Lucretius - Of the Nature of Things

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