Lucretius - Of the Nature of Things

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.

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.

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