Of the Nature of Things. T. Lucretius Carus

deriving from the primal germs.

       And those which are the primal germs of things

       No power can quench; for in the end they conquer

       By their own solidness; though hard it be

       To think that aught in things has solid frame;

       For lightnings pass, no less than voice and shout,

       Through hedging walls of houses, and the iron

       White-dazzles in the fire, and rocks will burn

       With exhalations fierce and burst asunder.

       Totters the rigid gold dissolved in heat;

       The ice of bronze melts conquered in the flame;

       Warmth and the piercing cold through silver seep,

       Since, with the cups held rightly in the hand,

       We oft feel both, as from above is poured

       The dew of waters between their shining sides:

       So true it is no solid form is found.

       But yet because true reason and nature of things

       Constrain us, come, whilst in few verses now

       I disentangle how there still exist

       Bodies of solid, everlasting frame--

       The seeds of things, the primal germs we teach,

       Whence all creation around us came to be.

       First since we know a twofold nature exists,

       Of things, both twain and utterly unlike--

       Body, and place in which an things go on--

       Then each must be both for and through itself,

       And all unmixed: where'er be empty space,

       There body's not; and so where body bides,

       There not at all exists the void inane.

       Thus primal bodies are solid, without a void.

       But since there's void in all begotten things,

       All solid matter must be round the same;

       Nor, by true reason canst thou prove aught hides

       And holds a void within its body, unless

       Thou grant what holds it be a solid. Know,

       That which can hold a void of things within

       Can be naught else than matter in union knit.

       Thus matter, consisting of a solid frame,

       Hath power to be eternal, though all else,

       Though all creation, be dissolved away.

       Again, were naught of empty and inane,

       The world were then a solid; as, without

       Some certain bodies to fill the places held,

       The world that is were but a vacant void.

       And so, infallibly, alternate-wise

       Body and void are still distinguished,

       Since nature knows no wholly full nor void.

       There are, then, certain bodies, possessed of power

       To vary forever the empty and the full;

       And these can nor be sundered from without

       By beats and blows, nor from within be torn

       By penetration, nor be overthrown

       By any assault soever through the world--

       For without void, naught can be crushed, it seems,

       Nor broken, nor severed by a cut in twain,

       Nor can it take the damp, or seeping cold

       Or piercing fire, those old destroyers three;

       But the more void within a thing, the more

       Entirely it totters at their sure assault.

       Thus if first bodies be, as I have taught,

       Solid, without a void, they must be then

       Eternal; and, if matter ne'er had been

       Eternal, long ere now had all things gone

       Back into nothing utterly, and all

       We see around from nothing had been born--

       But since I taught above that naught can be

       From naught created, nor the once begotten

       To naught be summoned back, these primal germs

       Must have an immortality of frame.

       And into these must each thing be resolved,

       When comes its supreme hour, that thus there be

       At hand the stuff for plenishing the world.

       *****

       So primal germs have solid singleness

       Nor otherwise could they have been conserved

       Through aeons and infinity of time

       For the replenishment of wasted worlds.

       Once more, if nature had given a scope for things

       To be forever broken more and more,

       By now the bodies of matter would have been

       So far reduced by breakings in old days

       That from them nothing could, at season fixed,

       Be born, and arrive its prime and top of life.

       For, lo, each thing is quicker marred than made;

       And so whate'er the long infinitude

       Of days and all fore-passed time would now

       By this have broken and ruined and dissolved,

       That same could ne'er in all remaining time

       Be builded up for plenishing the world.

       But mark: infallibly a fixed bound

       Remaineth stablished 'gainst their breaking down;

       Since we behold each thing soever renewed,

       And unto all, their seasons, after their kind,

       Wherein they arrive the flower of their age.

       Again, if bounds have not been set against

       The breaking down of this corporeal world,

       Yet must all bodies of whatever things

       Have still endured from everlasting time

       Unto this present, as not yet assailed

       By shocks of peril. But because the same

       Are, to thy thinking, of a nature frail,

       It ill accords that thus they could remain

       (As thus they do) through everlasting time,

       Vexed through the ages (as indeed they are)

       By the innumerable blows of chance.

       So in our programme of creation, mark

       How 'tis that, though the bodies of all stuff

       Are solid to the core, we yet explain

       The ways whereby some things are fashioned soft--

       Air, water, earth, and fiery exhalations--

       And by what force they function and go on:

       The fact is founded in the void of things.

       But if the primal germs themselves be soft,

       Reason cannot be brought to bear to show

       The ways whereby may be created these

       Great crags of basalt and the during iron;

       For their whole nature will profoundly lack