Delphi Complete Works of Lucretius

by Titus Lucretius Carus

  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.r />
  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<
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  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,