BOOK I

BOOK I

PROEM

 Mother of Rome, delight of Gods and men,
 Dear Venus that beneath the gliding stars
 Makest to teem the many-voyaged main
 And fruitful lands--for all of living things
 Through thee alone are evermore conceived,
 Through thee are risen to visit the great sun--
 Before thee, Goddess, and thy coming on,
 Flee stormy wind and massy cloud away,
 For thee the daedal Earth bears scented flowers,
 For thee waters of the unvexed deep
 Smile, and the hollows of the serene sky
 Glow with diffused radiance for thee!
 For soon as comes the springtime face of day,
 And procreant gales blow from the West unbarred,
 First fowls of air, smit to the heart by thee,
 Foretoken thy approach, O thou Divine,
 And leap the wild herds round the happy fields
 Or swim the bounding torrents. Thus amain,
 Seized with the spell, all creatures follow thee
 Whithersoever thou walkest forth to lead,
 And thence through seas and mountains and swift streams,
 Through leafy homes of birds and greening plains,
 Kindling the lure of love in every breast,
 Thou bringest the eternal generations forth,
 Kind after kind. And since 'tis thou alone
 Guidest the Cosmos, and without thee naught
 Is risen to reach the shining shores of light,
 Nor aught of joyful or of lovely born,
 Thee do I crave co-partner in that verse
 Which I presume on Nature to compose
 For Memmius mine, whom thou hast willed to be
 Peerless in every grace at every hour--
 Wherefore indeed, Divine one, give my words
 Immortal charm. Lull to a timely rest
 O'er sea and land the savage works of war,
 For thou alone hast power with public peace
 To aid mortality; since he who rules
 The savage works of battle, puissant Mars,
 How often to thy bosom flings his strength
 O'ermastered by the eternal wound of love--
 And there, with eyes and full throat backward thrown,
 Gazing, my Goddess, open-mouthed at thee,
 Pastures on love his greedy sight, his breath
 Hanging upon thy lips. Him thus reclined
 Fill with thy holy body, round, above!
 Pour from those lips soft syllables to win
 Peace for the Romans, glorious Lady, peace!
 For in a season troublous to the state
 Neither may I attend this task of mine
 With thought untroubled, nor mid such events
 The illustrious scion of the Memmian house
 Neglect the civic cause.

                        Whilst human kind
 Throughout the lands lay miserably crushed
 Before all eyes beneath Religion--who
 Would show her head along the region skies,
 Glowering on mortals with her hideous face--
 A Greek it was who first opposing dared
 Raise mortal eyes that terror to withstand,
 Whom nor the fame of Gods nor lightning's stroke
 Nor threatening thunder of the ominous sky
 Abashed; but rather chafed to angry zest
 His dauntless heart to be the first to rend
 The crossbars at the gates of Nature old.
 And thus his will and hardy wisdom won;
 And forward thus he fared afar, beyond
 The flaming ramparts of the world, until
 He wandered the unmeasurable All.
 Whence he to us, a conqueror, reports
 What things can rise to being, what cannot,
 And by what law to each its scope prescribed,
 Its boundary stone that clings so deep in Time.
 Wherefore Religion now is under foot,
 And us his victory now exalts to heaven.

 I know how hard it is in Latian verse
 To tell the dark discoveries of the Greeks,
 Chiefly because our pauper-speech must find
 Strange terms to fit the strangeness of the thing;
 Yet worth of thine and the expected joy
 Of thy sweet friendship do persuade me on
 To bear all toil and wake the clear nights through,
 Seeking with what of words and what of song
 I may at last most gloriously uncloud
 For thee the light beyond, wherewith to view
 The core of being at the centre hid.
 And for the rest, summon to judgments true,
 Unbusied ears and singleness of mind
 Withdrawn from cares; lest these my gifts, arranged
 For thee with eager service, thou disdain
 Before thou comprehendest: since for thee
 I prove the supreme law of Gods and sky,
 And the primordial germs of things unfold,
 Whence Nature all creates, and multiplies
 And fosters all, and whither she resolves
 Each in the end when each is overthrown.
 This ultimate stock we have devised to name
 Procreant atoms, matter, seeds of things,
 Or primal bodies, as primal to the world.

 I fear perhaps thou deemest that we fare
 An impious road to realms of thought profane;
 But 'tis that same religion oftener far
 Hath bred the foul impieties of men:
 As once at Aulis, the elected chiefs,
 Foremost of heroes, Danaan counsellors,
 Defiled Diana's altar, virgin queen,
 With Agamemnon's daughter, foully slain.
 She felt the chaplet round her maiden locks
 And fillets, fluttering down on either cheek,
 And at the altar marked her grieving sire,
 The priests beside him who concealed the knife,
 And all the folk in tears at sight of her.
 With a dumb terror and a sinking knee
 She dropped; nor might avail her now that first
 'Twas she who gave the king a father's name.
 They raised her up, they bore the trembling girl
 On to the altar--hither led not now
 With solemn rites and hymeneal choir,
 But sinless woman, sinfully foredone,
 A parent felled her on her bridal day,
 Making his child a sacrificial beast
 To give the ships auspicious winds for Troy:
 Such are the crimes to which Religion leads.

 And there shall come the time when even thou,
 Forced by the soothsayer's terror-tales, shalt seek
 To break from us. Ah, many a dream even now
 Can they concoct to rout thy plans of life,
 And trouble all thy fortunes with base fears.
 I own with reason: for, if men but knew
 Some fixed end to ills, they would be strong
 By some device unconquered to withstand
 Religions and the menacings of seers.
 But now nor skill nor instrument is theirs,
 Since men must dread eternal pains in death.
 For what the soul may be they do not know,
 Whether 'tis born, or enter in at birth,
 And whether, snatched by death, it die with us,
 Or visit the shadows and the vasty caves
 Of Orcus, or by some divine decree
 Enter the brute herds, as our Ennius sang,
 Who first from lovely Helicon brought down
 A laurel wreath of bright perennial leaves,
 Renowned forever among the Italian clans.
 Yet Ennius too in everlasting verse
 Proclaims those vaults of Acheron to be,
 Though thence, he said, nor souls nor bodies fare,
 But only phantom figures, strangely wan,
 And tells how once from out those regions rose
 Old Homer's ghost to him and shed salt tears
 And with his words unfolded Nature's source.
 Then be it ours with steady mind to clasp
 The purport of the skies--the law behind
 The wandering courses of the sun and moon;
 To scan the powers that speed all life below;
 But most to see with reasonable eyes
 Of what the mind, of what the soul is made,
 And what it is so terrible that breaks
 On us asleep, or waking in disease,
 Until we seem to mark and hear at hand
 Dead men whose bones earth bosomed long ago.

SUBSTANCE IS ETERNAL

 This terror, then, this darkness of the mind,
 Not sunrise with its flaring spokes of light,
 Nor glittering arrows of morning can disperse,
 But only Nature's aspect and her law,
 Which, teaching us, hath this exordium:
 Nothing from nothing ever yet was born.
 Fear holds dominion over mortality
 Only because, seeing in land and sky
 So much the cause whereof no wise they know,
 Men think Divinities are working there.
 Meantime, when once we know from nothing still
 Nothing can be create, we shall divine
 More clearly what we seek: those elements
 From which alone all things created are,
 And how accomplished by no tool of Gods.
 Suppose all sprang from all things: any kind
 Might take its origin from any thing,
 No fixed seed required. Men from the sea
 Might rise, and from the land the scaly breed,
 And, fowl full fledged come bursting from the sky;
 The horned cattle, the herds and all the wild
 Would haunt with varying offspring tilth and waste;
 Nor would the same fruits keep their olden trees,
 But each might grow from any stock or limb
 By chance and change. Indeed, and were there not
 For each its procreant atoms, could things have
 Each its unalterable mother old?
 But, since produced from fixed seeds are all,
 Each birth goes forth upon the shores of light
 From its own stuff, from its own primal bodies.
 And all from all cannot become, because
 In each resides a secret power its own.
 Again, why see we lavished o'er the lands
 At spring the rose, at summer heat the corn,
 The vines that mellow when the autumn lures,
 If not because the fixed seeds of things
 At their own season must together stream,
 And new creations only be revealed
 When the due times arrive and pregnant earth
 Safely may give unto the shores of light
 Her tender progenies? But if from naught
 Were their becoming, they would spring abroad
 Suddenly, unforeseen, in alien months,
 With no primordial germs, to be preserved
 From procreant unions at an adverse hour.
 Nor on the mingling of the living seeds
 Would space be needed for the growth of things
 Were life an increment of nothing: then
 The tiny babe forthwith would walk a man,
 And from the turf would leap a branching tree--
 Wonders unheard of; for, by Nature, each
 Slowly increases from its lawful seed,
 And through that increase shall conserve its kind.
 Whence take the proof that things enlarge and feed
 From out their proper matter. Thus it comes
 That earth, without her seasons of fixed rains,
 Could bear no produce such as makes us glad,
 And whatsoever lives, if shut from food,
 Prolongs its kind and guards its life no more.
 Thus easier 'tis to hold that many things
 Have primal bodies in common (as we see
 The single letters common to many words)
 Than aught exists without its origins.
 Moreover, why should Nature not prepare
 Men of a bulk to ford the seas afoot,
 Or rend the mighty mountains with their hands,
 Or conquer Time with length of days, if not
 Because for all begotten things abides
 The changeless stuff, and what from that may spring
 Is fixed forevermore? Lastly we see
 How far the tilled surpass the fields untilled
 And to the labour of our hands return
 Their more abounding crops; there are indeed
 Within the earth primordial germs of things,
 Which, as the ploughshare turns the fruitful clods
 And kneads the mould, we quicken into birth.
 Else would ye mark, without all toil of ours,
 Spontaneous generations, fairer forms.
 Confess then, naught from nothing can become,
 Since all must have their seeds, wherefrom to grow,
 Wherefrom to reach the gentle fields of air.
 Hence too it comes that Nature all dissolves
 Into their primal bodies again, and naught
 Perishes ever to annihilation.
 For, were aught mortal in its every part,
 Before our eyes it might be snatched away
 Unto destruction; since no force were needed
 To sunder its members and undo its bands.
 Whereas, of truth, because all things exist,
 With seed imperishable, Nature allows
 Destruction nor collapse of aught, until
 Some outward force may shatter by a blow,
 Or inward craft, entering its hollow cells,
 Dissolve it down. And more than this, if Time,
 That wastes with eld the works along the world,
 Destroy entire, consuming matter all,
 Whence then may Venus back to light of life
 Restore the generations kind by kind?
 Or how, when thus restored, may daedal Earth
 Foster and plenish with her ancient food,
 Which, kind by kind, she offers unto each?
 Whence may the water-springs, beneath the sea,
 Or inland rivers, far and wide away,
 Keep the unfathomable ocean full?
 And out of what does Ether feed the stars?
 For lapsed years and infinite age must else
 Have eat all shapes of mortal stock away:
 But be it the Long Ago contained those germs,
 By which this sum of things recruited lives,
 Those same infallibly can never die,
 Nor nothing to nothing evermore return.
 And, too, the selfsame power might end alike
 All things, were they not still together held
 By matter eternal, shackled through its parts,
 Now more, now less. A touch might be enough
 To cause destruction. For the slightest force
 Would loose the weft of things wherein no part
 Were of imperishable stock. But now
 Because the fastenings of primordial parts
 Are put together diversely and stuff
 Is everlasting, things abide the same
 Unhurt and sure, until some power comes on
 Strong to destroy the warp and woof of each:
 Nothing returns to naught; but all return
 At their collapse to primal forms of stuff.
 Lo, the rains perish which Ether-father throws
 Down to the bosom of Earth-mother; but then
 Upsprings the shining grain, and boughs are green
 Amid the trees, and trees themselves wax big
 And lade themselves with fruits; and hence in turn
 The race of man and all the wild are fed;
 Hence joyful cities thrive with boys and girls;
 And leafy woodlands echo with new birds;
 Hence cattle, fat and drowsy, lay their bulk
 Along the joyous pastures whilst the drops
 Of white ooze trickle from distended bags;
 Hence the young scamper on their weakling joints
 Along the tender herbs, fresh hearts afrisk
 With warm new milk. Thus naught of what so seems
 Perishes utterly, since Nature ever
 Upbuilds one thing from other, suffering naught
 To come to birth but through some other's death.

 *****

 And now, since I have taught that things cannot
 Be born from nothing, nor the same, when born,
 To nothing be recalled, doubt not my words,
 Because our eyes no primal germs perceive;
 For mark those bodies which, though known to be
 In this our world, are yet invisible:
 The winds infuriate lash our face and frame,
 Unseen, and swamp huge ships and rend the clouds,
 Or, eddying wildly down, bestrew the plains
 With mighty trees, or scour the mountain tops
 With forest-crackling blasts. Thus on they rave
 With uproar shrill and ominous moan. The winds,
 'Tis clear, are sightless bodies sweeping through
 The sea, the lands, the clouds along the sky,
 Vexing and whirling and seizing all amain;
 And forth they flow and pile destruction round,
 Even as the water's soft and supple bulk
 Becoming a river of abounding floods,
 Which a wide downpour from the lofty hills
 Swells with big showers, dashes headlong down
 Fragments of woodland and whole branching trees;
 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
 The whole new void between those bodies formed;
 But air, however it stream with hastening gusts,
 Can yet not fill the gap at once--for first
 It makes for one place, ere diffused through all.
 And then, if haply any think this comes,
 When bodies spring apart, because the air
 Somehow condenses, wander they from truth:
 For then a void is formed, where none before;
 And, too, a void is filled which was before.
 Nor can air be condensed in such a wise;
 Nor, granting it could, without a void, I hold,
 It still could not contract upon itself
 And draw its parts together into one.
 Wherefore, despite demur and counter-speech,
 Confess thou must there is a void in things.

 And still I might by many an argument
 Here scrape together credence for my words.
 But for the keen eye these mere footprints serve,
 Whereby thou mayest know the rest thyself.
 As dogs full oft with noses on the ground,
 Find out the silent lairs, though hid in brush,
 Of beasts, the mountain-rangers, when but once
 They scent the certain footsteps of the way,
 Thus thou thyself in themes like these alone
 Can hunt from thought to thought, and keenly wind
 Along even onward to the secret places
 And drag out truth. But, if thou loiter loth
 Or veer, however little, from the point,
 This I can promise, Memmius, for a fact:
 Such copious drafts my singing tongue shall pour
 From the large well-springs of my plenished breast
 That much I dread slow age will steal and coil
 Along our members, and unloose the gates
 Of life within us, ere for thee my verse
 Hath put within thine ears the stores of proofs
 At hand for one soever question broached.

NOTHING EXISTS per se EXCEPT ATOMS AND THE VOID

 But, now again to weave the tale begun,
 All nature, then, as self-sustained, consists
 Of twain of things: of bodies and of void
 In which they're set, and where they're moved around.
 For common instinct of our race declares
 That body of itself exists: unless
 This primal faith, deep-founded, fail us not,
 Naught will there be whereunto to appeal
 On things occult when seeking aught to prove
 By reasonings of mind. Again, without
 That place and room, which we do call the inane,
 Nowhere could bodies then be set, nor go
 Hither or thither at all--as shown before.
 Besides, there's naught of which thou canst declare
 It lives disjoined from body, shut from void--
 A kind of third in nature. For whatever
 Exists must be a somewhat; and the same,
 If tangible, however fight and slight,
 Will yet increase the count of body's sum,
 With its own augmentation big or small;
 But, if intangible and powerless ever
 To keep a thing from passing through itself
 On any side, 'twill be naught else but that
 Which we do call the empty, the inane.
 Again, whate'er exists, as of itself,
 Must either act or suffer action on it,
 Or else be that wherein things move and be:
 Naught, saving body, acts, is acted on;
 Naught but the inane can furnish room. And thus,
 Beside the inane and bodies, is no third
 Nature amid the number of all things--
 Remainder none to fall at any time
 Under our senses, nor be seized and seen
 By any man through reasonings of mind.
 Name o'er creation with what names thou wilt,
 Thou'lt find but properties of those first twain,
 Or see but accidents those twain produce.

 A property is that which not at all
 Can be disjoined and severed from a thing
 Without a fatal dissolution: such,
 Weight to the rocks, heat to the fire, and flow
 To the wide waters, touch to corporal things,
 Intangibility to the viewless void.
 But state of slavery, pauperhood, and wealth,
 Freedom, and war, and concord, and all else
 Which come and go whilst nature stands the same,
 We're wont, and rightly, to call accidents.
 Even time exists not of itself; but sense
 Reads out of things what happened long ago,
 What presses now, and what shall follow after:
 No man, we must admit, feels time itself,
 Disjoined from motion and repose of things.
 Thus, when they say there "is" the ravishment
 Of Princess Helen, "is" the siege and sack
 Of Trojan Town, look out, they force us not
 To admit these acts existent by themselves,
 Merely because those races of mankind
 (Of whom these acts were accidents) long since
 Irrevocable age has borne away:
 For all past actions may be said to be
 But accidents, in one way, of mankind,--
 In other, of some region of the world.
 Add, too, had been no matter, and no room
 Wherein all things go on, the fire of love
 Upblown by that fair form, the glowing coal
 Under the Phrygian Alexander's breast,
 Had ne'er enkindled that renowned strife
 Of savage war, nor had the wooden horse
 Involved in flames old Pergama, by a birth
 At midnight of a brood of the Hellenes.
 And thus thou canst remark that every act
 At bottom exists not of itself, nor is
 As body is, nor has like name with void;
 But rather of sort more fitly to be called
 An accident of body, and of place
 Wherein all things go on.

CHARACTER OF THE ATOMS

                       Bodies, again,
 Are partly primal germs of things, and partly
 Unions 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
 The first foundations of a solid frame.
 But powerful in old simplicity,
 Abide the solid, the primeval germs;
 And by their combinations more condensed,
 All objects can be tightly knit and bound
 And made to show unconquerable strength.
 Again, since all things kind by kind obtain
 Fixed bounds of growing and conserving life;
 Since Nature hath inviolably decreed
 What each can do, what each can never do;
 Since naught is changed, but all things so abide
 That ever the variegated birds reveal
 The spots or stripes peculiar to their kind,
 Spring after spring: thus surely all that is
 Must be composed of matter immutable.
 For if the primal germs in any wise
 Were open to conquest and to change, 'twould be
 Uncertain also what could come to birth
 And what could not, and by what law to each
 Its scope prescribed, its boundary stone that clings
 So deep in Time. Nor could the generations
 Kind after kind so often reproduce
 The nature, habits, motions, ways of life,
 Of their progenitors.

                             And then again,
 Since there is ever an extreme bounding point

 *****

 Of that first body which our senses now
 Cannot perceive: That bounding point indeed
 Exists without all parts, a minimum
 Of nature, nor was e'er a thing apart,
 As of itself,--nor shall hereafter be,
 Since 'tis itself still parcel of another,
 A first and single part, whence other parts
 And others similar in order lie
 In a packed phalanx, filling to the full
 The nature of first body: being thus
 Not self-existent, they must cleave to that
 From which in nowise they can sundered be.
 So primal germs have solid singleness,
 Which tightly packed and closely joined cohere
 By virtue of their minim particles--
 No compound by mere union of the same;
 But strong in their eternal singleness,
 Nature, reserving them as seeds for things,
 Permitteth naught of rupture or decrease.

 Moreover, were there not a minimum,
 The smallest bodies would have infinites,
 Since then a half-of-half could still be halved,
 With limitless division less and less.
 Then what the difference 'twixt the sum and least?
 None: for however infinite the sum,
 Yet even the smallest would consist the same
 Of infinite parts. But since true reason here
 Protests, denying that the mind can think it,
 Convinced thou must confess such things there are
 As have no parts, the minimums of nature.
 And since these are, likewise confess thou must
 That primal bodies are solid and eterne.
 Again, if Nature, creatress of all things,
 Were wont to force all things to be resolved
 Unto least parts, then would she not avail
 To reproduce from out them anything;
 Because whate'er is not endowed with parts
 Cannot possess those properties required
 Of generative stuff--divers connections,
 Weights, blows, encounters, motions, whereby things
 Forevermore have being and go on.

CONFUTATION OF OTHER PHILOSOPHERS

 And on such grounds it is that those who held
 The stuff of things is fire, and out of fire
 Alone the cosmic sum is formed, are seen
 Mightily from true reason to have lapsed.
 Of whom, chief leader to do battle, comes
 That Heraclitus, famous for dark speech
 Among the silly, not the serious Greeks
 Who search for truth. For dolts are ever prone
 That to bewonder and adore which hides
 Beneath distorted words, holding that true
 Which sweetly tickles in their stupid ears,
 Or which is rouged in finely finished phrase.
 For how, I ask, can things so varied be,
 If formed of fire, single and pure? No whit
 'Twould help for fire to be condensed or thinned,
 If all the parts of fire did still preserve
 But fire's own nature, seen before in gross.
 The heat were keener with the parts compressed,
 Milder, again, when severed or dispersed--
 And more than this thou canst conceive of naught
 That from such causes could become; much less
 Might earth's variety of things be born
 From any fires soever, dense or rare.
 This too: if they suppose a void in things,
 Then fires can be condensed and still left rare;
 But since they see such opposites of thought
 Rising against them, and are loath to leave
 An unmixed void in things, they fear the steep
 And lose the road of truth. Nor do they see,
 That, if from things we take away the void,
 All things are then condensed, and out of all
 One body made, which has no power to dart
 Swiftly from out itself not anything--
 As throws the fire its light and warmth around,
 Giving thee proof its parts are not compact.
 But if perhaps they think, in other wise,
 Fires through their combinations can be quenched
 And change their substance, very well: behold,
 If fire shall spare to do so in no part,
 Then heat will perish utterly and all,
 And out of nothing would the world be formed.
 For change in anything from out its bounds
 Means instant death of that which was before;
 And thus a somewhat must persist unharmed
 Amid the world, lest all return to naught,
 And, born from naught, abundance thrive anew.
 Now since indeed there are those surest bodies
 Which keep their nature evermore the same,
 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 tripod 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
 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
 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,
 Till all ablaze with bursting flower of flame."
 Good sooth--yet fire is not ingraft in wood,
 But many are the seeds of heat, and when
 Rubbing together they together flow,
 They start the conflagrations in the forests.
 Whereas if flame, already fashioned, lay
 Stored up within the forests, then the fires
 Could not for any time be kept unseen,
 But would be laying all the wildwood waste
 And burning all the boscage. Now dost see
 (Even as we said a little space above)
 How mightily it matters with what others,
 In what positions these same primal germs
 Are bound together? And what motions, too,
 They give and get among themselves? how, hence,
 The same, if altered 'mongst themselves, can body
 Both igneous and ligneous objects forth--
 Precisely as these words themselves are made
 By somewhat altering their elements,
 Although we mark with name indeed distinct
 The igneous from the ligneous. Once again,
 If thou suppose whatever thou beholdest,
 Among all visible objects, cannot be,
 Unless thou feign bodies of matter endowed
 With a like nature,--by thy vain device
 For thee will perish all the germs of things:
 'Twill come to pass they'll laugh aloud, like men,
 Shaken asunder by a spasm of mirth,
 Or moisten with salty tear-drops cheeks and chins.

THE INFINITY OF THE UNIVERSE

 Now learn of what remains! More keenly hear!
 And for myself, my mind is not deceived
 How dark it is: But the large hope of praise
 Hath strook with pointed thyrsus through my heart;
 On the same hour hath strook into my breast
 Sweet love of the Muses, wherewith now instinct,
 I wander afield, thriving in sturdy thought,
 Through unpathed haunts of the Pierides,
 Trodden by step of none before. I joy
 To come on undefiled fountains there,
 To drain them deep; I joy to pluck new flowers,
 To seek for this my head a signal crown
 From regions where the Muses never yet
 Have garlanded the temples of a man:
 First, since I teach concerning mighty things,
 And go right on to loose from round the mind
 The tightened coils of dread religion;
 Next, since, concerning themes so dark, I frame
 Songs so pellucid, touching all throughout
 Even with the Muses' charm--which, as 'twould seem,
 Is not without a reasonable ground:
 But as physicians, when they seek to give
 Young boys the nauseous wormwood, first do touch
 The brim around the cup with the sweet juice
 And yellow of the honey, in order that
 The thoughtless age of boyhood be cajoled
 As far as the lips, and meanwhile swallow down
 The wormwood's bitter draught, and, though befooled,
 Be yet not merely duped, but rather thus
 Grow strong again with recreated health:
 So now I too (since this my doctrine seems
 In general somewhat woeful unto those
 Who've had it not in hand, and since the crowd
 Starts back from it in horror) have desired
 To expound our doctrine unto thee in song
 Soft-speaking and Pierian, and, as 'twere,
 To touch it with sweet honey of the Muse--
 If by such method haply I might hold
 The mind of thee upon these lines of ours,
 Till thou see through the nature of all things,
 And how exists the interwoven frame.

 But since I've taught that bodies of matter, made
 Completely solid, hither and thither fly
 Forevermore unconquered through all time,
 Now come, and whether to the sum of them
 There be a limit or be none, for thee
 Let us unfold; likewise what has been found
 To be the wide inane, or room, or space
 Wherein all things soever do go on,
 Let us examine if it finite be
 All and entire, or reach unmeasured round
 And downward an illimitable profound.

 Thus, then, the All that is is limited
 In no one region of its onward paths,
 For then 'tmust have forever its beyond.
 And a beyond 'tis seen can never be
 For aught, unless still further on there be
 A somewhat somewhere that may bound the same--
 So that the thing be seen still on to where
 The nature of sensation of that thing
 Can follow it no longer. Now because
 Confess we must there's naught beside the sum,
 There's no beyond, and so it lacks all end.
 It matters nothing where thou post thyself,
 In whatsoever regions of the same;
 Even any place a man has set him down
 Still leaves about him the unbounded all
 Outward in all directions; or, supposing
 A moment the all of space finite to be,
 If some one farthest traveller runs forth
 Unto the extreme coasts and throws ahead
 A flying spear, is't then thy wish to think
 It goes, hurled off amain, to where 'twas sent
 And shoots afar, or that some object there
 Can thwart and stop it? For the one or other
 Thou must admit and take. Either of which
 Shuts off escape for thee, and does compel
 That thou concede the all spreads everywhere,
 Owning no confines. Since whether there be
 Aught that may block and check it so it comes
 Not where 'twas sent, nor lodges in its goal,
 Or whether borne along, in either view
 'Thas started not from any end. And so
 I'll follow on, and whereso'er thou set
 The extreme coasts, I'll query, "what becomes
 Thereafter of thy spear?" 'Twill come to pass
 That nowhere can a world's-end be, and that
 The chance for further flight prolongs forever
 The flight itself. Besides, were all the space
 Of the totality and sum shut in
 With fixed coasts, and bounded everywhere,
 Then would the abundance of world's matter flow
 Together by solid weight from everywhere
 Still downward to the bottom of the world,
 Nor aught could happen under cope of sky,
 Nor could there be a sky at all or sun--
 Indeed, where matter all one heap would lie,
 By having settled during infinite time.
 But in reality, repose is given
 Unto no bodies 'mongst the elements,
 Because there is no bottom whereunto
 They might, as 'twere, together flow, and where
 They might take up their undisturbed abodes.
 In endless motion everything goes on
 Forevermore; out of all regions, even
 Out of the pit below, from forth the vast,
 Are hurtled bodies evermore supplied.
 The nature of room, the space of the abyss
 Is such that even the flashing thunderbolts
 Can neither speed upon their courses through,
 Gliding across eternal tracts of time,
 Nor, further, bring to pass, as on they run,
 That they may bate their journeying one whit:
 Such huge abundance spreads for things around--
 Room off to every quarter, without end.
 Lastly, before our very eyes is seen
 Thing to bound thing: air hedges hill from hill,
 And mountain walls hedge air; land ends the sea,
 And sea in turn all lands; but for the All
 Truly is nothing which outside may bound.
 That, too, the sum of things itself may not
 Have power to fix a measure of its own,
 Great nature guards, she who compels the void
 To bound all body, as body all the void,
 Thus rendering by these alternates the whole
 An infinite; or else the one or other,
 Being unbounded by the other, spreads,
 Even by its single nature, ne'ertheless
 Immeasurably forth....
 Nor sea, nor earth, nor shining vaults of sky,
 Nor breed of mortals, nor holy limbs of gods
 Could keep their place least portion of an hour:
 For, driven apart from out its meetings fit,
 The stock of stuff, dissolved, would be borne
 Along the illimitable inane afar,
 Or rather, in fact, would ne'er have once combined
 And given a birth to aught, since, scattered wide,
 It could not be united. For of truth
 Neither by counsel did the primal germs
 'Stablish themselves, as by keen act of mind,
 Each in its proper place; nor did they make,
 Forsooth, a compact how each germ should move;
 But since, being many and changed in many modes
 Along the All, they're driven abroad and vexed
 By blow on blow, even from all time of old,
 They thus at last, after attempting all
 The kinds of motion and conjoining, come
 Into those great arrangements out of which
 This sum of things established is create,
 By which, moreover, through the mighty years,
 It is preserved, when once it has been thrown
 Into the proper motions, bringing to pass
 That ever the streams refresh the greedy main
 With river-waves abounding, and that earth,
 Lapped in warm exhalations of the sun,
 Renews her broods, and that the lusty race
 Of breathing creatures bears and blooms, and that
 The gliding fires of ether are alive--
 What still the primal germs nowise could do,
 Unless from out the infinite of space
 Could come supply of matter, whence in season
 They're wont whatever losses to repair.
 For as the nature of breathing creatures wastes,
 Losing its body, when deprived of food:
 So all things have to be dissolved as soon
 As matter, diverted by what means soever
 From off its course, shall fail to be on hand.
 Nor can the blows from outward still conserve,
 On every side, whatever sum of a world
 Has been united in a whole. They can
 Indeed, by frequent beating, check a part,
 Till others arriving may fulfil the sum;
 But meanwhile often are they forced to spring
 Rebounding back, and, as they spring, to yield,
 Unto those elements whence a world derives,
 Room and a time for flight, permitting them
 To be from off the massy union borne
 Free and afar. Wherefore, again, again:
 Needs must there come a many for supply;
 And also, that the blows themselves shall be
 Unfailing ever, must there ever be
 An infinite force of matter all sides round.

 And in these problems, shrink, my Memmius, far
 From yielding faith to that notorious talk:
 That all things inward to the centre press;
 And thus the nature of the world stands firm
 With never blows from outward, nor can be
 Nowhere disparted--since all height and depth
 Have always inward to the centre pressed
 (If thou art ready to believe that aught
 Itself can rest upon itself ); or that
 The ponderous bodies which be under earth
 Do all press upwards and do come to rest
 Upon the earth, in some way upside down,
 Like to those images of things we see
 At present through the waters. They contend,
 With like procedure, that all breathing things
 Head downward roam about, and yet cannot
 Tumble from earth to realms of sky below,
 No more than these our bodies wing away
 Spontaneously to vaults of sky above;
 That, when those creatures look upon the sun,
 We view the constellations of the night;
 And that with us the seasons of the sky
 They thus alternately divide, and thus
 Do pass the night coequal to our days,
 But a vain error has given these dreams to fools,
 Which they've embraced with reasoning perverse
 For centre none can be where world is still
 Boundless, nor yet, if now a centre were,
 Could aught take there a fixed position more
 Than for some other cause 'tmight be dislodged.
 For all of room and space we call the void
 Must both through centre and non-centre yield
 Alike to weights where'er their motions tend.
 Nor is there any place, where, when they've come,
 Bodies can be at standstill in the void,
 Deprived of force of weight; nor yet may void
 Furnish support to any,--nay, it must,
 True to its bent of nature, still give way.
 Thus in such manner not at all can things
 Be held in union, as if overcome
 By craving for a centre.

                              But besides,
 Seeing they feign that not all bodies press
 To centre inward, rather only those
 Of earth and water (liquid of the sea,
 And the big billows from the mountain slopes,
 And whatsoever are encased, as 'twere,
 In earthen body), contrariwise, they teach
 How the thin air, and with it the hot fire,
 Is borne asunder from the centre, and how,
 For this all ether quivers with bright stars,
 And the sun's flame along the blue is fed
 (Because the heat, from out the centre flying,
 All gathers there), and how, again, the boughs
 Upon the tree-tops could not sprout their leaves,
 Unless, little by little, from out the earth
 For each were nutriment...

 *****

 Lest, after the manner of the winged flames,
 The ramparts of the world should flee away,
 Dissolved amain throughout the mighty void,
 And lest all else should likewise follow after,
 Aye, lest the thundering vaults of heaven should burst
 And splinter upward, and the earth forthwith
 Withdraw from under our feet, and all its bulk,
 Among its mingled wrecks and those of heaven,
 With slipping asunder of the primal seeds,
 Should pass, along the immeasurable inane,
 Away forever, and, that instant, naught
 Of wrack and remnant would be left, beside
 The desolate space, and germs invisible.
 For on whatever side thou deemest first
 The primal bodies lacking, lo, that side
 Will be for things the very door of death:
 Wherethrough the throng of matter all will dash,
 Out and abroad.

                These points, if thou wilt ponder,
 Then, with but paltry trouble led along...

 *****

 For one thing after other will grow clear,
 Nor shall the blind night rob thee of the road,
 To hinder thy gaze on nature's Farthest-forth.
 Thus things for things shall kindle torches new.