BOOK II

BOOK II

PROEM

 'Tis sweet, when, down the mighty main, the winds
 Roll up its waste of waters, from the land
 To watch another's labouring anguish far,
 Not that we joyously delight that man
 Should thus be smitten, but because 'tis sweet
 To mark what evils we ourselves be spared;
 'Tis sweet, again, to view the mighty strife
 Of armies embattled yonder o'er the plains,
 Ourselves no sharers in the peril; but naught
 There is more goodly than to hold the high
 Serene plateaus, well fortressed by the wise,
 Whence thou may'st look below on other men
 And see them ev'rywhere wand'ring, all dispersed
 In their lone seeking for the road of life;
 Rivals in genius, or emulous in rank,
 Pressing through days and nights with hugest toil
 For summits of power and mastery of the world.
 O wretched minds of men! O blinded hearts!
 In how great perils, in what darks of life
 Are spent the human years, however brief!--
 O not to see that nature for herself
 Barks after nothing, save that pain keep off,
 Disjoined from the body, and that mind enjoy
 Delightsome feeling, far from care and fear!
 Therefore we see that our corporeal life
 Needs little, altogether, and only such
 As takes the pain away, and can besides
 Strew underneath some number of delights.
 More grateful 'tis at times (for nature craves
 No artifice nor luxury), if forsooth
 There be no golden images of boys
 Along the halls, with right hands holding out
 The lamps ablaze, the lights for evening feasts,
 And if the house doth glitter not with gold
 Nor gleam with silver, and to the lyre resound
 No fretted and gilded ceilings overhead,
 Yet still to lounge with friends in the soft grass
 Beside a river of water, underneath
 A big tree's boughs, and merrily to refresh
 Our frames, with no vast outlay--most of all
 If the weather is laughing and the times of the year
 Besprinkle the green of the grass around with flowers.
 Nor yet the quicker will hot fevers go,
 If on a pictured tapestry thou toss,
 Or purple robe, than if 'tis thine to lie
 Upon the poor man's bedding. Wherefore, since
 Treasure, nor rank, nor glory of a reign
 Avail us naught for this our body, thus
 Reckon them likewise nothing for the mind:
 Save then perchance, when thou beholdest forth
 Thy legions swarming round the Field of Mars,
 Rousing a mimic warfare--either side
 Strengthened with large auxiliaries and horse,
 Alike equipped with arms, alike inspired;
 Or save when also thou beholdest forth
 Thy fleets to swarm, deploying down the sea:
 For then, by such bright circumstance abashed,
 Religion pales and flees thy mind; O then
 The fears of death leave heart so free of care.
 But if we note how all this pomp at last
 Is but a drollery and a mocking sport,
 And of a truth man's dread, with cares at heels,
 Dreads not these sounds of arms, these savage swords
 But among kings and lords of all the world
 Mingles undaunted, nor is overawed
 By gleam of gold nor by the splendour bright
 Of purple robe, canst thou then doubt that this
 Is aught, but power of thinking?--when, besides
 The whole of life but labours in the dark.
 For just as children tremble and fear all
 In the viewless dark, so even we at times
 Dread in the light so many things that be
 No whit more fearsome than what children feign,
 Shuddering, will be upon them in the dark.
 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.

ATOMIC MOTIONS

 Now come: I will untangle for thy steps
 Now by what motions the begetting bodies
 Of the world-stuff beget the varied world,
 And then forever resolve it when begot,
 And by what force they are constrained to this,
 And what the speed appointed unto them
 Wherewith to travel down the vast inane:
 Do thou remember to yield thee to my words.
 For truly matter coheres not, crowds not tight,
 Since we behold each thing to wane away,
 And we observe how all flows on and off,
 As 'twere, with age-old time, and from our eyes
 How eld withdraws each object at the end,
 Albeit the sum is seen to bide the same,
 Unharmed, because these motes that leave each thing
 Diminish what they part from, but endow
 With increase those to which in turn they come,
 Constraining these to wither in old age,
 And those to flower at the prime (and yet
 Biding not long among them). Thus the sum
 Forever is replenished, and we live
 As mortals by eternal give and take.
 The nations wax, the nations wane away;
 In a brief space the generations pass,
 And like to runners hand the lamp of life
 One unto other.

                      But if thou believe
 That the primordial germs of things can stop,
 And in their stopping give new motions birth,
 Afar thou wanderest from the road of truth.
 For since they wander through the void inane,
 All the primordial germs of things must needs
 Be borne along, either by weight their own,
 Or haply by another's blow without.
 For, when, in their incessancy so oft
 They meet and clash, it comes to pass amain
 They leap asunder, face to face: not strange--
 Being most hard, and solid in their weights,
 And naught opposing motion, from behind.
 And that more clearly thou perceive how all
 These mites of matter are darted round about,
 Recall to mind how nowhere in the sum
 Of All exists a bottom,--nowhere is
 A realm of rest for primal bodies; since
 (As amply shown and proved by reason sure)
 Space has no bound nor measure, and extends
 Unmetered forth in all directions round.
 Since this stands certain, thus 'tis out of doubt
 No rest is rendered to the primal bodies
 Along the unfathomable inane; but rather,
 Inveterately plied by motions mixed,
 Some, at their jamming, bound aback and leave
 Huge gaps between, and some from off the blow
 Are hurried about with spaces small between.
 And all which, brought together with slight gaps,
 In more condensed union bound aback,
 Linked by their own all inter-tangled shapes,--
 These form the irrefragable roots of rocks
 And the brute bulks of iron, and what else
 Is of their kind...
 The rest leap far asunder, far recoil,
 Leaving huge gaps between: and these supply
 For us thin air and splendour-lights of the sun.
 And many besides wander the mighty void--
 Cast back from unions of existing things,
 Nowhere accepted in the universe,
 And nowise linked in motions to the rest.
 And of this fact (as I record it here)
 An image, a type goes on before our eyes
 Present each moment; for behold whenever
 The sun's light and the rays, let in, pour down
 Across dark halls of houses: thou wilt see
 The many mites in many a manner mixed
 Amid a void in the very light of the rays,
 And battling on, as in eternal strife,
 And in battalions contending without halt,
 In meetings, partings, harried up and down.
 From this thou mayest conjecture of what sort
 The ceaseless tossing of primordial seeds
 Amid the mightier void--at least so far
 As small affair can for a vaster serve,
 And by example put thee on the spoor
 Of knowledge. For this reason too 'tis fit
 Thou turn thy mind the more unto these bodies
 Which here are witnessed tumbling in the light:
 Namely, because such tumblings are a sign
 That motions also of the primal stuff
 Secret and viewless lurk beneath, behind.
 For thou wilt mark here many a speck, impelled
 By viewless blows, to change its little course,
 And beaten backwards to return again,
 Hither and thither in all directions round.
 Lo, all their shifting movement is of old,
 From the primeval atoms; for the same
 Primordial seeds of things first move of self,
 And then those bodies built of unions small
 And nearest, as it were, unto the powers
 Of the primeval atoms, are stirred up
 By impulse of those atoms' unseen blows,
 And these thereafter goad the next in size:
 Thus motion ascends from the primevals on,
 And stage by stage emerges to our sense,
 Until those objects also move which we
 Can mark in sunbeams, though it not appears
 What blows do urge them.

                         Herein wonder not
 How 'tis that, while the seeds of things are all
 Moving forever, the sum yet seems to stand
 Supremely still, except in cases where
 A thing shows motion of its frame as whole.
 For far beneath the ken of senses lies
 The nature of those ultimates of the world;
 And so, since those themselves thou canst not see,
 Their motion also must they veil from men--
 For mark, indeed, how things we can see, oft
 Yet hide their motions, when afar from us
 Along the distant landscape. Often thus,
 Upon a hillside will the woolly flocks
 Be cropping their goodly food and creeping about
 Whither the summons of the grass, begemmed
 With the fresh dew, is calling, and the lambs,
 Well filled, are frisking, locking horns in sport:
 Yet all for us seem blurred and blent afar--
 A glint of white at rest on a green hill.
 Again, when mighty legions, marching round,
 Fill all the quarters of the plains below,
 Rousing a mimic warfare, there the sheen
 Shoots up the sky, and all the fields about
 Glitter with brass, and from beneath, a sound
 Goes forth from feet of stalwart soldiery,
 And mountain walls, smote by the shouting, send
 The voices onward to the stars of heaven,
 And hither and thither darts the cavalry,
 And of a sudden down the midmost fields
 Charges with onset stout enough to rock
 The solid earth: and yet some post there is
 Up the high mountains, viewed from which they seem
 To stand--a gleam at rest along the plains.

  Now what the speed to matter's atoms given
 Thou mayest in few, my Memmius, learn from this:
 When first the dawn is sprinkling with new light
 The lands, and all the breed of birds abroad
 Flit round the trackless forests, with liquid notes
 Filling the regions along the mellow air,
 We see 'tis forthwith manifest to man
 How suddenly the risen sun is wont
 At such an hour to overspread and clothe
 The whole with its own splendour; but the sun's
 Warm exhalations and this serene light
 Travel not down an empty void; and thus
 They are compelled more slowly to advance,
 Whilst, as it were, they cleave the waves of air;
 Nor one by one travel these particles
 Of the warm exhalations, but are all
 Entangled and enmassed, whereby at once
 Each is restrained by each, and from without
 Checked, till compelled more slowly to advance.
 But the primordial atoms with their old
 Simple solidity, when forth they travel
 Along the empty void, all undelayed
 By aught outside them there, and they, each one
 Being one unit from nature of its parts,
 Are borne to that one place on which they strive
 Still to lay hold, must then, beyond a doubt,
 Outstrip in speed, and be more swiftly borne
 Than light of sun, and over regions rush,
 Of space much vaster, in the self-same time
 The sun's effulgence widens round the sky.

 *****
 Nor to pursue the atoms one by one,
 To see the law whereby each thing goes on.
 But some men, ignorant of matter, think,
 Opposing this, that not without the gods,
 In such adjustment to our human ways,
 Can nature change the seasons of the years,
 And bring to birth the grains and all of else
 To which divine Delight, the guide of life,
 Persuades mortality and leads it on,
 That, through her artful blandishments of love,
 It propagate the generations still,
 Lest humankind should perish. When they feign
 That gods have stablished all things but for man,
 They seem in all ways mightily to lapse
 From reason's truth: for ev'n if ne'er I knew
 What seeds primordial are, yet would I dare
 This to affirm, ev'n from deep judgment based
 Upon the ways and conduct of the skies--
 This to maintain by many a fact besides--
 That in no wise the nature of the world
 For us was builded by a power divine--
 So great the faults it stands encumbered with:
 The which, my Memmius, later on, for thee
 We will clear up. Now as to what remains
 Concerning motions we'll unfold our thought.

 Now is the place, meseems, in these affairs
 To prove for thee this too: nothing corporeal
 Of its own force can e'er be upward borne,
 Or upward go--nor let the bodies of flames
 Deceive thee here: for they engendered are
 With urge to upwards, taking thus increase,
 Whereby grow upwards shining grains and trees,
 Though all the weight within them downward bears.
 Nor, when the fires will leap from under round
 The roofs of houses, and swift flame laps up
 Timber and beam, 'tis then to be supposed
 They act of own accord, no force beneath
 To urge them up. 'Tis thus that blood, discharged
 From out our bodies, spurts its jets aloft
 And spatters gore. And hast thou never marked
 With what a force the water will disgorge
 Timber and beam? The deeper, straight and down,
 We push them in, and, many though we be,
 The more we press with main and toil, the more
 The water vomits up and flings them back,
 That, more than half their length, they there emerge,
 Rebounding. Yet we never doubt, meseems,
 That all the weight within them downward bears
 Through empty void. Well, in like manner, flames
 Ought also to be able, when pressed out,
 Through winds of air to rise aloft, even though
 The weight within them strive to draw them down.
 Hast thou not seen, sweeping so far and high,
 The meteors, midnight flambeaus of the sky,
 How after them they draw long trails of flame
 Wherever Nature gives a thoroughfare?
 How stars and constellations drop to earth,
 Seest not? Nay, too, the sun from peak of heaven
 Sheds round to every quarter its large heat,
 And sows the new-ploughed intervales with light:
 Thus also sun's heat downward tends to earth.
 Athwart the rain thou seest the lightning fly;
 Now here, now there, bursting from out the clouds,
 The fires dash zig-zag--and that flaming power
 Falls likewise down to earth.

                             In these affairs
 We wish thee also well aware of this:
 The atoms, as their own weight bears them down
 Plumb through the void, at scarce determined times,
 In scarce determined places, from their course
 Decline a little--call it, so to speak,
 Mere changed trend. For were it not their wont
 Thuswise to swerve, down would they fall, each one,
 Like drops of rain, through the unbottomed void;
 And then collisions ne'er could be nor blows
 Among the primal elements; and thus
 Nature would never have created aught.

 But, if perchance be any that believe
 The heavier bodies, as more swiftly borne
 Plumb down the void, are able from above
 To strike the lighter, thus engendering blows
 Able to cause those procreant motions, far
 From highways of true reason they retire.
 For whatsoever through the waters fall,
 Or through thin air, must quicken their descent,
 Each after its weight--on this account, because
 Both bulk of water and the subtle air
 By no means can retard each thing alike,
 But give more quick before the heavier weight;
 But contrariwise the empty void cannot,
 On any side, at any time, to aught
 Oppose resistance, but will ever yield,
 True to its bent of nature. Wherefore all,
 With equal speed, though equal not in weight,
 Must rush, borne downward through the still inane.
 Thus ne'er at all have heavier from above
 Been swift to strike the lighter, gendering strokes
 Which cause those divers motions, by whose means
 Nature transacts her work. And so I say,
 The atoms must a little swerve at times--
 But only the least, lest we should seem to feign
 Motions oblique, and fact refute us there.
 For this we see forthwith is manifest:
 Whatever the weight, it can't obliquely go,
 Down on its headlong journey from above,
 At least so far as thou canst mark; but who
 Is there can mark by sense that naught can swerve
 At all aside from off its road's straight line?

 Again, if ev'r all motions are co-linked,
 And from the old ever arise the new
 In fixed order, and primordial seeds
 Produce not by their swerving some new start
 Of motion to sunder the covenants of fate,
 That cause succeed not cause from everlasting,
 Whence this free will for creatures o'er the lands,
 Whence is it wrested from the fates,--this will
 Whereby we step right forward where desire
 Leads each man on, whereby the same we swerve
 In motions, not as at some fixed time,
 Nor at some fixed line of space, but where
 The mind itself has urged? For out of doubt
 In these affairs 'tis each man's will itself
 That gives the start, and hence throughout our limbs
 Incipient motions are diffused. Again,
 Dost thou not see, when, at a point of time,
 The bars are opened, how the eager strength
 Of horses cannot forward break as soon
 As pants their mind to do? For it behooves
 That all the stock of matter, through the frame,
 Be roused, in order that, through every joint,
 Aroused, it press and follow mind's desire;
 So thus thou seest initial motion's gendered
 From out the heart, aye, verily, proceeds
 First from the spirit's will, whence at the last
 'Tis given forth through joints and body entire.
 Quite otherwise it is, when forth we move,
 Impelled by a blow of another's mighty powers
 And mighty urge; for then 'tis clear enough
 All matter of our total body goes,
 Hurried along, against our own desire--
 Until the will has pulled upon the reins
 And checked it back, throughout our members all;
 At whose arbitrament indeed sometimes
 The stock of matter's forced to change its path,
 Throughout our members and throughout our joints,
 And, after being forward cast, to be
 Reined up, whereat it settles back again.
 So seest thou not, how, though external force
 Drive men before, and often make them move,
 Onward against desire, and headlong snatched,
 Yet is there something in these breasts of ours
 Strong to combat, strong to withstand the same?--
 Wherefore no less within the primal seeds
 Thou must admit, besides all blows and weight,
 Some other cause of motion, whence derives
 This power in us inborn, of some free act.--
 Since naught from nothing can become, we see.
 For weight prevents all things should come to pass
 Through blows, as 'twere, by some external force;
 But that man's mind itself in all it does
 Hath not a fixed necessity within,
 Nor is not, like a conquered thing, compelled
 To bear and suffer,--this state comes to man
 From that slight swervement of the elements
 In no fixed line of space, in no fixed time.

 Nor ever was the stock of stuff more crammed,
 Nor ever, again, sundered by bigger gaps:
 For naught gives increase and naught takes away;
 On which account, just as they move to-day,
 The elemental bodies moved of old
 And shall the same hereafter evermore.
 And what was wont to be begot of old
 Shall be begotten under selfsame terms
 And grow and thrive in power, so far as given
 To each by Nature's changeless, old decrees.
 The sum of things there is no power can change,
 For naught exists outside, to which can flee
 Out of the world matter of any kind,
 Nor forth from which a fresh supply can spring,
 Break in upon the founded world, and change
 Whole nature of things, and turn their motions about.

ATOMIC FORMS AND THEIR COMBINATIONS

 Now come, and next hereafter apprehend
 What sorts, how vastly different in form,
 How varied in multitudinous shapes they are--
 These old beginnings of the universe;
 Not in the sense that only few are furnished
 With one like form, but rather not at all
 In general have they likeness each with each,
 No marvel: since the stock of them's so great
 That there's no end (as I have taught) nor sum,
 They must indeed not one and all be marked
 By equal outline and by shape the same.

 *****
 Moreover, humankind, and the mute flocks
 Of scaly creatures swimming in the streams,
 And joyous herds around, and all the wild,
 And all the breeds of birds--both those that teem
 In gladsome regions of the water-haunts,
 About the river-banks and springs and pools,
 And those that throng, flitting from tree to tree,
 Through trackless woods--Go, take which one thou wilt,
 In any kind: thou wilt discover still
 Each from the other still unlike in shape.
 Nor in no other wise could offspring know
 Mother, nor mother offspring--which we see
 They yet can do, distinguished one from other,
 No less than human beings, by clear signs.
 Thus oft before fair temples of the gods,
 Beside the incense-burning altars slain,
 Drops down the yearling calf, from out its breast
 Breathing warm streams of blood; the orphaned mother,
 Ranging meanwhile green woodland pastures round,
 Knows well the footprints, pressed by cloven hoofs,
 With eyes regarding every spot about,
 For sight somewhere of youngling gone from her;
 And, stopping short, filleth the leafy lanes
 With her complaints; and oft she seeks again
 Within the stall, pierced by her yearning still.
 Nor tender willows, nor dew-quickened grass,
 Nor the loved streams that glide along low banks,
 Can lure her mind and turn the sudden pain;
 Nor other shapes of calves that graze thereby
 Distract her mind or lighten pain the least--
 So keen her search for something known and hers.
 Moreover, tender kids with bleating throats
 Do know their horned dams, and butting lambs
 The flocks of sheep, and thus they patter on,
 Unfailingly each to its proper teat,
 As nature intends. Lastly, with any grain,
 Thou'lt see that no one kernel in one kind
 Is so far like another, that there still
 Is not in shapes some difference running through.
 By a like law we see how earth is pied
 With shells and conchs, where, with soft waves, the sea
 Beats on the thirsty sands of curving shores.
 Wherefore again, again, since seeds of things
 Exist by nature, nor were wrought with hands
 After a fixed pattern of one other,
 They needs must flitter to and fro with shapes
 In types dissimilar to one another.

 *****

 Easy enough by thought of mind to solve
 Why fires of lightning more can penetrate
 Than these of ours from pitch-pine born on earth.
 For thou canst say lightning's celestial fire,
 So subtle, is formed of figures finer far,
 And passes thus through holes which this our fire,
 Born from the wood, created from the pine,
 Cannot. Again, light passes through the horn
 On the lantern's side, while rain is dashed away.
 And why?--unless those bodies of light should be
 Finer than those of water's genial showers.
 We see how quickly through a colander
 The wines will flow; how, on the other hand,
 The sluggish olive-oil delays: no doubt,
 Because 'tis wrought of elements more large,
 Or else more crook'd and intertangled. Thus
 It comes that the primordials cannot be
 So suddenly sundered one from other, and seep,
 One through each several hole of anything.

 And note, besides, that liquor of honey or milk
 Yields in the mouth agreeable taste to tongue,
 Whilst nauseous wormwood, pungent centaury,
 With their foul flavour set the lips awry;
 Thus simple 'tis to see that whatsoever
 Can touch the senses pleasingly are made
 Of smooth and rounded elements, whilst those
 Which seem the bitter and the sharp, are held
 Entwined by elements more crook'd, and so
 Are wont to tear their ways into our senses,
 And rend our body as they enter in.
 In short all good to sense, all bad to touch,
 Being up-built of figures so unlike,
 Are mutually at strife--lest thou suppose
 That the shrill rasping of a squeaking saw
 Consists of elements as smooth as song
 Which, waked by nimble fingers, on the strings
 The sweet musicians fashion; or suppose
 That same-shaped atoms through men's nostrils pierce
 When foul cadavers burn, as when the stage
 Is with Cilician saffron sprinkled fresh,
 And the altar near exhales Panchaean scent;
 Or hold as of like seed the goodly hues
 Of things which feast our eyes, as those which sting
 Against the smarting pupil and draw tears,
 Or show, with gruesome aspect, grim and vile.
 For never a shape which charms our sense was made
 Without some elemental smoothness; whilst
 Whate'er is harsh and irksome has been framed
 Still with some roughness in its elements.
 Some, too, there are which justly are supposed
 To be nor smooth nor altogether hooked,
 With bended barbs, but slightly angled-out,
 To tickle rather than to wound the sense--
 And of which sort is the salt tartar of wine
 And flavours of the gummed elecampane.
 Again, that glowing fire and icy rime
 Are fanged with teeth unlike whereby to sting
 Our body's sense, the touch of each gives proof.
 For touch--by sacred majesties of Gods!--
 Touch is indeed the body's only sense--
 Be't that something in-from-outward works,
 Be't that something in the body born
 Wounds, or delighteth as it passes out
 Along the procreant paths of Aphrodite;
 Or be't the seeds by some collision whirl
 Disordered in the body and confound
 By tumult and confusion all the sense--
 As thou mayst find, if haply with the hand
 Thyself thou strike thy body's any part.
 On which account, the elemental forms
 Must differ widely, as enabled thus
 To cause diverse sensations.

                            And, again,
 What seems to us the hardened and condensed
 Must be of atoms among themselves more hooked,
 Be held compacted deep within, as 'twere
 By branch-like atoms--of which sort the chief
 Are diamond stones, despisers of all blows,
 And stalwart flint and strength of solid iron,
 And brazen bars, which, budging hard in locks,
 Do grate and scream. But what are liquid, formed
 Of fluid body, they indeed must be
 Of elements more smooth and round--because
 Their globules severally will not cohere:
 To suck the poppy-seeds from palm of hand
 Is quite as easy as drinking water down,
 And they, once struck, roll like unto the same.
 But that thou seest among the things that flow
 Some bitter, as the brine of ocean is,
 Is not the least a marvel...
 For since 'tis fluid, smooth its atoms are
 And round, with painful rough ones mixed therein;
 Yet need not these be held together hooked:
 In fact, though rough, they're globular besides,
 Able at once to roll, and rasp the sense.
 And that the more thou mayst believe me here,
 That with smooth elements are mixed the rough
 (Whence Neptune's salt astringent body comes),
 There is a means to separate the twain,
 And thereupon dividedly to see
 How the sweet water, after filtering through
 So often underground, flows freshened forth
 Into some hollow; for it leaves above
 The primal germs of nauseating brine,
 Since cling the rough more readily in earth.
 Lastly, whatso thou markest to disperse
 Upon the instant--smoke, and cloud, and flame--
 Must not (even though not all of smooth and round)
 Be yet co-linked with atoms intertwined,
 That thus they can, without together cleaving,
 So pierce our body and so bore the rocks.
 Whatever we see...
 Given to senses, that thou must perceive
 They're not from linked but pointed elements.

 The which now having taught, I will go on
 To bind thereto a fact to this allied
 And drawing from this its proof: these primal germs
 Vary, yet only with finite tale of shapes.
 For were these shapes quite infinite, some seeds
 Would have a body of infinite increase.
 For in one seed, in one small frame of any,
 The shapes can't vary from one another much.
 Assume, we'll say, that of three minim parts
 Consist the primal bodies, or add a few:
 When, now, by placing all these parts of one
 At top and bottom, changing lefts and rights,
 Thou hast with every kind of shift found out
 What the aspect of shape of its whole body
 Each new arrangement gives, for what remains,
 If thou percase wouldst vary its old shapes,
 New parts must then be added; follows next,
 If thou percase wouldst vary still its shapes,
 That by like logic each arrangement still
 Requires its increment of other parts.
 Ergo, an augmentation of its frame
 Follows upon each novelty of forms.
 Wherefore, it cannot be thou'lt undertake
 That seeds have infinite differences in form,
 Lest thus thou forcest some indeed to be
 Of an immeasurable immensity--
 Which I have taught above cannot be proved.

 *****

 And now for thee barbaric robes, and gleam
 Of Meliboean purple, touched with dye
 Of the Thessalian shell...
 The peacock's golden generations, stained
 With spotted gaieties, would lie o'erthrown
 By some new colour of new things more bright;
 The odour of myrrh and savours of honey despised;
 The swan's old lyric, and Apollo's hymns,
 Once modulated on the many chords,
 Would likewise sink o'ermastered and be mute:
 For, lo, a somewhat, finer than the rest,
 Would be arising evermore. So, too,
 Into some baser part might all retire,
 Even as we said to better might they come:
 For, lo, a somewhat, loathlier than the rest
 To nostrils, ears, and eyes, and taste of tongue,
 Would then, by reasoning reversed, be there.
 Since 'tis not so, but unto things are given
 Their fixed limitations which do bound
 Their sum on either side, 'tmust be confessed
 That matter, too, by finite tale of shapes
 Does differ. Again, from earth's midsummer heats
 Unto the icy hoar-frosts of the year
 The forward path is fixed, and by like law
 O'ertravelled backwards at the dawn of spring.
 For each degree of hot, and each of cold,
 And the half-warm, all filling up the sum
 In due progression, lie, my Memmius, there
 Betwixt the two extremes: the things create
 Must differ, therefore, by a finite change,
 Since at each end marked off they ever are
 By fixed point--on one side plagued by flames
 And on the other by congealing frosts.

 The which now having taught, I will go on
 To bind thereto a fact to this allied
 And drawing from this its proof: those primal germs
 Which have been fashioned all of one like shape
 Are infinite in tale; for, since the forms
 Themselves are finite in divergences,
 Then those which are alike will have to be
 Infinite, else the sum of stuff remains
 A finite--what I've proved is not the fact,
 Showing in verse how corpuscles of stuff,
 From everlasting and to-day the same,
 Uphold the sum of things, all sides around
 By old succession of unending blows.
 For though thou view'st some beasts to be more rare,
 And mark'st in them a less prolific stock,
 Yet in another region, in lands remote,
 That kind abounding may make up the count;
 Even as we mark among the four-foot kind
 Snake-handed elephants, whose thousands wall
 With ivory ramparts India about,
 That her interiors cannot entered be--
 So big her count of brutes of which we see
 Such few examples. Or suppose, besides,
 We feign some thing, one of its kind and sole
 With body born, to which is nothing like
 In all the lands: yet now unless shall be
 An infinite count of matter out of which
 Thus to conceive and bring it forth to life,
 It cannot be created and--what's more--
 It cannot take its food and get increase.
 Yea, if through all the world in finite tale
 Be tossed the procreant bodies of one thing,
 Whence, then, and where in what mode, by what power,
 Shall they to meeting come together there,
 In such vast ocean of matter and tumult strange?--
 No means they have of joining into one.
 But, just as, after mighty ship-wrecks piled,
 The mighty main is wont to scatter wide
 The rowers' banks, the ribs, the yards, the prow,
 The masts and swimming oars, so that afar
 Along all shores of lands are seen afloat
 The carven fragments of the rended poop,
 Giving a lesson to mortality
 To shun the ambush of the faithless main,
 The violence and the guile, and trust it not
 At any hour, however much may smile
 The crafty enticements of the placid deep:
 Exactly thus, if once thou holdest true
 That certain seeds are finite in their tale,
 The various tides of matter, then, must needs
 Scatter them flung throughout the ages all,
 So that not ever can they join, as driven
 Together into union, nor remain
 In union, nor with increment can grow--
 But facts in proof are manifest for each:
 Things can be both begotten and increase.
 'Tis therefore manifest that primal germs,
 Are infinite in any class thou wilt--
 From whence is furnished matter for all things.

 Nor can those motions that bring death prevail
 Forever, nor eternally entomb
 The welfare of the world; nor, further, can
 Those motions that give birth to things and growth
 Keep them forever when created there.
 Thus the long war, from everlasting waged,
 With equal strife among the elements
 Goes on and on. Now here, now there, prevail
 The vital forces of the world--or fall.
 Mixed with the funeral is the wildered wail
 Of infants coming to the shores of light:
 No night a day, no dawn a night hath followed
 That heard not, mingling with the small birth-cries,
 The wild laments, companions old of death
 And the black rites.

                       This, too, in these affairs
 'Tis fit thou hold well sealed, and keep consigned
 With no forgetting brain: nothing there is
 Whose nature is apparent out of hand
 That of one kind of elements consists--
 Nothing there is that's not of mixed seed.
 And whatsoe'er possesses in itself
 More largely many powers and properties
 Shows thus that here within itself there are
 The largest number of kinds and differing shapes
 Of elements. And, chief of all, the earth
 Hath in herself first bodies whence the springs,
 Rolling chill waters, renew forevermore
 The unmeasured main; hath whence the fires arise--
 For burns in many a spot her flamed crust,
 Whilst the impetuous Aetna raves indeed
 From more profounder fires--and she, again,
 Hath in herself the seed whence she can raise
 The shining grains and gladsome trees for men;
 Whence, also, rivers, fronds, and gladsome pastures
 Can she supply for mountain-roaming beasts.
 Wherefore great mother of gods, and mother of beasts,
 And parent of man hath she alone been named.

 Her hymned the old and learned bards of Greece

 *****

 Seated in chariot o'er the realms of air
 To drive her team of lions, teaching thus
 That the great earth hangs poised and cannot lie
 Resting on other earth. Unto her car
 They've yoked the wild beasts, since a progeny,
 However savage, must be tamed and chid
 By care of parents. They have girt about
 With turret-crown the summit of her head,
 Since, fortressed in her goodly strongholds high,
 'Tis she sustains the cities; now, adorned
 With that same token, to-day is carried forth,
 With solemn awe through many a mighty land,
 The image of that mother, the divine.
 Her the wide nations, after antique rite,
 Do name Idaean Mother, giving her
 Escort of Phrygian bands, since first, they say,
 From out those regions 'twas that grain began
 Through all the world. To her do they assign
 The Galli, the emasculate, since thus
 They wish to show that men who violate
 The majesty of the mother and have proved
 Ingrate to parents are to be adjudged
 Unfit to give unto the shores of light
 A living progeny. The Galli come:
 And hollow cymbals, tight-skinned tambourines
 Resound around to bangings of their hands;
 The fierce horns threaten with a raucous bray;
 The tubed pipe excites their maddened minds
 In Phrygian measures; they bear before them knives,
 Wild emblems of their frenzy, which have power
 The rabble's ingrate heads and impious hearts
 To panic with terror of the goddess' might.
 And so, when through the mighty cities borne,
 She blesses man with salutations mute,
 They strew the highway of her journeyings
 With coin of brass and silver, gifting her
 With alms and largesse, and shower her and shade
 With flowers of roses falling like the snow
 Upon the Mother and her companion-bands.
 Here is an armed troop, the which by Greeks
 Are called the Phrygian Curetes. Since
 Haply among themselves they use to play
 In games of arms and leap in measure round
 With bloody mirth and by their nodding shake
 The terrorizing crests upon their heads,
 This is the armed troop that represents
 The arm'd Dictaean Curetes, who, in Crete,
 As runs the story, whilom did out-drown
 That infant cry of Zeus, what time their band,
 Young boys, in a swift dance around the boy,
 To measured step beat with the brass on brass,
 That Saturn might not get him for his jaws,
 And give its mother an eternal wound
 Along her heart. And 'tis on this account
 That armed they escort the mighty Mother,
 Or else because they signify by this
 That she, the goddess, teaches men to be
 Eager with armed valour to defend
 Their motherland, and ready to stand forth,
 The guard and glory of their parents' years.
 A tale, however beautifully wrought,
 That's wide of reason by a long remove:
 For all the gods must of themselves enjoy
 Immortal aeons and supreme repose,
 Withdrawn from our affairs, detached, afar:
 Immune from peril and immune from pain,
 Themselves abounding in riches of their own,
 Needing not us, they are not touched by wrath
 They are not taken by service or by gift.
 Truly is earth insensate for all time;
 But, by obtaining germs of many things,
 In many a way she brings the many forth
 Into the light of sun. And here, whoso
 Decides to call the ocean Neptune, or
 The grain-crop Ceres, and prefers to abuse
 The name of Bacchus rather than pronounce
 The liquor's proper designation, him
 Let us permit to go on calling earth
 Mother of Gods, if only he will spare
 To taint his soul with foul religion.
  So, too, the wooly flocks, and horned kine,
  And brood of battle-eager horses, grazing
 Often together along one grassy plain,
 Under the cope of one blue sky, and slaking
 From out one stream of water each its thirst,
 All live their lives with face and form unlike,
 Keeping the parents' nature, parents' habits,
 Which, kind by kind, through ages they repeat.
 So great in any sort of herb thou wilt,
 So great again in any river of earth
 Are the distinct diversities of matter.
 Hence, further, every creature--any one
 From out them all--compounded is the same
 Of bones, blood, veins, heat, moisture, flesh, and thews--
 All differing vastly in their forms, and built
 Of elements dissimilar in shape.
 Again, all things by fire consumed ablaze,
 Within their frame lay up, if naught besides,
 At least those atoms whence derives their power
 To throw forth fire and send out light from under,
 To shoot the sparks and scatter embers wide.
 If, with like reasoning of mind, all else
 Thou traverse through, thou wilt discover thus
 That in their frame the seeds of many things
 They hide, and divers shapes of seeds contain.
 Further, thou markest much, to which are given
 Along together colour and flavour and smell,
 Among which, chief, are most burnt offerings.

 *****

 Thus must they be of divers shapes composed.
 A smell of scorching enters in our frame
 Where the bright colour from the dye goes not;
 And colour in one way, flavour in quite another
 Works inward to our senses--so mayst see
 They differ too in elemental shapes.
 Thus unlike forms into one mass combine,
 And things exist by intermixed seed.

 But still 'tmust not be thought that in all ways
 All things can be conjoined; for then wouldst view
 Portents begot about thee every side:
 Hulks of mankind half brute astarting up,
 At times big branches sprouting from man's trunk,
 Limbs of a sea-beast to a land-beast knit,
 And nature along the all-producing earth
 Feeding those dire Chimaeras breathing flame
 From hideous jaws--Of which 'tis simple fact
 That none have been begot; because we see
 All are from fixed seed and fixed dam
 Engendered and so function as to keep
 Throughout their growth their own ancestral type.
 This happens surely by a fixed law:
 For from all food-stuff, when once eaten down,
 Go sundered atoms, suited to each creature,
 Throughout their bodies, and, conjoining there,
 Produce the proper motions; but we see
 How, contrariwise, nature upon the ground
 Throws off those foreign to their frame; and many
 With viewless bodies from their bodies fly,
 By blows impelled--those impotent to join
 To any part, or, when inside, to accord
 And to take on the vital motions there.
 But think not, haply, living forms alone
 Are bound by these laws: they distinguished all.

 *****

 For just as all things of creation are,
 In their whole nature, each to each unlike,
 So must their atoms be in shape unlike--
 Not since few only are fashioned of like form,
 But since they all, as general rule, are not
 The same as all. Nay, here in these our verses,
 Elements many, common to many words,
 Thou seest, though yet 'tis needful to confess
 The words and verses differ, each from each,
 Compounded out of different elements--
 Not since few only, as common letters, run
 Through all the words, or no two words are made,
 One and the other, from all like elements,
 But since they all, as general rule, are not
 The same as all. Thus, too, in other things,
 Whilst many germs common to many things
 There are, yet they, combined among themselves,
 Can form new wholes to others quite unlike.
 Thus fairly one may say that humankind,
 The grains, the gladsome trees, are all made up
 Of different atoms. Further, since the seeds
 Are different, difference must there also be
 In intervening spaces, thoroughfares,
 Connections, weights, blows, clashings, motions, all
 Which not alone distinguish living forms,
 But sunder earth's whole ocean from the lands,
 And hold all heaven from the lands away.

ABSENCE OF SECONDARY QUALITIES

 Now come, this wisdom by my sweet toil sought
 Look thou perceive, lest haply thou shouldst guess
 That the white objects shining to thine eyes
 Are gendered of white atoms, or the black
 Of a black seed; or yet believe that aught
 That's steeped in any hue should take its dye
 From bits of matter tinct with hue the same.
 For matter's bodies own no hue the least--
 Or like to objects or, again, unlike.
 But, if percase it seem to thee that mind
 Itself can dart no influence of its own
 Into these bodies, wide thou wand'rest off.
 For since the blind-born, who have ne'er surveyed
 The light of sun, yet recognise by touch
 Things that from birth had ne'er a hue for them,
 'Tis thine to know that bodies can be brought
 No less unto the ken of our minds too,
 Though yet those bodies with no dye be smeared.
 Again, ourselves whatever in the dark
 We touch, the same we do not find to be
 Tinctured with any colour.

                         Now that here
 I win the argument, I next will teach

 *****

 Now, every colour changes, none except,
 And every...
 Which the primordials ought nowise to do.
 Since an immutable somewhat must remain,
 Lest all things utterly be brought to naught.
 For change of anything from out its bounds
 Means instant death of that which was before.
 Wherefore be mindful not to stain with colour
 The seeds of things, lest things return for thee
 All utterly to naught.

                        But now, if seeds
 Receive no property of colour, and yet
 Be still endowed with variable forms
 From which all kinds of colours they beget
 And vary (by reason that ever it matters much
 With what seeds, and in what positions joined,
 And what the motions that they give and get),
 Forthwith most easily thou mayst devise
 Why what was black of hue an hour ago
 Can of a sudden like the marble gleam,--
 As ocean, when the high winds have upheaved
 Its level plains, is changed to hoary waves
 Of marble whiteness: for, thou mayst declare,
 That, when the thing we often see as black
 Is in its matter then commixed anew,
 Some atoms rearranged, and some withdrawn,
 And added some, 'tis seen forthwith to turn
 Glowing and white. But if of azure seeds
 Consist the level waters of the deep,
 They could in nowise whiten: for however
 Thou shakest azure seeds, the same can never
 Pass into marble hue. But, if the seeds--
 Which thus produce the ocean's one pure sheen--
 Be now with one hue, now another dyed,
 As oft from alien forms and divers shapes
 A cube's produced all uniform in shape,
 'Twould be but natural, even as in the cube
 We see the forms to be dissimilar,
 That thus we'd see in brightness of the deep
 (Or in whatever one pure sheen thou wilt)
 Colours diverse and all dissimilar.
 Besides, the unlike shapes don't thwart the least
 The whole in being externally a cube;
 But differing hues of things do block and keep
 The whole from being of one resultant hue.
 Then, too, the reason which entices us
 At times to attribute colours to the seeds
 Falls quite to pieces, since white things are not
 Create from white things, nor are black from black,
 But evermore they are create from things
 Of divers colours. Verily, the white
 Will rise more readily, is sooner born
 Out of no colour, than of black or aught
 Which stands in hostile opposition thus.

 Besides, since colours cannot be, sans light,
 And the primordials come not forth to light,
 'Tis thine to know they are not clothed with colour--
 Truly, what kind of colour could there be
 In the viewless dark? Nay, in the light itself
 A colour changes, gleaming variedly,
 When smote by vertical or slanting ray.
 Thus in the sunlight shows the down of doves
 That circles, garlanding, the nape and throat:
 Now it is ruddy with a bright gold-bronze,
 Now, by a strange sensation it becomes
 Green-emerald blended with the coral-red.
 The peacock's tail, filled with the copious light,
 Changes its colours likewise, when it turns.
 Wherefore, since by some blow of light begot,
 Without such blow these colours can't become.

 And since the pupil of the eye receives
 Within itself one kind of blow, when said
 To feel a white hue, then another kind,
 When feeling a black or any other hue,
 And since it matters nothing with what hue
 The things thou touchest be perchance endowed,
 But rather with what sort of shape equipped,
 'Tis thine to know the atoms need not colour,
 But render forth sensations, as of touch,
 That vary with their varied forms.

                                  Besides,
 Since special shapes have not a special colour,
 And all formations of the primal germs
 Can be of any sheen thou wilt, why, then,
 Are not those objects which are of them made
 Suffused, each kind with colours of every kind?
 For then 'twere meet that ravens, as they fly,
 Should dartle from white pinions a white sheen,
 Or swans turn black from seed of black, or be
 Of any single varied dye thou wilt.

 Again, the more an object's rent to bits,
 The more thou see its colour fade away
 Little by little till 'tis quite extinct;
 As happens when the gaudy linen's picked
 Shred after shred away: the purple there,
 Phoenician red, most brilliant of all dyes,
 Is lost asunder, ravelled thread by thread;
 Hence canst perceive the fragments die away
 From out their colour, long ere they depart
 Back to the old primordials of things.
 And, last, since thou concedest not all bodies
 Send out a voice or smell, it happens thus
 That not to all thou givest sounds and smells.
 So, too, since we behold not all with eyes,
 'Tis thine to know some things there are as much
 Orphaned of colour, as others without smell,
 And reft of sound; and those the mind alert
 No less can apprehend than it can mark
 The things that lack some other qualities.

 But think not haply that the primal bodies
 Remain despoiled alone of colour: so,
 Are they from warmth dissevered and from cold
 And from hot exhalations; and they move,
 Both sterile of sound and dry of juice; and throw
 Not any odour from their proper bodies.
 Just as, when undertaking to prepare
 A liquid balm of myrrh and marjoram,
 And flower of nard, which to our nostrils breathes
 Odour of nectar, first of all behooves
 Thou seek, as far as find thou may and can,
 The inodorous olive-oil (which never sends
 One whiff of scent to nostrils), that it may
 The least debauch and ruin with sharp tang
 The odorous essence with its body mixed
 And in it seethed. And on the same account
 The primal germs of things must not be thought
 To furnish colour in begetting things,
 Nor sound, since pow'rless they to send forth aught
 From out themselves, nor any flavour, too,
 Nor cold, nor exhalation hot or warm.

 *****

 The rest; yet since these things are mortal all--
 The pliant mortal, with a body soft;
 The brittle mortal, with a crumbling frame;
 The hollow with a porous-all must be
 Disjoined from the primal elements,
 If still we wish under the world to lay
 Immortal ground-works, whereupon may rest
 The sum of weal and safety, lest for thee
 All things return to nothing utterly.

 Now, too: whate'er we see possessing sense
 Must yet confessedly be stablished all
 From elements insensate. And those signs,
 So clear to all and witnessed out of hand,
 Do not refute this dictum nor oppose;
 But rather themselves do lead us by the hand,
 Compelling belief that living things are born
 Of elements insensate, as I say.
 Sooth, we may see from out the stinking dung
 Live worms spring up, when, after soaking rains,
 The drenched earth rots; and all things change the same:
 Lo, change the rivers, the fronds, the gladsome pastures
 Into the cattle, the cattle their nature change
 Into our bodies, and from our body, oft
 Grow strong the powers and bodies of wild beasts
 And mighty-winged birds. Thus nature changes
 All foods to living frames, and procreates
 From them the senses of live creatures all,
 In manner about as she uncoils in flames
 Dry logs of wood and turns them all to fire.
 And seest not, therefore, how it matters much
 After what order are set the primal germs,
 And with what other germs they all are mixed,
 And what the motions that they give and get?

 But now, what is't that strikes thy sceptic mind,
 Constraining thee to sundry arguments
 Against belief that from insensate germs
 The sensible is gendered?--Verily,
 'Tis this: that liquids, earth, and wood, though mixed,
 Are yet unable to gender vital sense.
 And, therefore, 'twill be well in these affairs
 This to remember: that I have not said
 Senses are born, under conditions all,
 From all things absolutely which create
 Objects that feel; but much it matters here
 Firstly, how small the seeds which thus compose
 The feeling thing, then, with what shapes endowed,
 And lastly what they in positions be,
 In motions, in arrangements. Of which facts
 Naught we perceive in logs of wood and clods;
 And yet even these, when sodden by the rains,
 Give birth to wormy grubs, because the bodies
 Of matter, from their old arrangements stirred
 By the new factor, then combine anew
 In such a way as genders living things.

 Next, they who deem that feeling objects can
 From feeling objects be create, and these,
 In turn, from others that are wont to feel

 *****

 When soft they make them; for all sense is linked
 With flesh, and thews, and veins--and such, we see,
 Are fashioned soft and of a mortal frame.
 Yet be't that these can last forever on:
 They'll have the sense that's proper to a part,
 Or else be judged to have a sense the same
 As that within live creatures as a whole.
 But of themselves those parts can never feel,
 For all the sense in every member back
 To something else refers--a severed hand,
 Or any other member of our frame,
 Itself alone cannot support sensation.
 It thus remains they must resemble, then,
 Live creatures as a whole, to have the power
 Of feeling sensation concordant in each part
 With the vital sense; and so they're bound to feel
 The things we feel exactly as do we.
 If such the case, how, then, can they be named
 The primal germs of things, and how avoid
 The highways of destruction?--since they be
 Mere living things and living things be all
 One and the same with mortal. Grant they could,
 Yet by their meetings and their unions all,
 Naught would result, indeed, besides a throng
 And hurly-burly all of living things--
 Precisely as men, and cattle, and wild beasts,
 By mere conglomeration each with each
 Can still beget not anything of new.
 But if by chance they lose, inside a body,
 Their own sense and another sense take on,
 What, then, avails it to assign them that
 Which is withdrawn thereafter? And besides,
 To touch on proof that we pronounced before,
 Just as we see the eggs of feathered fowls
 To change to living chicks, and swarming worms
 To bubble forth when from the soaking rains
 The earth is sodden, sure, sensations all
 Can out of non-sensations be begot.

 But if one say that sense can so far rise
 From non-sense by mutation, or because
 Brought forth as by a certain sort of birth,
 'Twill serve to render plain to him and prove
 There is no birth, unless there be before
 Some formed union of the elements,
 Nor any change, unless they be unite.

 In first place, senses can't in body be
 Before its living nature's been begot,--
 Since all its stuff, in faith, is held dispersed
 About through rivers, air, and earth, and all
 That is from earth created, nor has met
 In combination, and, in proper mode,
 Conjoined into those vital motions which
 Kindle the all-perceiving senses--they
 That keep and guard each living thing soever.

 Again, a blow beyond its nature's strength
 Shatters forthwith each living thing soe'er,
 And on it goes confounding all the sense
 Of body and mind. For of the primal germs
 Are loosed their old arrangements, and, throughout,
 The vital motions blocked,--until the stuff,
 Shaken profoundly through the frame entire,
 Undoes the vital knots of soul from body
 And throws that soul, to outward wide-dispersed,
 Through all the pores. For what may we surmise
 A blow inflicted can achieve besides
 Shaking asunder and loosening all apart?
 It happens also, when less sharp the blow,
 The vital motions which are left are wont
 Oft to win out--win out, and stop and still
 The uncouth tumults gendered by the blow,
 And call each part to its own courses back,
 And shake away the motion of death which now
 Begins its own dominion in the body,
 And kindle anew the senses almost gone.
 For by what other means could they the more
 Collect their powers of thought and turn again
 From very doorways of destruction
 Back unto life, rather than pass whereto
 They be already well-nigh sped and so
 Pass quite away?

                  Again, since pain is there
 Where bodies of matter, by some force stirred up,
 Through vitals and through joints, within their seats
 Quiver and quake inside, but soft delight,
 When they remove unto their place again:
 'Tis thine to know the primal germs can be
 Assaulted by no pain, nor from themselves
 Take no delight; because indeed they are
 Not made of any bodies of first things,
 Under whose strange new motions they might ache
 Or pluck the fruit of any dear new sweet.
 And so they must be furnished with no sense.

 Once more, if thus, that every living thing
 May have sensation, needful 'tis to assign
 Sense also to its elements, what then
 Of those fixed elements from which mankind
 Hath been, by their peculiar virtue, formed?
 Of verity, they'll laugh aloud, like men,
 Shaken asunder by a spasm of mirth,
 Or sprinkle with dewy tear-drops cheeks and chins,
 And have the cunning hardihood to say
 Much on the composition of the world,
 And in their turn inquire what elements
 They have themselves,--since, thus the same in kind
 As a whole mortal creature, even they
 Must also be from other elements,
 And then those others from others evermore--
 So that thou darest nowhere make a stop.
 Oho, I'll follow thee until thou grant
 The seed (which here thou say'st speaks, laughs, and

 *****
                               thinks)
 Is yet derived out of other seeds
 Which in their turn are doing just the same.
 But if we see what raving nonsense this,
 And that a man may laugh, though not, forsooth,
 Compounded out of laughing elements,
 And think and utter reason with learn'd speech,
 Though not himself compounded, for a fact,
 Of sapient seeds and eloquent, why, then,
 Cannot those things which we perceive to have
 Their own sensation be composed as well
 Of intermixed seeds quite void of sense?

INFINITE WORLDS

 Once more, we all from seed celestial spring,
 To all is that same father, from whom earth,
 The fostering mother, as she takes the drops
 Of liquid moisture, pregnant bears her broods--
 The shining grains, and gladsome shrubs and trees,
 And bears the human race and of the wild
 The generations all, the while she yields
 The foods wherewith all feed their frames and lead
 The genial life and propagate their kind;
 Wherefore she owneth that maternal name,
 By old desert. What was before from earth,
 The same in earth sinks back, and what was sent
 From shores of ether, that, returning home,
 The vaults of sky receive. Nor thus doth death
 So far annihilate things that she destroys
 The bodies of matter; but she dissipates
 Their combinations, and conjoins anew
 One element with others; and contrives
 That all things vary forms and change their colours
 And get sensations and straight give them o'er.
 And thus may'st know it matters with what others
 And in what structure the primordial germs
 Are held together, and what motions they
 Among themselves do give and get; nor think
 That aught we see hither and thither afloat
 Upon the crest of things, and now a birth
 And straightway now a ruin, inheres at rest
 Deep in the eternal atoms of the world.

 Why, even in these our very verses here
 It matters much with what and in what order
 Each element is set: the same denote
 Sky, and the ocean, lands, and streams, and sun;
 The same, the grains, and trees, and living things.
 And if not all alike, at least the most--
 But what distinctions by positions wrought!
 And thus no less in things themselves, when once
 Around are changed the intervals between,
 The paths of matter, its connections, weights,
 Blows, clashings, motions, order, structure, shapes,
 The things themselves must likewise changed be.

 Now to true reason give thy mind for us.
 Since here strange truth is putting forth its might
 To hit thee in thine ears, a new aspect
 Of things to show its front. Yet naught there is
 So easy that it standeth not at first
 More hard to credit than it after is;
 And naught soe'er that's great to such degree,
 Nor wonderful so far, but all mankind
 Little by little abandon their surprise.
 Look upward yonder at the bright clear sky
 And what it holds--the stars that wander o'er,
 The moon, the radiance of the splendour-sun:
 Yet all, if now they first for mortals were,
 If unforeseen now first asudden shown,
 What might there be more wonderful to tell,
 What that the nations would before have dared
 Less to believe might be?--I fancy, naught--
 So strange had been the marvel of that sight.
 The which o'erwearied to behold, to-day
 None deigns look upward to those lucent realms.
 Then, spew not reason from thy mind away,
 Beside thyself because the matter's new,
 But rather with keen judgment nicely weigh;
 And if to thee it then appeareth true,
 Render thy hands, or, if 'tis false at last,
 Gird thee to combat. For my mind-of-man
 Now seeks the nature of the vast Beyond
 There on the other side, that boundless sum
 Which lies without the ramparts of the world,
 Toward which the spirit longs to peer afar,
 Toward which indeed the swift elan of thought
 Flies unencumbered forth.

                           Firstly, we find,
 Off to all regions round, on either side,
 Above, beneath, throughout the universe
 End is there none--as I have taught, as too
 The very thing of itself declares aloud,
 And as from nature of the unbottomed deep
 Shines clearly forth. Nor can we once suppose
 In any way 'tis likely, (seeing that space
 To all sides stretches infinite and free,
 And seeds, innumerable in number, in sum
 Bottomless, there in many a manner fly,
 Bestirred in everlasting motion there),
 That only this one earth and sky of ours
 Hath been create and that those bodies of stuff,
 So many, perform no work outside the same;
 Seeing, moreover, this world too hath been
 By nature fashioned, even as seeds of things
 By innate motion chanced to clash and cling--
 After they'd been in many a manner driven
 Together at random, without design, in vain--
 And as at last those seeds together dwelt,
 Which, when together of a sudden thrown,
 Should alway furnish the commencements fit
 Of mighty things--the earth, the sea, the sky,
 And race of living creatures. Thus, I say,
 Again, again, 'tmust be confessed there are
 Such congregations of matter otherwhere,
 Like this our world which vasty ether holds
 In huge embrace.

                  Besides, when matter abundant
 Is ready there, when space on hand, nor object
 Nor any cause retards, no marvel 'tis
 That things are carried on and made complete,
 Perforce. And now, if store of seeds there is
 So great that not whole life-times of the living
 Can count the tale...
 And if their force and nature abide the same,
 Able to throw the seeds of things together
 Into their places, even as here are thrown
 The seeds together in this world of ours,
 'Tmust be confessed in other realms there are
 Still other worlds, still other breeds of men,
 And other generations of the wild.

 Hence too it happens in the sum there is
 No one thing single of its kind in birth,
 And single and sole in growth, but rather it is
 One member of some generated race,
 Among full many others of like kind.
 First, cast thy mind abroad upon the living:
 Thou'lt find the race of mountain-ranging wild
 Even thus to be, and thus the scions of men
 To be begot, and lastly the mute flocks
 Of scaled fish, and winged frames of birds.
 Wherefore confess we must on grounds the same
 That earth, sun, moon, and ocean, and all else,
 Exist not sole and single--rather in number
 Exceeding number. Since that deeply set
 Old boundary stone of life remains for them
 No less, and theirs a body of mortal birth
 No less, than every kind which here on earth
 Is so abundant in its members found.

 Which well perceived if thou hold in mind,
 Then Nature, delivered from every haughty lord,
 And forthwith free, is seen to do all things
 Herself and through herself of own accord,
 Rid of all gods. For--by their holy hearts
 Which pass in long tranquillity of peace
 Untroubled ages and a serene life!--
 Who hath the power (I ask), who hath the power
 To rule the sum of the immeasurable,
 To hold with steady hand the giant reins
 Of the unfathomed deep? Who hath the power
 At once to roll a multitude of skies,
 At once to heat with fires ethereal all
 The fruitful lands of multitudes of worlds,
 To be at all times in all places near,
 To stablish darkness by his clouds, to shake
 The serene spaces of the sky with sound,
 And hurl his lightnings,--ha, and whelm how oft
 In ruins his own temples, and to rave,
 Retiring to the wildernesses, there
 At practice with that thunderbolt of his,
 Which yet how often shoots the guilty by,
 And slays the honourable blameless ones!

 Ere since the birth-time of the world, ere since
 The risen first-born day of sea, earth, sun,
 Have many germs been added from outside,
 Have many seeds been added round about,
 Which the great All, the while it flung them on,
 Brought hither, that from them the sea and lands
 Could grow more big, and that the house of heaven
 Might get more room and raise its lofty roofs
 Far over earth, and air arise around.
 For bodies all, from out all regions, are
 Divided by blows, each to its proper thing,
 And all retire to their own proper kinds:
 The moist to moist retires; earth gets increase
 From earthy body; and fires, as on a forge,
 Beat out new fire; and ether forges ether;
 Till nature, author and ender of the world,
 Hath led all things to extreme bound of growth:
 As haps when that which hath been poured inside
 The vital veins of life is now no more
 Than that which ebbs within them and runs off.
 This is the point where life for each thing ends;
 This is the point where nature with her powers
 Curbs all increase. For whatsoe'er thou seest
 Grow big with glad increase, and step by step
 Climb upward to ripe age, these to themselves
 Take in more bodies than they send from selves,
 Whilst still the food is easily infused
 Through all the veins, and whilst the things are not
 So far expanded that they cast away
 Such numerous atoms as to cause a waste
 Greater than nutriment whereby they wax.
 For 'tmust be granted, truly, that from things
 Many a body ebbeth and runs off;
 But yet still more must come, until the things
 Have touched development's top pinnacle;
 Then old age breaks their powers and ripe strength
 And falls away into a worser part.
 For ever the ampler and more wide a thing,
 As soon as ever its augmentation ends,
 It scatters abroad forthwith to all sides round
 More bodies, sending them from out itself.
 Nor easily now is food disseminate
 Through all its veins; nor is that food enough
 To equal with a new supply on hand
 Those plenteous exhalations it gives off.
 Thus, fairly, all things perish, when with ebbing
 They're made less dense and when from blows without
 They are laid low; since food at last will fail
 Extremest eld, and bodies from outside
 Cease not with thumping to undo a thing
 And overmaster by infesting blows.

 Thus, too, the ramparts of the mighty world
 On all sides round shall taken be by storm,
 And tumble to wrack and shivered fragments down.
 For food it is must keep things whole, renewing;
 'Tis food must prop and give support to all,--
 But to no purpose, since nor veins suffice
 To hold enough, nor nature ministers
 As much as needful. And even now 'tis thus:
 Its age is broken and the earth, outworn
 With many parturitions, scarce creates
 The little lives--she who created erst
 All generations and gave forth at birth
 Enormous bodies of wild beasts of old.
 For never, I fancy, did a golden cord
 From off the firmament above let down
 The mortal generations to the fields;
 Nor sea, nor breakers pounding on the rocks
 Created them; but earth it was who bore--
 The same to-day who feeds them from herself.
 Besides, herself of own accord, she first
 The shining grains and vineyards of all joy
 Created for mortality; herself
 Gave the sweet fruitage and the pastures glad,
 Which now to-day yet scarcely wax in size,
 Even when aided by our toiling arms.
 We break the ox, and wear away the strength
 Of sturdy farm-hands; iron tools to-day
 Barely avail for tilling of the fields,
 So niggardly they grudge our harvestings,
 So much increase our labour. Now to-day
 The aged ploughman, shaking of his head,
 Sighs o'er and o'er that labours of his hands
 Have fallen out in vain, and, as he thinks
 How present times are not as times of old,
 Often he praises the fortunes of his sire,
 And crackles, prating, how the ancient race,
 Fulfilled with piety, supported life
 With simple comfort in a narrow plot,
 Since, man for man, the measure of each field
 Was smaller far i' the old days. And, again,
 The gloomy planter of the withered vine
 Rails at the season's change and wearies heaven,
 Nor grasps that all of things by sure degrees
 Are wasting away and going to the tomb,
 Outworn by venerable length of life.