Lucretius - Of the Nature of Things

Have power to work more combinations still,

Whence divers things can be produced in turn.

Now let us also take for scrutiny

The homeomeria of Anaxagoras,

So called by Greeks, for which our pauper-speech

Yieldeth no name in the Italian tongue,

Although the thing itself is not o’erhard

For explanation. First, then, when he speaks

Of this homeomeria of things, he thinks

Bones to be sprung from littlest bones minute,

And from minute and littlest flesh all flesh,

And blood created out of drops of blood,

Conceiving gold compact of grains of gold,

And earth concreted out of bits of earth,

Fire made of fires, and water out of waters,

Feigning the like with all the rest of stuff.

Yet he concedes not any void in things,

Nor any limit to cutting bodies down.

Wherefore to me he seems on both accounts

To err no less than those we named before.

Add too: these germs he feigns are far too frail —

If they be germs primordial furnished forth

With but same nature as the things themselves,

And travail and perish equally with those,

And no rein curbs them from annihilation.

For which will last against the grip and crush

Under the teeth of death? the fire? the moist?

Or else the air? which then? the blood? the bones?

No one, methinks, when every thing will be

At bottom as mortal as whate’er we mark

To perish by force before our gazing eyes.

But my appeal is to the proofs above

That things cannot fall back to naught, nor yet

From naught increase. And now again, since food

Augments and nourishes the human frame,

’Tis thine to know our veins and blood and bones

And thews are formed of particles unlike

To them in kind; or if they say all foods

Are of mixed substance having in themselves

Small bodies of thews, and bones, and also veins

And particles of blood, then every food,

Solid or liquid, must itself be thought

As made and mixed of things unlike in kind —

Of bones, of thews, of ichor and of blood.

Again, if all the bodies which upgrow

From earth, are first within the earth, then earth

Must be compound of alien substances

Which spring and bloom abroad from out the earth.

Transfer the argument, and thou may’st use

The selfsame words: if flame and smoke and ash

Still lurk unseen within the wood, the wood

Must be compound of alien substances

Which spring from out the wood.

Right here remains

A certain slender means to skulk from truth,

Which Anaxagoras takes unto himself,

Who holds that all things lurk commixed with all

While that one only comes to view, of which

The bodies exceed in number all the rest,

And lie more close to hand and at the fore —

A notion banished from true reason far.

For then ’twere meet that kernels of the grains

Should oft, when crunched between the might of stones,

Give forth a sign of blood, or of aught else

Which in our human frame is fed; and that

Rock rubbed on rock should yield a gory ooze.

Likewise the herbs ought oft to give forth drops

Of sweet milk, flavoured like the uddered sheep’s;

Indeed we ought to find, when crumbling up

The earthy clods, there herbs, and grains, and leaves,

All sorts dispersed minutely in the soil;

Lastly we ought to find in cloven wood

Ashes and smoke and bits of fire there hid.

But since fact teaches this is not the case,

’Tis thine to know things are not mixed with things

Thuswise; but seeds, common to many things,

Commixed in many ways, must lurk in things.

“But often it happens on skiey hills” thou sayest,

“That neighbouring tops of lofty trees are rubbed

One against other, smote by the blustering south,

Till all ablaze with bursting flower of flame.”

Good sooth — yet fire is not ingraft in wood,

But many are the seeds of heat, and when

Rubbing together they together flow,

They start the conflagrations in the forests.

Whereas if flame, already fashioned, lay

Stored up within the forests, then the fires

Could not for any time be kept unseen,

But would be laying all the wildwood waste

And burning all the boscage. Now dost see

(Even as we said a little space above)

How mightily it matters with what others,

In what positions these same primal germs

Are bound together? And what motions, too,

They give and get among themselves? how, hence,

The same, if altered ‘mongst themselves, can body

Both igneous and ligneous objects forth —

Precisely as these words themselves are made

By somewhat altering their elements,

Although we mark with name indeed distinct

The igneous from the ligneous. Once again,

If thou suppose whatever thou beholdest,

Among all visible objects, cannot be,

Unless thou feign bodies of matter endowed

With a like nature — by thy vain device

For thee will perish all the germs of things:

’Twill come to pass they’ll laugh aloud, like men,

Shaken asunder by a spasm of mirth,

Or moisten with salty tear-drops cheeks and chins.

Now learn of what remains! More keenly hear!

And for myself, my mind is not deceived

How dark it is: But the large hope of praise

Hath strook with pointed thyrsus through my heart;

On the same hour hath strook into my breast

Sweet love of the Muses, wherewith now instinct,

I wander afield, thriving in sturdy thought,

Through unpathed haunts of the Pierides,

Trodden by step of none before. I joy

To come on undefiled fountains there,

To drain them deep; I joy to pluck new flowers,

To seek for this my head a signal crown

From regions where the Muses never yet

Have garlanded the temples of a man:

First, since I teach concerning mighty things,

And go right on to loose from round the mind

The tightened coils of dread religion;

Next, since, concerning themes so dark, I frame

Songs so pellucid, touching all throughout

Even with the Muses’ charm — which, as ‘twould seem,

Is not without a reasonable ground:

But as physicians, when they seek to give

Young boys the nauseous wormwood, first do touch

The brim around the cup with the sweet juice

And yellow of the honey, in order that

The thoughtless age of boyhood be cajoled

As far as the lips, and meanwhile swallow down

The wormwood’s bitter draught, and, though befooled,

Be yet not merely duped, but rather thus

Grow strong again with recreated health:

So now I too (since this my doctrine seems

In general somewhat woeful unto those

Who’ve had it not in hand, and since the crowd

Starts back from it in horror) have desired

To expound our doctrine unto thee in song

Soft-speaking and Pierian, and, as ’twere,

To touch it with sweet honey of the Muse —

If by such method haply I might hold

The mind of thee upon these lines of ours,

Till thou see through the nature of all things,

And how exists the interwoven frame.

But since I’ve taught that bodies of matter, made

Completely solid, hither and thither fly

Forevermore unconquered through all time,

Now come, and whether to the sum of them

There be a limit or be none, for thee

Let us unfold; likewise what has been found

To be the wide inane, or room, or space

Wherein all things soever do go on,

Let us examine if it finite be

All and entire, or reach unmeasured round