Of the Nature of Things. T. Lucretius Carus

Nor can the solid bridges bide the shock

       As on the waters whelm: the turbulent stream,

       Strong with a hundred rains, beats round the piers,

       Crashes with havoc, and rolls beneath its waves

       Down-toppled masonry and ponderous stone,

       Hurling away whatever would oppose.

       Even so must move the blasts of all the winds,

       Which, when they spread, like to a mighty flood,

       Hither or thither, drive things on before

       And hurl to ground with still renewed assault,

       Or sometimes in their circling vortex seize

       And bear in cones of whirlwind down the world:

       The winds are sightless bodies and naught else--

       Since both in works and ways they rival well

       The mighty rivers, the visible in form.

       Then too we know the varied smells of things

       Yet never to our nostrils see them come;

       With eyes we view not burning heats, nor cold,

       Nor are we wont men's voices to behold.

       Yet these must be corporeal at the base,

       Since thus they smite the senses: naught there is

       Save body, having property of touch.

       And raiment, hung by surf-beat shore, grows moist,

       The same, spread out before the sun, will dry;

       Yet no one saw how sank the moisture in,

       Nor how by heat off-driven. Thus we know,

       That moisture is dispersed about in bits

       Too small for eyes to see. Another case:

       A ring upon the finger thins away

       Along the under side, with years and suns;

       The drippings from the eaves will scoop the stone;

       The hooked ploughshare, though of iron, wastes

       Amid the fields insidiously. We view

       The rock-paved highways worn by many feet;

       And at the gates the brazen statues show

       Their right hands leaner from the frequent touch

       Of wayfarers innumerable who greet.

       We see how wearing-down hath minished these,

       But just what motes depart at any time,

       The envious nature of vision bars our sight.

       Lastly whatever days and nature add

       Little by little, constraining things to grow

       In due proportion, no gaze however keen

       Of these our eyes hath watched and known. No more

       Can we observe what's lost at any time,

       When things wax old with eld and foul decay,

       Or when salt seas eat under beetling crags.

       Thus Nature ever by unseen bodies works.

       THE VOID

       But yet creation's neither crammed nor blocked

       About by body: there's in things a void--

       Which to have known will serve thee many a turn,

       Nor will not leave thee wandering in doubt,

       Forever searching in the sum of all,

       And losing faith in these pronouncements mine.

       There's place intangible, a void and room.

       For were it not, things could in nowise move;

       Since body's property to block and check

       Would work on all and at an times the same.

       Thus naught could evermore push forth and go,

       Since naught elsewhere would yield a starting place.

       But now through oceans, lands, and heights of heaven,

       By divers causes and in divers modes,

       Before our eyes we mark how much may move,

       Which, finding not a void, would fail deprived

       Of stir and motion; nay, would then have been

       Nowise begot at all, since matter, then,

       Had staid at rest, its parts together crammed.

       Then too, however solid objects seem,

       They yet are formed of matter mixed with void:

       In rocks and caves the watery moisture seeps,

       And beady drops stand out like plenteous tears;

       And food finds way through every frame that lives;

       The trees increase and yield the season's fruit

       Because their food throughout the whole is poured,

       Even from the deepest roots, through trunks and boughs;

       And voices pass the solid walls and fly

       Reverberant through shut doorways of a house;

       And stiffening frost seeps inward to our bones.

       Which but for voids for bodies to go through

       'Tis clear could happen in nowise at all.

       Again, why see we among objects some

       Of heavier weight, but of no bulkier size?

       Indeed, if in a ball of wool there be

       As much of body as in lump of lead,

       The two should weigh alike, since body tends

       To load things downward, while the void abides,

       By contrary nature, the imponderable.

       Therefore, an object just as large but lighter

       Declares infallibly its more of void;

       Even as the heavier more of matter shows,

       And how much less of vacant room inside.

       That which we're seeking with sagacious quest

       Exists, infallibly, commixed with things--

       The void, the invisible inane.

       Right here

       I am compelled a question to expound,

       Forestalling something certain folk suppose,

       Lest it avail to lead thee off from truth:

       Waters (they say) before the shining breed

       Of the swift scaly creatures somehow give,

       And straightway open sudden liquid paths,

       Because the fishes leave behind them room

       To which at once the yielding billows stream.

       Thus things among themselves can yet be moved,

       And change their place, however full the Sum--

       Received opinion, wholly false forsooth.

       For where can scaly creatures forward dart,

       Save where the waters give them room? Again,

       Where can the billows yield a way, so long

       As ever the fish are powerless to go?

       Thus either all bodies of motion are deprived,

       Or things contain admixture of a void

       Where each thing gets its start in moving on.

       Lastly, where after impact two broad bodies

       Suddenly spring apart, the air must crowd