On the Nature of Things. Тит Лукреций Кар

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

           Must be compound of alien substances.

           Which spring and bloom abroad from out the earth.

           Transfer the argument, and thou may'st use

           The selfsame words: if flame and smoke and ash

           Still lurk unseen within the wood, the wood

           Must be compound of alien substances

           Which spring from out the wood.

                                     Right here remains

           A certain slender means to skulk from truth,

           Which Anaxagoras takes unto himself,

           Who holds that all things lurk commixed with all

           While that one only comes to view, of which

           The bodies exceed in number all the rest,

           And lie more close to hand and at the fore—

           A notion banished from true reason far.

           For then 'twere meet that kernels of the grains

           Should oft, when crunched between the might of stones,

           Give forth a sign of blood, or of aught else

           Which in our human frame is fed; and that

           Rock rubbed on rock should yield a gory ooze.

           Likewise the herbs ought oft to give forth drops

           Of sweet milk, flavoured like the uddered sheep's;

           Indeed we ought to find, when crumbling up

           The earthy clods, there herbs, and grains, and leaves,

           All sorts dispersed minutely in the soil;

           Lastly we ought to find in cloven wood

           Ashes and smoke and bits of fire there hid.

           But since fact teaches this is not the case,

           'Tis thine to know things are not mixed with things

           Thuswise; but seeds, common to many things,

           Commixed in many ways, must lurk in things.

           "But often it happens on skiey hills" thou sayest,

           "That neighbouring tops of lofty trees are rubbed

           One against other, smote by the blustering south,