nay, too, the sun from peak of heaven
- Sheds round to every quarter its large heat,
- And sows the new-ploughed intervales with light:
- Thus also sun's heat downward tends to earth.
- Athwart the rain thou seest the lightning fly;
- Now here, now there, bursting from out the clouds,
- The fires dash zig-zag- and that flaming power
- Falls likewise down to earth.
- In these affairs
- We wish thee also well aware of this:
- The atoms, as their own weight bears them down
- Plumb through the void, at scarce determined times,
- In scarce determined places, from their course
- Decline a little- call it, so to speak,
- Mere changed trend. For were it not their wont
- Thuswise to swerve, down would they fall, each one,
- Like drops of rain, through the unbottomed void;
- And then collisions ne'er could be nor blows
- Among the primal elements; and thus
- Nature would never have created aught.
- But, if perchance be any that believe
- The heavier bodies, as more swiftly borne
- Plumb down the void, are able from above
- To strike the lighter, thus engendering blows
- Able to cause those procreant motions, far
- From highways of true reason they retire.
- For whatsoever through the waters fall,
- Or through thin air, must quicken their descent,
- Each after its weight- on this account, because
- Both bulk of water and the subtle air
- By no means can retard each thing alike,
- But give more quick before the heavier weight;
- But contrariwise the empty void cannot,
- On any side, at any time, to aught
- Oppose resistance, but will ever yield,
- True to its bent of nature. Wherefore all,
- With equal speed, though equal not in weight,
- Must rush, borne downward through the still inane.
- Thus ne'er at all have heavier from above
- Been swift to strike the lighter, gendering strokes
- Which cause those divers motions, by whose means
- Nature transacts her work. And so I say,
- The atoms must a little swerve at times-
- But only the least, lest we should seem to feign
- Motions oblique, and fact refute us there.
- For this we see forthwith is manifest:
- Whatever the weight, it can't obliquely go,
- Down on its headlong journey from above,
- At least so far as thou canst mark; but who
- Is there can mark by sense that naught can swerve
- At all aside from off its road's straight line?
- Again, if ev'r all motions are co-linked,
- And from the old ever arise the new
- In fixed order, and primordial seeds
- Produce not by their swerving some new start
- Of motion to sunder the covenants of fate,
- That cause succeed not cause from everlasting,
- Whence this free will for creatures o'er the lands,
- Whence is it wrested from the fates,- this will
- Whereby we step right forward where desire
- Leads each man on, whereby the same we swerve
- In motions, not as at some fixed time,
- Nor at some fixed line of space, but where
- The mind itself has urged? For out of doubt
- In these affairs 'tis each man's will itself
- That gives the start, and hence throughout our limbs
- Incipient motions are diffused. Again,
- Dost thou not see, when, at a point of time,
- The bars are opened, how the eager strength
- Of horses cannot forward break as soon
- As pants their mind to do? For it behooves
- That all the stock of matter, through the frame,
- Be roused, in order that, through every joint,
- Aroused, it press and follow mind's desire;
- So thus thou seest initial motion's gendered
- From out the heart, aye, verily, proceeds
- First from the spirit's will, whence at the last
- 'Tis given forth through joints and body entire.
- Quite otherwise it is, when forth we move,
- Impelled by a blow of another's mighty powers
- And mighty urge; for then 'tis clear enough
- All matter of our total body goes,
- Hurried along, against our own desire-
- Until the will has pulled upon the reins
- And checked it back, throughout our members all;
- At whose arbitrament indeed sometimes
- The stock of matter's forced to change its path,
- Throughout our members and throughout our joints,
- And, after being forward cast, to be
- Reined up, whereat it settles back again.
- So seest thou not, how, though external force
- Drive men before, and often make them move,
- Onward against desire, and headlong snatched,
- Yet is there something in these breasts of ours
- Strong to combat, strong to withstand the same?-
- Wherefore no less within the primal seeds
- Thou must admit, besides all blows and weight,
- Some other cause of motion, whence derives
- This power in us inborn, of some free act.-
- Since naught from nothing can become, we see.
- For weight prevents all things should come to pass
- Through blows, as 'twere, by some external force;
- But that man's mind itself in all it does
- Hath not a fixed necessity within,
- Nor is not, like a conquered thing, compelled
- To bear and suffer,- this state comes to man
- From that slight swervement of the elements
- In no fixed line of space, in no fixed time.
- Nor ever was the stock of stuff more crammed,
- Nor ever, again, sundered by bigger gaps:
- For naught gives increase and naught takes away;
- On which account, just as they move to-day,
- The elemental bodies moved of old
- And shall the same hereafter evermore.
- And what was wont to be begot of old
- Shall be begotten under selfsame terms
- And grow and thrive in power, so far as given
- To each by Nature's changeless, old decrees.
- The sum of things there is no power can change,
- For naught exists outside, to which can flee
- Out of the world matter of any kind,
- Nor forth from which a fresh supply can spring,
- Break in upon the founded world, and change
- Whole nature of things, and turn their motions about.
- Herein wonder not
- How 'tis that, while the seeds of things are all
- Moving forever, the sum yet seems to stand
- Supremely still, except in cases where
- A thing shows motion of its frame as whole.
- For far beneath the ken of senses lies
- The nature of those ultimates of the world;
- And so, since those themselves thou canst not see,
- Their motion also must they veil from men-
- For mark, indeed, how things we can see, oft
- Yet hide their motions, when afar from us
- Along the distant landscape. Often thus,
- Upon a hillside will the woolly flocks
- Be cropping their goodly food and creeping about
- Whither the summons of the grass, begemmed
- With the fresh dew, is calling, and the lambs,
- Well filled, are frisking, locking horns in sport:
- Yet all for us seem blurred and blent afar-
- A glint of white at rest on a green hill.
- Again, when mighty legions, marching round,
- Fill all the quarters of the plains below,
- Rousing a mimic warfare, there the sheen
- Shoots up the sky, and all the fields about
- Glitter with brass, and from beneath, a sound
- Goes forth from feet of stalwart soldiery,
- And mountain walls, smote by the shouting, send
- The voices onward to the stars of heaven,
- And hither and thither darts the cavalry,
- And of a sudden down the midmost fields
- Charges with onset stout enough to rock
- The solid earth: and yet some post there is
- Up the high mountains, viewed from which they seem
- To stand- a gleam at rest along the plains.
- Now come, and next hereafter apprehend
- What sorts, how vastly different in form,
- How varied in multitudinous shapes they are-
- These old beginnings of the universe;
- Not in the sense that only few are furnished
- With one like form, but rather not at all
- In general have they likeness each with each,
- No marvel: since the stock of them's so great
- That there's no end (as I have taught) nor sum,
- They must indeed not one and all be marked
- By equal outline and by shape the same.
- . . . . . .
- Moreover, humankind, and the mute flocks
- Of scaly creatures swimming in the streams,
- And joyous herds around, and all the wild,
- And all the breeds of birds- both those that teem
- In gladsome regions of the water-haunts,
- About the river-banks and springs and pools,
- And those that throng, flitting from tree to tree,
- Through trackless woods- Go, take which one thou wilt,
- In any kind: thou wilt discover still
- Each from the other still unlike in shape.
- Nor in no other wise could offspring know
- Mother, nor mother offspring- which we see
- They yet can do, distinguished one from other,
- No less than human beings, by clear signs.
- Thus oft before fair temples of the gods,
- Beside the incense-burning altars slain,
- Drops down the yearling calf, from out its breast
- Breathing warm streams of blood; the orphaned mother,
- Ranging meanwhile green woodland pastures round,
- Knows well the footprints, pressed by cloven hoofs,
- With eyes regarding every spot about,
- For sight somewhere of youngling gone from her;
- And, stopping short, filleth the leafy lanes
- With her complaints; and oft she seeks again
- Within the stall, pierced by her yearning still.
- Nor tender willows, nor dew-quickened grass,
- Nor the loved streams that glide along low banks,
- Can lure her mind and turn the sudden pain;
- Nor other shapes of calves that graze thereby
- Distract her mind or lighten pain the least-
- So keen her search for something known and hers.
- Moreover, tender kids with bleating throats
- Do know their horned dams, and butting lambs
- The flocks of sheep, and thus they patter on,
- Unfailingly each to its proper teat,
- As nature intends. Lastly, with any grain,
- Thou'lt see that no one kernel in one kind
- Is so far like another, that there still
- Is not in shapes some difference running through.
- By a like law we see how earth is pied
- With shells and conchs, where, with soft waves, the sea
- Beats on the thirsty sands of curving shores.
- Wherefore again, again, since seeds of things
- Exist by nature, nor were wrought with hands
- After a fixed pattern of one other,
- They needs must flitter to and fro with shapes
- In types dissimilar to one another.
- . . . . . .
- Easy enough by thought of mind to solve
- Why fires of lightning more can penetrate
- Than these of ours from pitch-pine born on earth.
- For thou canst say lightning's celestial fire,
- So subtle, is formed of figures finer far,
- And passes thus through holes which this our fire,
- Born from the wood, created from the pine,
- Cannot. Again, light passes through the horn
- On the lantern's side, while rain is dashed away.
- And why?- unless those bodies of light should be
- Finer than those of water's genial showers.
- We see how quickly through a colander
- The wines will flow; how, on the other hand,
- The sluggish olive-oil delays: no doubt,
- Because 'tis wrought of elements more large,
- Or else more crook'd and intertangled. Thus
- It comes that the primordials cannot be
- So suddenly sundered one from other, and seep,
- One through each several hole of anything.
- And note, besides, that liquor of honey or milk
- Yields in the mouth agreeable taste to tongue,
- Whilst nauseous wormwood, pungent centaury,
- With their foul flavour set the lips awry;
- Thus simple 'tis to see that whatsoever
- Can touch the senses pleasingly are made
- Of smooth and rounded elements, whilst those
- Which seem the bitter and the sharp, are held
- Entwined by elements more crook'd, and so
- Are wont to tear their ways into our senses,
- And rend our body as they enter in.
- In short all good to sense, all bad to touch,
- Being up-built of figures so unlike,
- Are mutually at strife- lest thou suppose
- That the shrill rasping of a squeaking saw
- Consists of elements as smooth as song
- Which, waked by nimble fingers, on the strings
- The sweet musicians fashion; or suppose
- That same-shaped atoms through men's nostrils pierce
- When foul cadavers burn, as when the stage
- Is with Cilician saffron sprinkled fresh,
- And the altar near exhales Panchaean scent;
- Or hold as of like seed the goodly hues
- Of things which feast our eyes, as those which sting
- Against the smarting pupil and draw tears,
- Or show, with gruesome aspect, grim and vile.
- For never a shape which charms our sense was made
- Without some elemental smoothness; whilst
- Whate'er is harsh and irksome has been framed
- Still with some roughness in its elements.
- Some, too, there are which justly are supposed
- To be nor smooth nor altogether hooked,
- With bended barbs, but slightly angled-out,
- To tickle rather than to wound the sense-
- And of which sort is the salt tartar of wine
- And flavours of the gummed elecampane.
- Again, that glowing fire and icy rime
- Are fanged with teeth unlike whereby to sting
- Our body's sense, the touch of each gives proof.
- For touch- by sacred majesties of Gods!-
- Touch is indeed the body's only sense-
- Be't that something in-from-outward works,
- Be't that something in the body born
- Wounds, or delighteth as it passes out
- Along the procreant paths of Aphrodite;
- Or be't the seeds by some collision whirl
- Disordered in the body and confound
- By tumult and confusion all the sense-
- As thou mayst find, if haply with the hand
- Thyself thou strike thy body's any part.
- On which account, the elemental forms
- Must differ widely, as enabled thus
- To cause diverse sensations.
- And, again,
- What seems to us the hardened and condensed
- Must be of atoms among themselves more hooked,
- Be held compacted deep within, as 'twere
- By branch-like atoms- of which sort the chief
- Are diamond stones, despisers of all blows,
- And stalwart flint and strength of solid iron,
- And brazen bars, which, budging hard in locks,
- Do grate and scream. But what are liquid, formed
- Of fluid body, they indeed must be
- Of elements more smooth and round- because
- Their globules severally will not cohere:
- To suck the poppy-seeds from palm of hand
- Is quite as easy as drinking water down,
- And they, once struck, roll like unto the same.
- But that thou seest among the things that flow
- Some bitter, as the brine of ocean is,
- Is not the least a marvel...
- For since 'tis fluid, smooth its atoms are
- And round, with painful rough ones mixed therein;
- Yet need not these be held together hooked:
- In fact, though rough, they're globular besides,
- Able at once to roll, and rasp the sense.
- And that the more thou mayst believe me here,
- That with smooth elements are mixed the rough
- (Whence Neptune's salt astringent body comes),
- There is a means to separate the twain,
- And thereupon dividedly to see
- How the sweet water, after filtering through
- So often underground, flows freshened forth
- Into some hollow; for it leaves above
- The primal germs of nauseating brine,
- Since cling the rough more readily in earth.
- Lastly, whatso thou markest to disperse
- Upon the instant- smoke, and cloud, and flame-
- Must not (even though not all of smooth and round)
- Be yet co-linked with atoms intertwined,
- That thus they can, without together cleaving,
- So pierce our body and so bore the rocks.
- Whatever we see...
- Given to senses, that thou must perceive
- They're not from linked but pointed elements.
- The which now having taught, I will go on
- To bind thereto a fact to this allied
- And drawing from this its proof: these primal germs
- Vary, yet only with finite tale of shapes.
- For were these shapes quite infinite, some seeds
- Would have a body of infinite increase.
- For in one seed, in one small frame of any,
- The shapes can't vary from one another much.
- Assume, we'll say, that of three minim parts
- Consist the primal bodies, or add a few:
- When, now, by placing all these parts of one
- At top and bottom, changing lefts and rights,
- Thou hast with every kind of shift found out
- What the aspect of shape of its whole body
- Each new arrangement gives, for what remains,
- If thou percase wouldst vary its old shapes,
- New parts must then be added; follows next,
- If thou percase wouldst vary still its shapes,
- That by like logic each arrangement still
- Requires its increment of other parts.
- Ergo, an augmentation of its frame
- Follows upon each novelty of forms.
- Wherefore, it cannot be thou'lt undertake
- That seeds have infinite differences in form,
- Lest thus thou forcest some indeed to be
- Of an immeasurable immensity-
- Which I have taught above cannot be proved.
- . . . . . .
- And now for thee barbaric robes, and gleam
- Of Meliboean purple, touched with dye
- Of the Thessalian shell...
- The peacock's golden generations, stained
- With spotted gaieties, would lie o'erthrown
- By some new colour of new things more bright;
- The odour of myrrh and savours of honey despised;
- The swan's old lyric, and Apollo's hymns,
- Once modulated on the many chords,
- Would likewise sink o'ermastered and be mute:
- For, lo, a somewhat, finer than the rest,
- Would be arising evermore. So, too,
- Into some baser part might all retire,
- Even as we said to better might they come:
- For, lo, a somewhat, loathlier than the rest
- To nostrils, ears, and eyes, and taste of tongue,
- Would then, by reasoning reversed, be there.
- Since 'tis not so, but unto things are given
- Their fixed limitations which do bound
- Their sum on either side, 'tmust be confessed
- That matter, too, by finite tale of shapes
- Does differ. Again, from earth's midsummer heats
- Unto the icy hoar-frosts of the year
- The forward path is fixed, and by like law
- O'ertravelled backwards at the dawn of spring.
- For each degree of hot, and each of cold,
- And the half-warm, all filling up the sum
- In due progression, lie, my Memmius, there
- Betwixt the two extremes: the things create
- Must differ, therefore, by a finite change,
- Since at each end marked off they ever are
- By fixed point- on one side plagued by flames
- And on the other by congealing frosts.
- The which now having taught, I will go on
- To bind thereto a fact to this allied
- And drawing from this its proof: those primal germs
- Which have been fashioned all of one like shape
- Are infinite in tale; for, since the forms
- Themselves are finite in divergences,
- Then those which are alike will have to be
- Infinite, else the sum of stuff remains
- A finite- what I've proved is not the fact,
- Showing in verse how corpuscles of stuff,
- From everlasting and to-day the same,
- Uphold the sum of things, all sides around
- By old succession of unending blows.
- For though thou view'st some beasts to be more rare,
- And mark'st in them a less prolific stock,
- Yet in another region, in lands remote,
- That kind abounding may make up the count;
- Even as we mark among the four-foot kind
- Snake-handed elephants, whose thousands wall
- With ivory ramparts India about,
- That her interiors cannot entered be-
- So big her count of brutes of which we see
- Such few examples. Or suppose, besides,
- We feign some thing, one of its kind and sole
- With body born, to which is nothing like
- In all the lands: yet now unless shall be
- An infinite count of matter out of which
- Thus to conceive and bring it forth to life,
- It cannot be created and- what's more-
- It cannot take its food and get increase.
- Yea, if through all the world in finite tale
- Be tossed the procreant bodies of one thing,
- Whence, then, and where in what mode, by what power,
- Shall they to meeting come together there,
- In such vast ocean of matter and tumult strange?-
- No means they have of joining into one.
- But, just as, after mighty ship-wrecks piled,
- The mighty main is wont to scatter wide
- The rowers' banks, the ribs, the yards, the prow,
- The masts and swimming oars, so that afar
- Along all shores of lands are seen afloat
- The carven fragments of the rended poop,
- Giving a lesson to mortality
- To shun the ambush of the faithless main,
- The violence and the guile, and trust it not
- At any hour, however much may smile
- The crafty enticements of the placid deep:
- Exactly thus, if once thou holdest true
- That certain seeds are finite in their tale,
- The various tides of matter, then, must needs
- Scatter them flung throughout the ages all,
- So that not ever can they join, as driven
- Together into union, nor remain
- In union, nor with increment can grow-
- But facts in proof are manifest for each:
- Things can be both begotten and increase.
- 'Tis therefore manifest that primal germs,
- Are infinite in any class thou wilt-
- From whence is furnished matter for all things.
- Nor can those motions that bring death prevail
- Forever, nor eternally entomb
- The welfare of the world; nor, further, can
- Those motions that give birth to things and growth
- Keep them forever when created there.
- Thus the long war, from everlasting waged,
- With equal strife among the elements
- Goes on and on. Now here, now there, prevail
- The vital forces of the world- or fall.
- Mixed with the funeral is the wildered wail
- Of infants coming to the shores of light:
- No night a day, no dawn a night hath followed
- That heard not, mingling with the small birth-cries,
- The wild laments, companions old of death
- And the black rites.