Of the Nature of Things. T. Lucretius Carus

Upon whose going out and coming in

       And changed order things their nature change,

       And all corporeal substances transformed,

       'Tis thine to know those primal bodies, then,

       Are not of fire. For 'twere of no avail

       Should some depart and go away, and some

       Be added new, and some be changed in order,

       If still all kept their nature of old heat:

       For whatsoever they created then

       Would still in any case be only fire.

       The truth, I fancy, this: bodies there are

       Whose clashings, motions, order, posture, shapes

       Produce the fire and which, by order changed,

       Do change the nature of the thing produced,

       And are thereafter nothing like to fire

       Nor whatso else has power to send its bodies

       With impact touching on the senses' touch.

       Again, to say that all things are but fire

       And no true thing in number of all things

       Exists but fire, as this same fellow says,

       Seems crazed folly. For the man himself

       Against the senses by the senses fights,

       And hews at that through which is all belief,

       Through which indeed unto himself is known

       The thing he calls the fire. For, though he thinks

       The senses truly can perceive the fire,

       He thinks they cannot as regards all else,

       Which still are palpably as clear to sense--

       To me a thought inept and crazy too.

       For whither shall we make appeal? for what

       More certain than our senses can there be

       Whereby to mark asunder error and truth?

       Besides, why rather do away with all,

       And wish to allow heat only, then deny

       The fire and still allow all else to be?--

       Alike the madness either way it seems.

       Thus whosoe'er have held the stuff of things

       To be but fire, and out of fire the sum,

       And whosoever have constituted air

       As first beginning of begotten things,

       And all whoever have held that of itself

       Water alone contrives things, or that earth

       Createth all and changes things anew

       To divers natures, mightily they seem

       A long way to have wandered from the truth.

       Add, too, whoever make the primal stuff

       Twofold, by joining air to fire, and earth

       To water; add who deem that things can grow

       Out of the four--fire, earth, and breath, and rain;

       As first Empedocles of Acragas,

       Whom that three-cornered isle of all the lands

       Bore on her coasts, around which flows and flows

       In mighty bend and bay the Ionic seas,

       Splashing the brine from off their gray-green waves.

       Here, billowing onward through the narrow straits,

       Swift ocean cuts her boundaries from the shores

       Of the Italic mainland. Here the waste

       Charybdis; and here Aetna rumbles threats

       To gather anew such furies of its flames

       As with its force anew to vomit fires,

       Belched from its throat, and skyward bear anew

       Its lightnings' flash. And though for much she seem

       The mighty and the wondrous isle to men,

       Most rich in all good things, and fortified

       With generous strength of heroes, she hath ne'er

       Possessed within her aught of more renown,

       Nor aught more holy, wonderful, and dear

       Than this true man. Nay, ever so far and pure

       The lofty music of his breast divine

       Lifts up its voice and tells of glories found,

       That scarce he seems of human stock create.

       Yet he and those forementioned (known to be

       So far beneath him, less than he in all),

       Though, as discoverers of much goodly truth,

       They gave, as 'twere from out of the heart's own shrine,

       Responses holier and soundlier based

       Than ever the Pythia pronounced for men

       From out the triped and the Delphian laurel,

       Have still in matter of first-elements

       Made ruin of themselves, and, great men, great

       Indeed and heavy there for them the fall:

       First, because, banishing the void from things,

       They yet assign them motion, and allow

       Things soft and loosely textured to exist,

       As air, dew, fire, earth, animals, and grains,

       Without admixture of void amid their frame.

       Next, because, thinking there can be no end

       In cutting bodies down to less and less

       Nor pause established to their breaking up,

       They hold there is no minimum in things;

       Albeit we see the boundary point of aught

       Is that which to our senses seems its least,

       Whereby thou mayst conjecture, that, because

       The things thou canst not mark have boundary points,

       They surely have their minimums. Then, too,

       Since these philosophers ascribe to things

       Soft primal germs, which we behold to be

       Of birth and body mortal, thus, throughout,

       The sum of things must be returned to naught,

       And, born from naught, abundance thrive anew--

       Thou seest how far each doctrine stands from truth.

       And, next, these bodies are among themselves

       In many ways poisons and foes to each,

       Wherefore their congress will destroy them quite

       Or drive asunder as we see in storms

       Rains, winds, and lightnings all asunder fly.

       Thus too, if all things are create of four,

       And all again dissolved into the four,

       How can the four be called the primal germs

       Of things, more than all things themselves be thought,

       By retroversion, primal germs of them?

       For ever alternately are both begot,

       With interchange of nature and aspect

       From immemorial time. But if percase

       Thou think'st the frame of fire and earth, the air,

       The dew of water can in such wise meet