Of the Nature of Things. T. Lucretius Carus

As not by mingling to resign their nature,

       From them for thee no world can be create--

       No thing of breath, no stock or stalk of tree:

       In the wild congress of this varied heap

       Each thing its proper nature will display,

       And air will palpably be seen mixed up

       With earth together, unquenched heat with water.

       But primal germs in bringing things to birth

       Must have a latent, unseen quality,

       Lest some outstanding alien element

       Confuse and minish in the thing create

       Its proper being.

       But these men begin

       From heaven, and from its fires; and first they feign

       That fire will turn into the winds of air,

       Next, that from air the rain begotten is,

       And earth created out of rain, and then

       That all, reversely, are returned from earth--

       The moisture first, then air thereafter heat--

       And that these same ne'er cease in interchange,

       To go their ways from heaven to earth, from earth

       Unto the stars of the aethereal world--

       Which in no wise at all the germs can do.

       Since an immutable somewhat still must be,

       Lest all things utterly be sped to naught;

       For change in anything from out its bounds

       Means instant death of that which was before.

       Wherefore, since those things, mentioned heretofore,

       Suffer a changed state, they must derive

       From others ever unconvertible,

       Lest an things utterly return to naught.

       Then why not rather presuppose there be

       Bodies with such a nature furnished forth

       That, if perchance they have created fire,

       Can still (by virtue of a few withdrawn,

       Or added few, and motion and order changed)

       Fashion the winds of air, and thus all things

       Forevermore be interchanged with all?

       "But facts in proof are manifest," thou sayest,

       "That all things grow into the winds of air

       And forth from earth are nourished, and unless

       The season favour at propitious hour

       With rains enough to set the trees a-reel

       Under the soak of bulking thunderheads,

       And sun, for its share, foster and give heat,

       No grains, nor trees, nor breathing things can grow."

       True--and unless hard food and moisture soft

       Recruited man, his frame would waste away,

       And life dissolve from out his thews and bones;

       For out of doubt recruited and fed are we

       By certain things, as other things by others.

       Because in many ways the many germs

       Common to many things are mixed in things,

       No wonder 'tis that therefore divers things

       By divers things are nourished. And, again,

       Often it matters vastly with what others,

       In what positions the primordial germs

       Are bound together, and what motions, too,

       They give and get among themselves; for these

       Same germs do put together sky, sea, lands,

       Rivers, and sun, grains, trees, and breathing things,

       But yet commixed they are in divers modes

       With divers things, forever as they move.

       Nay, thou beholdest in our verses here

       Elements many, common to many worlds,

       Albeit thou must confess each verse, each word

       From one another differs both in sense

       And ring of sound--so much the elements

       Can bring about by change of order alone.

       But those which are the primal germs of things

       Have power to work more combinations still,

       Whence divers things can be produced in turn.

       Now let us also take for scrutiny

       The homeomeria of Anaxagoras,

       So called by Greeks, for which our pauper-speech

       Yieldeth no name in the Italian tongue,

       Although the thing itself is not o'erhard

       For explanation. First, then, when he speaks

       Of this homeomeria of things, he thinks

       Bones to be sprung from littlest bones minute,

       And from minute and littlest flesh all flesh,

       And blood created out of drops of blood,

       Conceiving gold compact of grains of gold,

       And earth concreted out of bits of earth,

       Fire made of fires, and water out of waters,

       Feigning the like with all the rest of stuff.

       Yet he concedes not any void in things,

       Nor any limit to cutting bodies down.

       Wherefore to me he seems on both accounts

       To err no less than those we named before.

       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