Of the Nature of Things. T. Lucretius Carus

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...

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       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...

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       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.