Lucius Seneca - Yale Required Reading - Collected Works (Vol. 2)

To meet together and to try all sorts

Which, by combining one with other, they

Are powerful to create, that thus it is

No marvel now, if they have also fallen

Into arrangements such, and if they've passed

Into vibrations such, as those whereby

This sum of things is carried on to-day

By fixed renewal. But knew I never what

The seeds primordial were, yet would I dare

This to affirm, even from deep judgments based

Upon the ways and conduct of the skies—

This to maintain by many a fact besides—

That in no wise the nature of all things

For us was fashioned by a power divine—

So great the faults it stands encumbered with.

First, mark all regions which are overarched

By the prodigious reaches of the sky:

One yawning part thereof the mountain-chains

And forests of the beasts do have and hold;

And cliffs, and desert fens, and wastes of sea

(Which sunder afar the beaches of the lands)

Possess it merely; and, again, thereof

Well-nigh two-thirds intolerable heat

And a perpetual fall of frost doth rob

From mortal kind. And what is left to till,

Even that the force of nature would o'errun

With brambles, did not human force oppose,—

Long wont for livelihood to groan and sweat

Over the two-pronged mattock and to cleave

The soil in twain by pressing on the plough.

Unless, by the ploughshare turning the fruitful clods

And kneading the mould, we quicken into birth,

[The crops] spontaneously could not come up

Into the free bright air. Even then sometimes,

When things acquired by the sternest toil

Are now in leaf, are now in blossom all,

Either the skiey sun with baneful heats

Parches, or sudden rains or chilling rime

Destroys, or flaws of winds with furious whirl

Torment and twist. Beside these matters, why

Doth nature feed and foster on land and sea

The dreadful breed of savage beasts, the foes

Of the human clan? Why do the seasons bring

Distempers with them? Wherefore stalks at large

Death, so untimely? Then, again, the babe,

Like to the castaway of the raging surf,

Lies naked on the ground, speechless, in want

Of every help for life, when nature first

Hath poured him forth upon the shores of light

With birth-pangs from within the mother's womb,

And with a plaintive wail he fills the place,—

As well befitting one for whom remains

In life a journey through so many ills.

But all the flocks and herds and all wild beasts

Come forth and grow, nor need the little rattles,

Nor must be treated to the humouring nurse's

Dear, broken chatter; nor seek they divers clothes

To suit the changing skies; nor need, in fine,

Nor arms, nor lofty ramparts, wherewithal

Their own to guard—because the earth herself

And nature, artificer of the world, bring forth

Aboundingly all things for all.

Table of Contents

And first,

Since body of earth and water, air's light breath,

And fiery exhalations (of which four

This sum of things is seen to be compact)

So all have birth and perishable frame,

Thus the whole nature of the world itself

Must be conceived as perishable too.

For, verily, those things of which we see

The parts and members to have birth in time

And perishable shapes, those same we mark

To be invariably born in time

And born to die. And therefore when I see

The mightiest members and the parts of this

Our world consumed and begot again,

'Tis mine to know that also sky above

And earth beneath began of old in time

And shall in time go under to disaster.

And lest in these affairs thou deemest me

To have seized upon this point by sleight to serve

My own caprice—because I have assumed

That earth and fire are mortal things indeed,

And have not doubted water and the air

Both perish too and have affirmed the same

To be again begotten and wax big—

Mark well the argument: in first place, lo,

Some certain parts of earth, grievously parched

By unremitting suns, and trampled on

By a vast throng of feet, exhale abroad

A powdery haze and flying clouds of dust,

Which the stout winds disperse in the whole air.

A part, moreover, of her sod and soil

Is summoned to inundation by the rains;

And rivers graze and gouge the banks away.

Besides, whatever takes a part its own

In fostering and increasing [aught]...

Is rendered back; and since, beyond a doubt,

Earth, the all-mother, is beheld to be

Likewise the common sepulchre of things,

Therefore thou seest her minished of her plenty,

And then again augmented with new growth.

And for the rest, that sea, and streams, and springs

Forever with new waters overflow,

And that perennially the fluids well,

Needeth no words—the mighty flux itself

Of multitudinous waters round about

Declareth this. But whatso water first

Streams up is ever straightway carried off,

And thus it comes to pass that all in all

There is no overflow; in part because

The burly winds (that over-sweep amain)

And skiey sun (that with his rays dissolves)

Do minish the level seas; in part because

The water is diffused underground

Through all the lands. The brine is filtered off,

And then the liquid stuff seeps back again

And all regathers at the river-heads,

Whence in fresh-water currents on it flows

Over the lands, adown the channels which

Were cleft erstwhile and erstwhile bore along

The liquid-footed floods.

Now, then, of air

I'll speak, which hour by hour in all its body

Is changed innumerably. For whatso'er

Streams up in dust or vapour off of things,

The same is all and always borne along

Into the mighty ocean of the air;

And did not air in turn restore to things

Bodies, and thus recruit them as they stream,

All things by this time had resolved been

And changed into air. Therefore it never

Ceases to be engendered off of things

And to return to things, since verily

In constant flux do all things stream.

Likewise,

The abounding well-spring of the liquid light,

The ethereal sun, doth flood the heaven o'er

With constant flux of radiance ever new,

And with fresh light supplies the place of light,

Upon the instant. For whatever effulgence

Hath first streamed off, no matter where it falls,

Is lost unto the sun. And this 'tis thine

To know from these examples: soon as clouds

Have first begun to under-pass the sun,

And, as it were, to rend the rays of light

In twain, at once the lower part of them

Is lost entire, and earth is overcast

Where'er the thunderheads are rolled along—

So know thou mayst that things forever need

A fresh replenishment of gleam and glow,

And each effulgence, foremost flashed forth,

Perisheth one by one. Nor otherwise

Can things be seen in sunlight, lest alway

The fountain-head of light supply new light.

Indeed your earthly beacons of the night,

The hanging lampions and the torches, bright

With darting gleams and dense with livid soot,

Do hurry in like manner to supply

With ministering heat new light amain;

Are all alive to quiver with their fires,—

Are so alive, that thus the light ne'er leaves

The spots it shines on, as if rent in twain:

So speedily is its destruction veiled

By the swift birth of flame from all the fires.

Thus, then, we must suppose that sun and moon