De rerum natura / On the Nature of Things
{"WorkMasterId":6604,"WpPageId":283613,"ParentWpPageId":193735,"Slug":"de-rerum-natura","Url":"https://chrisdeasy.com/theos/humanities/philosophy/philosophers/lucretius-titus-lucretius-carus/de-rerum-natura/","RelativeUrl":"theos/humanities/philosophy/philosophers/lucretius-titus-lucretius-carus/de-rerum-natura/","HasFullText":true,"RawHtmlLength":564190,"CleanHtmlLength":508080,"Kicker":"Philosophy Work","Title":"De rerum natura / On the Nature of Things","Deck":"Lucretius renders Epicurean atomism into Latin poetry, arguing that nature consists of atoms and void, that mind and soul are mortal, that worlds arise without providential design, and that freedom from superstition is essential to tranquility.","BackLink":{"Text":"Back to Lucretius (Titus Lucretius Carus)","Url":"https://chrisdeasy.com/theos/humanities/philosophy/philosophers/lucretius-titus-lucretius-carus/"},"AuthorCard":{"Label":"Author","Title":"Lucretius (Titus Lucretius Carus)","Url":"https://chrisdeasy.com/theos/humanities/philosophy/philosophers/lucretius-titus-lucretius-carus/","MediaHref":"","ImageSrc":"https://chrisdeasy.com/wp-content/uploads/lucretius-titus-lucretius-carus-01-lucretius-pointing-to-the-casus-the-downward.jpg","ImageAlt":"Lucretius pointing to the casus","FilterTerra":"Eastern Mediterranean","ClickText":"Lucretius (Titus Lucretius Carus)","ClickHref":"https://chrisdeasy.com/theos/humanities/philosophy/philosophers/lucretius-titus-lucretius-carus/","Copies":["99 BCE – 55 BCE","Rome or Roman Italy, probably Rome; exact birthplace uncertain","Roman Epicurean poet-philosopher whose De rerum natura carries atomism, naturalistic explanation, mortal mind, and the critique of superstition into Latin didactic poetry."]},"ContextCards":[{"Label":"Period","Key":"Period:1","Title":"Ancient History","DateText":"3000 BCE – 499 CE","Url":"https://chrisdeasy.com/theos/humanities/philosophy/eras-of-thought/philosophers-of-ancient-history/"},{"Label":"Era","Key":"Era:3","Title":"Classical Antiquity","DateText":"500 BCE – 499 CE","Url":"https://chrisdeasy.com/theos/humanities/philosophy/eras-of-thought/philosophers-of-ancient-history/philosophers-of-classical-antiquity/"},{"Label":"Composition","Title":"55 BCE","Url":"","DateText":""}],"DateNote":"Normalized site year -55 marks the likely completion or late composition of the poem; sources vary around Lucretius\u0027 life dates and the poem may have lacked final authorial revision.","GeoCards":[{"Label":"Region","Key":"Region:1"},{"Label":"Terra Avita","Key":"TerraAvita:2"},{"Label":"Terra Avita Region","Key":"TerraAvitaRegion:6"},{"Label":"Modern Country","Key":"Country:ITA:2"}],"OriginalTitle":"De rerum natura","Language":"Latin","DisciplineCards":[{"Label":"Primary Discipline","Key":"Discipline:metaphysics"},{"Label":"Secondary Discipline","Key":"Discipline:philosophy-of-science"}],"Tradition":"Roman Epicurean atomism","FullText":{"Title":"Full Text","Copy":"Public-domain full text from Project Gutenberg eBook #785 .","Url":"","Label":"","Kicker":"","Cards":[]},"CoreThesis":["Lucretius renders Epicurean atomism into Latin poetry, arguing that nature consists of atoms and void, that mind and soul are mortal, that worlds arise without providential design, and that freedom from superstition is essential to tranquility."],"Classification":{"AlternateTitles":"On the Nature of Things; On the Nature of the Universe; De la nature des choses; Della natura delle cose","KeyConcepts":"atoms; void; clinamen; swerve; Epicureanism; mortality of soul; anti-superstition; pleasure; sensation; simulacra; natural explanation; Memmius; plague","Methodology":"Latin didactic poetry, Epicurean physics, ethical therapy, anti-superstitious polemic, atomist explanation, analogical reasoning, and poetic instruction addressed to Gaius Memmius.","Structure":"Six-book didactic poem: atoms and void; atomic motion and cosmology; mind and soul; sensation and desire; the world and civilization; meteorology, plague, and natural explanation. The public page marks no full-text badge."},"Arguments":["Lucretius renders Epicurean atomism into Latin poetry, arguing that nature consists of atoms and void, that mind and soul are mortal, that worlds arise without providential design, and that freedom from superstition is essential to tranquility."],"Influence":{"InfluencedBy":"Epicurus, Democritus, Leucippus, Empedocles, Ennius, Roman poetic tradition, and Hellenistic debates about nature, religion, pleasure, death, and explanation.","InfluenceOn":""},"Significance":["Accepted as Lucretius\u0027 only direct work row: a six-book Epicurean didactic poem addressed to Gaius Memmius, transmitted through medieval manuscripts and early modern editions, with evidence notes preserving uncertainty about final revision and ancient biographical legends.","De rerum natura remains a central source for Epicurean physics, materialist philosophy of mind, naturalistic explanation, critique of superstition, and the literary transmission of atomism."],"EvidenceNote":["Accepted as Lucretius\u0027 only direct work row: a six-book Epicurean didactic poem addressed to Gaius Memmius, transmitted through medieval manuscripts and early modern editions, with evidence notes preserving uncertainty about final revision and ancient biographical legends."],"MainSections":[{"Kind":"RawSection","Title":"Full Versions","BodyHtml":"\u003cdiv class=\"dz-philo__full-version-grid\"\u003e\n \u003carticle class=\"dz-philo__full-version-card\"\u003e\n \u003cp class=\"dz-philo__full-version-provider\"\u003eProject Gutenberg\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003ch3 class=\"dz-philo__full-version-title\"\u003eProject Gutenberg eBook #785\u003c/h3\u003e\n \u003cp class=\"dz-philo__full-version-meta\"\u003eHtmlText · Imported\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003ca class=\"dz-philo__full-version-link\" href=\"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/785\"\u003eOpen full version\u003c/a\u003e\n \u003c/article\u003e\n \u003c/div\u003e"},{"Kind":"TextSection","Title":"Core Thesis","Paragraphs":["Lucretius renders Epicurean atomism into Latin poetry, arguing that nature consists of atoms and void, that mind and soul are mortal, that worlds arise without providential design, and that freedom from superstition is essential to tranquility."]},{"Kind":"FieldSection","Title":"Classification","Fields":[{"Label":"Alternate Titles","Value":"On the Nature of Things; On the Nature of the Universe; De la nature des choses; Della natura delle cose"},{"Label":"Key Concepts","Value":"atoms; void; clinamen; swerve; Epicureanism; mortality of soul; anti-superstition; pleasure; sensation; simulacra; natural explanation; Memmius; plague"},{"Label":"Methodology","Value":"Latin didactic poetry, Epicurean physics, ethical therapy, anti-superstitious polemic, atomist explanation, analogical reasoning, and poetic instruction addressed to Gaius Memmius."},{"Label":"Structure","Value":"Six-book didactic poem: atoms and void; atomic motion and cosmology; mind and soul; sensation and desire; the world and civilization; meteorology, plague, and natural explanation. The public page marks no full-text badge."}]},{"Kind":"TextSection","Title":"Arguments","Paragraphs":["Lucretius renders Epicurean atomism into Latin poetry, arguing that nature consists of atoms and void, that mind and soul are mortal, that worlds arise without providential design, and that freedom from superstition is essential to tranquility."]},{"Kind":"FieldSection","Title":"Influence","Fields":[{"Label":"Influenced By","Value":"Epicurus, Democritus, Leucippus, Empedocles, Ennius, Roman poetic tradition, and Hellenistic debates about nature, religion, pleasure, death, and explanation."},{"Label":"Influence On","Value":"Virgil, Ovid, Gassendi, early modern atomism, Enlightenment materialism, Spinozist and naturalist reception, modern Epicurean scholarship, philosophy of science, and literary-philosophical didactic poetry."}]},{"Kind":"TextSection","Title":"Significance","Paragraphs":["Accepted as Lucretius\u0027 only direct work row: a six-book Epicurean didactic poem addressed to Gaius Memmius, transmitted through medieval manuscripts and early modern editions, with evidence notes preserving uncertainty about final revision and ancient biographical legends.","De rerum natura remains a central source for Epicurean physics, materialist philosophy of mind, naturalistic explanation, critique of superstition, and the literary transmission of atomism."]},{"Kind":"TextSection","Title":"Evidence Note","Paragraphs":["Accepted as Lucretius\u0027 only direct work row: a six-book Epicurean didactic poem addressed to Gaius Memmius, transmitted through medieval manuscripts and early modern editions, with evidence notes preserving uncertainty about final revision and ancient biographical legends."]},{"Kind":"RawSection","Title":"Full Text","BodyHtml":"\u003cp class=\"dz-philo__section-copy dz-philo__full-text-source\"\u003ePublic-domain full text from \u003ca href=\"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/785\"\u003eProject Gutenberg eBook #785\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e\n \u003carticle class=\"dz-philo__full-text-body\"\u003e\r\n\u003ch1\u003e\r\n OF THE NATURE OF THINGS\r\n \u003c/h1\u003e\r\n \u003cp\u003e\r\n \u003cbr \u003e\r\n \u003c/p\u003e\r\n \u003ch2\u003e\r\n By Titus Lucretius Carus\r\n \u003c/h2\u003e\r\n \u003cp\u003e\r\n \u003cbr \u003e \u003cbr \u003e\r\n \u003c/p\u003e\r\n \u003ch3\u003e\r\n A Metrical Translation\r\n \u003c/h3\u003e\r\n \u003ch2\u003e\r\n By William Ellery Leonard\r\n \u003c/h2\u003e\r\n \u003cp\u003e\r\n \u003cbr \u003e \u003cbr \u003e\r\n \u003c/p\u003e\r\n \u003chr \u003e\r\n \u003cp\u003e\r\n \u003cbr \u003e \u003cbr \u003e\r\n \u003c/p\u003e\r\n \u003cblockquote\u003e\r\n \u003cp class=\"toc\"\u003e\r\n \u003cspan style=\"font-size: larger\"\u003e\u003cb\u003eCONTENTS\u003c/b\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\r\n \u003c/p\u003e\r\n \u003cp\u003e\r\n \u003cbr \u003e\r\n \u003c/p\u003e\r\n \u003cp class=\"toc\"\u003e\r\n \u003ca href=\"#link2H_4_0001\"\u003e \u003cb\u003eBOOK I\u003c/b\u003e \u003c/a\u003e\r\n \u003c/p\u003e\r\n \u003cp class=\"toc\"\u003e\r\n \u003ca href=\"#link2H_4_0002\"\u003e SUBSTANCE IS ETERNAL \u003c/a\u003e\r\n \u003c/p\u003e\r\n \u003cp class=\"toc\"\u003e\r\n \u003ca href=\"#link2H_4_0003\"\u003e THE VOID \u003c/a\u003e\r\n \u003c/p\u003e\r\n \u003cp class=\"toc\"\u003e\r\n \u003ca href=\"#link2H_4_0004\"\u003e NOTHING EXISTS per se EXCEPT ATOMS AND THE\r\n VOID \u003c/a\u003e\r\n \u003c/p\u003e\r\n \u003cp class=\"toc\"\u003e\r\n \u003ca href=\"#link2H_4_0005\"\u003e CHARACTER OF THE ATOMS \u003c/a\u003e\r\n \u003c/p\u003e\r\n \u003cp class=\"toc\"\u003e\r\n \u003ca href=\"#link2H_4_0006\"\u003e CONFUTATION OF OTHER PHILOSOPHERS \u003c/a\u003e\r\n \u003c/p\u003e\r\n \u003cp class=\"toc\"\u003e\r\n \u003ca href=\"#link2H_4_0007\"\u003e THE INFINITY OF THE UNIVERSE \u003c/a\u003e\r\n \u003c/p\u003e\r\n \u003cp\u003e\r\n \u003cbr \u003e\r\n \u003c/p\u003e\r\n \u003cp class=\"toc\"\u003e\r\n \u003ca href=\"#link2H_4_0008\"\u003e \u003cb\u003eBOOK II\u003c/b\u003e \u003c/a\u003e\r\n \u003c/p\u003e\r\n \u003cp class=\"toc\"\u003e\r\n \u003ca href=\"#link2H_4_0009\"\u003e PROEM \u003c/a\u003e\r\n \u003c/p\u003e\r\n \u003cp class=\"toc\"\u003e\r\n \u003ca href=\"#link2H_4_0010\"\u003e ATOMIC MOTIONS \u003c/a\u003e\r\n \u003c/p\u003e\r\n \u003cp class=\"toc\"\u003e\r\n \u003ca href=\"#link2H_4_0011\"\u003e ATOMIC FORMS AND THEIR COMBINATIONS \u003c/a\u003e\r\n \u003c/p\u003e\r\n \u003cp class=\"toc\"\u003e\r\n \u003ca href=\"#link2H_4_0012\"\u003e INFINITE WORLDS \u003c/a\u003e\r\n \u003c/p\u003e\r\n \u003cp\u003e\r\n \u003cbr \u003e\r\n \u003c/p\u003e\r\n \u003cp class=\"toc\"\u003e\r\n \u003ca href=\"#link2H_4_0013\"\u003e \u003cb\u003eBOOK III\u003c/b\u003e \u003c/a\u003e\r\n \u003c/p\u003e\r\n \u003cp class=\"toc\"\u003e\r\n \u003ca href=\"#link2H_4_0014\"\u003e PROEM \u003c/a\u003e\r\n \u003c/p\u003e\r\n \u003cp class=\"toc\"\u003e\r\n \u003ca href=\"#link2H_4_0015\"\u003e NATURE AND COMPOSITION OF THE MIND \u003c/a\u003e\r\n \u003c/p\u003e\r\n \u003cp class=\"toc\"\u003e\r\n \u003ca href=\"#link2H_4_0016\"\u003e THE SOUL IS MORTAL \u003c/a\u003e\r\n \u003c/p\u003e\r\n \u003cp class=\"toc\"\u003e\r\n \u003ca href=\"#link2H_4_0017\"\u003e FOLLY OF THE FEAR OF DEATH \u003c/a\u003e\r\n \u003c/p\u003e\r\n \u003cp\u003e\r\n \u003cbr \u003e\r\n \u003c/p\u003e\r\n \u003cp class=\"toc\"\u003e\r\n \u003ca href=\"#link2H_4_0018\"\u003e \u003cb\u003eBOOK IV\u003c/b\u003e \u003c/a\u003e\r\n \u003c/p\u003e\r\n \u003cp class=\"toc\"\u003e\r\n \u003ca href=\"#link2H_4_0019\"\u003e PROEM \u003c/a\u003e\r\n \u003c/p\u003e\r\n \u003cp class=\"toc\"\u003e\r\n \u003ca href=\"#link2H_4_0020\"\u003e EXISTENCE AND CHARACTER OF THE IMAGES \u003c/a\u003e\r\n \u003c/p\u003e\r\n \u003cp class=\"toc\"\u003e\r\n \u003ca href=\"#link2H_4_0021\"\u003e THE SENSES AND MENTAL PICTURES \u003c/a\u003e\r\n \u003c/p\u003e\r\n \u003cp class=\"toc\"\u003e\r\n \u003ca href=\"#link2H_4_0022\"\u003e SOME VITAL FUNCTIONS \u003c/a\u003e\r\n \u003c/p\u003e\r\n \u003cp class=\"toc\"\u003e\r\n \u003ca href=\"#link2H_4_0023\"\u003e THE PASSION OF LOVE \u003c/a\u003e\r\n \u003c/p\u003e\r\n \u003cp\u003e\r\n \u003cbr \u003e\r\n \u003c/p\u003e\r\n \u003cp class=\"toc\"\u003e\r\n \u003ca href=\"#link2H_4_0024\"\u003e \u003cb\u003eBOOK V\u003c/b\u003e \u003c/a\u003e\r\n \u003c/p\u003e\r\n \u003cp class=\"toc\"\u003e\r\n \u003ca href=\"#link2H_4_0025\"\u003e PROEM \u003c/a\u003e\r\n \u003c/p\u003e\r\n \u003cp class=\"toc\"\u003e\r\n \u003ca href=\"#link2H_4_0026\"\u003e THE WORLD IS NOT ETERNAL \u003c/a\u003e\r\n \u003c/p\u003e\r\n \u003cp class=\"toc\"\u003e\r\n \u003ca href=\"#link2H_4_0027\"\u003e ORIGINS OF VEGETABLE AND ANIMAL LIFE \u003c/a\u003e\r\n \u003c/p\u003e\r\n \u003cp class=\"toc\"\u003e\r\n \u003ca href=\"#link2H_4_0028\"\u003e ORIGINS AND SAVAGE PERIOD OF MANKIND \u003c/a\u003e\r\n \u003c/p\u003e\r\n \u003cp class=\"toc\"\u003e\r\n \u003ca href=\"#link2H_4_0029\"\u003e BEGINNINGS OF CIVILIZATION \u003c/a\u003e\r\n \u003c/p\u003e\r\n \u003cp\u003e\r\n \u003cbr \u003e\r\n \u003c/p\u003e\r\n \u003cp class=\"toc\"\u003e\r\n \u003ca href=\"#link2H_4_0030\"\u003e \u003cb\u003eBOOK VI\u003c/b\u003e \u003c/a\u003e\r\n \u003c/p\u003e\r\n \u003cp class=\"toc\"\u003e\r\n \u003ca href=\"#link2H_4_0031\"\u003e PROEM \u003c/a\u003e\r\n \u003c/p\u003e\r\n \u003cp class=\"toc\"\u003e\r\n \u003ca href=\"#link2H_4_0032\"\u003e GREAT METEOROLOGICAL PHENOMENA, ETC. \u003c/a\u003e\r\n \u003c/p\u003e\r\n \u003cp class=\"toc\"\u003e\r\n \u003ca href=\"#link2H_4_0033\"\u003e THE PLAGUE ATHENS \u003c/a\u003e\r\n \u003c/p\u003e\r\n \u003c/blockquote\u003e\r\n \u003cp\u003e\r\n \u003cbr \u003e \u003cbr \u003e\r\n \u003c/p\u003e\r\n \u003chr \u003e\r\n \u003cp\u003e\r\n \u003cbr \u003e\u003ca id=\"link2H_4_0001\"\u003e\r\n \u003c!– H2 anchor –\u003e \u003c/a\u003e \u003cbr \u003e\r\n \u003c/p\u003e\r\n \u003ch2\u003e\r\n BOOK I\r\n \u003c/h2\u003e\r\n\u003cpre\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003c/pre\u003e\r\n \u003cp\u003e\r\n PROEM\r\n \u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cpre\u003e\r\n Mother of Rome, delight of Gods and men,\r\n Dear Venus that beneath the gliding stars\r\n Makest to teem the many-voyaged main\r\n And fruitful lands\u0026mdash;for all of living things\r\n Through thee alone are evermore conceived,\r\n Through thee are risen to visit the great sun\u0026mdash;\r\n Before thee, Goddess, and thy coming on,\r\n Flee stormy wind and massy cloud away,\r\n For thee the daedal Earth bears scented flowers,\r\n For thee waters of the unvexed deep\r\n Smile, and the hollows of the serene sky\r\n Glow with diffused radiance for thee!\r\n For soon as comes the springtime face of day,\r\n And procreant gales blow from the West unbarred,\r\n First fowls of air, smit to the heart by thee,\r\n Foretoken thy approach, O thou Divine,\r\n And leap the wild herds round the happy fields\r\n Or swim the bounding torrents. Thus amain,\r\n Seized with the spell, all creatures follow thee\r\n Whithersoever thou walkest forth to lead,\r\n And thence through seas and mountains and swift streams,\r\n Through leafy homes of birds and greening plains,\r\n Kindling the lure of love in every breast,\r\n Thou bringest the eternal generations forth,\r\n Kind after kind. And since \u0027tis thou alone\r\n Guidest the Cosmos, and without thee naught\r\n Is risen to reach the shining shores of light,\r\n Nor aught of joyful or of lovely born,\r\n Thee do I crave co-partner in that verse\r\n Which I presume on Nature to compose\r\n For Memmius mine, whom thou hast willed to be\r\n Peerless in every grace at every hour\u0026mdash;\r\n Wherefore indeed, Divine one, give my words\r\n Immortal charm. Lull to a timely rest\r\n O\u0027er sea and land the savage works of war,\r\n For thou alone hast power with public peace\r\n To aid mortality; since he who rules\r\n The savage works of battle, puissant Mars,\r\n How often to thy bosom flings his strength\r\n O\u0027ermastered by the eternal wound of love\u0026mdash;\r\n And there, with eyes and full throat backward thrown,\r\n Gazing, my Goddess, open-mouthed at thee,\r\n Pastures on love his greedy sight, his breath\r\n Hanging upon thy lips. Him thus reclined\r\n Fill with thy holy body, round, above!\r\n Pour from those lips soft syllables to win\r\n Peace for the Romans, glorious Lady, peace!\r\n For in a season troublous to the state\r\n Neither may I attend this task of mine\r\n With thought untroubled, nor mid such events\r\n The illustrious scion of the Memmian house\r\n Neglect the civic cause.\r\n\r\n Whilst human kind\r\n Throughout the lands lay miserably crushed\r\n Before all eyes beneath Religion\u0026mdash;who\r\n Would show her head along the region skies,\r\n Glowering on mortals with her hideous face\u0026mdash;\r\n A Greek it was who first opposing dared\r\n Raise mortal eyes that terror to withstand,\r\n Whom nor the fame of Gods nor lightning\u0027s stroke\r\n Nor threatening thunder of the ominous sky\r\n Abashed; but rather chafed to angry zest\r\n His dauntless heart to be the first to rend\r\n The crossbars at the gates of Nature old.\r\n And thus his will and hardy wisdom won;\r\n And forward thus he fared afar, beyond\r\n The flaming ramparts of the world, until\r\n He wandered the unmeasurable All.\r\n Whence he to us, a conqueror, reports\r\n What things can rise to being, what cannot,\r\n And by what law to each its scope prescribed,\r\n Its boundary stone that clings so deep in Time.\r\n Wherefore Religion now is under foot,\r\n And us his victory now exalts to heaven.\r\n\r\n I know how hard it is in Latian verse\r\n To tell the dark discoveries of the Greeks,\r\n Chiefly because our pauper-speech must find\r\n Strange terms to fit the strangeness of the thing;\r\n Yet worth of thine and the expected joy\r\n Of thy sweet friendship do persuade me on\r\n To bear all toil and wake the clear nights through,\r\n Seeking with what of words and what of song\r\n I may at last most gloriously uncloud\r\n For thee the light beyond, wherewith to view\r\n The core of being at the centre hid.\r\n And for the rest, summon to judgments true,\r\n Unbusied ears and singleness of mind\r\n Withdrawn from cares; lest these my gifts, arranged\r\n For thee with eager service, thou disdain\r\n Before thou comprehendest: since for thee\r\n I prove the supreme law of Gods and sky,\r\n And the primordial germs of things unfold,\r\n Whence Nature all creates, and multiplies\r\n And fosters all, and whither she resolves\r\n Each in the end when each is overthrown.\r\n This ultimate stock we have devised to name\r\n Procreant atoms, matter, seeds of things,\r\n Or primal bodies, as primal to the world.\r\n\r\n I fear perhaps thou deemest that we fare\r\n An impious road to realms of thought profane;\r\n But \u0027tis that same religion oftener far\r\n Hath bred the foul impieties of men:\r\n As once at Aulis, the elected chiefs,\r\n Foremost of heroes, Danaan counsellors,\r\n Defiled Diana\u0027s altar, virgin queen,\r\n With Agamemnon\u0027s daughter, foully slain.\r\n She felt the chaplet round her maiden locks\r\n And fillets, fluttering down on either cheek,\r\n And at the altar marked her grieving sire,\r\n The priests beside him who concealed the knife,\r\n And all the folk in tears at sight of her.\r\n With a dumb terror and a sinking knee\r\n She dropped; nor might avail her now that first\r\n \u0027Twas she who gave the king a father\u0027s name.\r\n They raised her up, they bore the trembling girl\r\n On to the altar\u0026mdash;hither led not now\r\n With solemn rites and hymeneal choir,\r\n But sinless woman, sinfully foredone,\r\n A parent felled her on her bridal day,\r\n Making his child a sacrificial beast\r\n To give the ships auspicious winds for Troy:\r\n Such are the crimes to which Religion leads.\r\n\r\n And there shall come the time when even thou,\r\n Forced by the soothsayer\u0027s terror-tales, shalt seek\r\n To break from us. Ah, many a dream even now\r\n Can they concoct to rout thy plans of life,\r\n And trouble all thy fortunes with base fears.\r\n I own with reason: for, if men but knew\r\n Some fixed end to ills, they would be strong\r\n By some device unconquered to withstand\r\n Religions and the menacings of seers.\r\n But now nor skill nor instrument is theirs,\r\n Since men must dread eternal pains in death.\r\n For what the soul may be they do not know,\r\n Whether \u0027tis born, or enter in at birth,\r\n And whether, snatched by death, it die with us,\r\n Or visit the shadows and the vasty caves\r\n Of Orcus, or by some divine decree\r\n Enter the brute herds, as our Ennius sang,\r\n Who first from lovely Helicon brought down\r\n A laurel wreath of bright perennial leaves,\r\n Renowned forever among the Italian clans.\r\n Yet Ennius too in everlasting verse\r\n Proclaims those vaults of Acheron to be,\r\n Though thence, he said, nor souls nor bodies fare,\r\n But only phantom figures, strangely wan,\r\n And tells how once from out those regions rose\r\n Old Homer\u0027s ghost to him and shed salt tears\r\n And with his words unfolded Nature\u0027s source.\r\n Then be it ours with steady mind to clasp\r\n The purport of the skies\u0026mdash;the law behind\r\n The wandering courses of the sun and moon;\r\n To scan the powers that speed all life below;\r\n But most to see with reasonable eyes\r\n Of what the mind, of what the soul is made,\r\n And what it is so terrible that breaks\r\n On us asleep, or waking in disease,\r\n Until we seem to mark and hear at hand\r\n Dead men whose bones earth bosomed long ago.\r\n\u003c/pre\u003e\r\n \u003cp\u003e\r\n \u003ca id=\"link2H_4_0002\"\u003e\r\n \u003c!– H2 anchor –\u003e \u003c/a\u003e\r\n \u003c/p\u003e\r\n \u003cdiv style=\"height: 4em;\"\u003e\r\n \u003cbr \u003e\u003cbr \u003e\u003cbr \u003e\u003cbr \u003e\r\n \u003c/div\u003e\r\n \u003ch2\u003e\r\n SUBSTANCE IS ETERNAL\r\n \u003c/h2\u003e\r\n\u003cpre\u003e\r\n This terror, then, this darkness of the mind,\r\n Not sunrise with its flaring spokes of light,\r\n Nor glittering arrows of morning can disperse,\r\n But only Nature\u0027s aspect and her law,\r\n Which, teaching us, hath this exordium:\r\n Nothing from nothing ever yet was born.\r\n Fear holds dominion over mortality\r\n Only because, seeing in land and sky\r\n So much the cause whereof no wise they know,\r\n Men think Divinities are working there.\r\n Meantime, when once we know from nothing still\r\n Nothing can be create, we shall divine\r\n More clearly what we seek: those elements\r\n From which alone all things created are,\r\n And how accomplished by no tool of Gods.\r\n Suppose all sprang from all things: any kind\r\n Might take its origin from any thing,\r\n No fixed seed required. Men from the sea\r\n Might rise, and from the land the scaly breed,\r\n And, fowl full fledged come bursting from the sky;\r\n The horned cattle, the herds and all the wild\r\n Would haunt with varying offspring tilth and waste;\r\n Nor would the same fruits keep their olden trees,\r\n But each might grow from any stock or limb\r\n By chance and change. Indeed, and were there not\r\n For each its procreant atoms, could things have\r\n Each its unalterable mother old?\r\n But, since produced from fixed seeds are all,\r\n Each birth goes forth upon the shores of light\r\n From its own stuff, from its own primal bodies.\r\n And all from all cannot become, because\r\n In each resides a secret power its own.\r\n Again, why see we lavished o\u0027er the lands\r\n At spring the rose, at summer heat the corn,\r\n The vines that mellow when the autumn lures,\r\n If not because the fixed seeds of things\r\n At their own season must together stream,\r\n And new creations only be revealed\r\n When the due times arrive and pregnant earth\r\n Safely may give unto the shores of light\r\n Her tender progenies? But if from naught\r\n Were their becoming, they would spring abroad\r\n Suddenly, unforeseen, in alien months,\r\n With no primordial germs, to be preserved\r\n From procreant unions at an adverse hour.\r\n Nor on the mingling of the living seeds\r\n Would space be needed for the growth of things\r\n Were life an increment of nothing: then\r\n The tiny babe forthwith would walk a man,\r\n And from the turf would leap a branching tree\u0026mdash;\r\n Wonders unheard of; for, by Nature, each\r\n Slowly increases from its lawful seed,\r\n And through that increase shall conserve its kind.\r\n Whence take the proof that things enlarge and feed\r\n From out their proper matter. Thus it comes\r\n That earth, without her seasons of fixed rains,\r\n Could bear no produce such as makes us glad,\r\n And whatsoever lives, if shut from food,\r\n Prolongs its kind and guards its life no more.\r\n Thus easier \u0027tis to hold that many things\r\n Have primal bodies in common (as we see\r\n The single letters common to many words)\r\n Than aught exists without its origins.\r\n Moreover, why should Nature not prepare\r\n Men of a bulk to ford the seas afoot,\r\n Or rend the mighty mountains with their hands,\r\n Or conquer Time with length of days, if not\r\n Because for all begotten things abides\r\n The changeless stuff, and what from that may spring\r\n Is fixed forevermore? Lastly we see\r\n How far the tilled surpass the fields untilled\r\n And to the labour of our hands return\r\n Their more abounding crops; there are indeed\r\n Within the earth primordial germs of things,\r\n Which, as the ploughshare turns the fruitful clods\r\n And kneads the mould, we quicken into birth.\r\n Else would ye mark, without all toil of ours,\r\n Spontaneous generations, fairer forms.\r\n Confess then, naught from nothing can become,\r\n Since all must have their seeds, wherefrom to grow,\r\n Wherefrom to reach the gentle fields of air.\r\n Hence too it comes that Nature all dissolves\r\n Into their primal bodies again, and naught\r\n Perishes ever to annihilation.\r\n For, were aught mortal in its every part,\r\n Before our eyes it might be snatched away\r\n Unto destruction; since no force were needed\r\n To sunder its members and undo its bands.\r\n Whereas, of truth, because all things exist,\r\n With seed imperishable, Nature allows\r\n Destruction nor collapse of aught, until\r\n Some outward force may shatter by a blow,\r\n Or inward craft, entering its hollow cells,\r\n Dissolve it down. And more than this, if Time,\r\n That wastes with eld the works along the world,\r\n Destroy entire, consuming matter all,\r\n Whence then may Venus back to light of life\r\n Restore the generations kind by kind?\r\n Or how, when thus restored, may daedal Earth\r\n Foster and plenish with her ancient food,\r\n Which, kind by kind, she offers unto each?\r\n Whence may the water-springs, beneath the sea,\r\n Or inland rivers, far and wide away,\r\n Keep the unfathomable ocean full?\r\n And out of what does Ether feed the stars?\r\n For lapsed years and infinite age must else\r\n Have eat all shapes of mortal stock away:\r\n But be it the Long Ago contained those germs,\r\n By which this sum of things recruited lives,\r\n Those same infallibly can never die,\r\n Nor nothing to nothing evermore return.\r\n And, too, the selfsame power might end alike\r\n All things, were they not still together held\r\n By matter eternal, shackled through its parts,\r\n Now more, now less. A touch might be enough\r\n To cause destruction. For the slightest force\r\n Would loose the weft of things wherein no part\r\n Were of imperishable stock. But now\r\n Because the fastenings of primordial parts\r\n Are put together diversely and stuff\r\n Is everlasting, things abide the same\r\n Unhurt and sure, until some power comes on\r\n Strong to destroy the warp and woof of each:\r\n Nothing returns to naught; but all return\r\n At their collapse to primal forms of stuff.\r\n Lo, the rains perish which Ether-father throws\r\n Down to the bosom of Earth-mother; but then\r\n Upsprings the shining grain, and boughs are green\r\n Amid the trees, and trees themselves wax big\r\n And lade themselves with fruits; and hence in turn\r\n The race of man and all the wild are fed;\r\n Hence joyful cities thrive with boys and girls;\r\n And leafy woodlands echo with new birds;\r\n Hence cattle, fat and drowsy, lay their bulk\r\n Along the joyous pastures whilst the drops\r\n Of white ooze trickle from distended bags;\r\n Hence the young scamper on their weakling joints\r\n Along the tender herbs, fresh hearts afrisk\r\n With warm new milk. Thus naught of what so seems\r\n Perishes utterly, since Nature ever\r\n Upbuilds one thing from other, suffering naught\r\n To come to birth but through some other\u0027s death.\r\n\r\n\u003c/pre\u003e\r\n \u003chr \u003e\r\n\u003cpre\u003e\r\n And now, since I have taught that things cannot\r\n Be born from nothing, nor the same, when born,\r\n To nothing be recalled, doubt not my words,\r\n Because our eyes no primal germs perceive;\r\n For mark those bodies which, though known to be\r\n In this our world, are yet invisible:\r\n The winds infuriate lash our face and frame,\r\n Unseen, and swamp huge ships and rend the clouds,\r\n Or, eddying wildly down, bestrew the plains\r\n With mighty trees, or scour the mountain tops\r\n With forest-crackling blasts. Thus on they rave\r\n With uproar shrill and ominous moan. The winds,\r\n \u0027Tis clear, are sightless bodies sweeping through\r\n The sea, the lands, the clouds along the sky,\r\n Vexing and whirling and seizing all amain;\r\n And forth they flow and pile destruction round,\r\n Even as the water\u0027s soft and supple bulk\r\n Becoming a river of abounding floods,\r\n Which a wide downpour from the lofty hills\r\n Swells with big showers, dashes headlong down\r\n Fragments of woodland and whole branching trees;\r\n Nor can the solid bridges bide the shock\r\n As on the waters whelm: the turbulent stream,\r\n Strong with a hundred rains, beats round the piers,\r\n Crashes with havoc, and rolls beneath its waves\r\n Down-toppled masonry and ponderous stone,\r\n Hurling away whatever would oppose.\r\n Even so must move the blasts of all the winds,\r\n Which, when they spread, like to a mighty flood,\r\n Hither or thither, drive things on before\r\n And hurl to ground with still renewed assault,\r\n Or sometimes in their circling vortex seize\r\n And bear in cones of whirlwind down the world:\r\n The winds are sightless bodies and naught else\u0026mdash;\r\n Since both in works and ways they rival well\r\n The mighty rivers, the visible in form.\r\n Then too we know the varied smells of things\r\n Yet never to our nostrils see them come;\r\n With eyes we view not burning heats, nor cold,\r\n Nor are we wont men\u0027s voices to behold.\r\n Yet these must be corporeal at the base,\r\n Since thus they smite the senses: naught there is\r\n Save body, having property of touch.\r\n And raiment, hung by surf-beat shore, grows moist,\r\n The same, spread out before the sun, will dry;\r\n Yet no one saw how sank the moisture in,\r\n Nor how by heat off-driven. Thus we know,\r\n That moisture is dispersed about in bits\r\n Too small for eyes to see. Another case:\r\n A ring upon the finger thins away\r\n Along the under side, with years and suns;\r\n The drippings from the eaves will scoop the stone;\r\n The hooked ploughshare, though of iron, wastes\r\n Amid the fields insidiously. We view\r\n The rock-paved highways worn by many feet;\r\n And at the gates the brazen statues show\r\n Their right hands leaner from the frequent touch\r\n Of wayfarers innumerable who greet.\r\n We see how wearing-down hath minished these,\r\n But just what motes depart at any time,\r\n The envious nature of vision bars our sight.\r\n Lastly whatever days and nature add\r\n Little by little, constraining things to grow\r\n In due proportion, no gaze however keen\r\n Of these our eyes hath watched and known. No more\r\n Can we observe what\u0027s lost at any time,\r\n When things wax old with eld and foul decay,\r\n Or when salt seas eat under beetling crags.\r\n Thus Nature ever by unseen bodies works.\r\n\u003c/pre\u003e\r\n \u003cp\u003e\r\n \u003ca id=\"link2H_4_0003\"\u003e\r\n \u003c!– H2 anchor –\u003e \u003c/a\u003e\r\n \u003c/p\u003e\r\n \u003cdiv style=\"height: 4em;\"\u003e\r\n \u003cbr \u003e\u003cbr \u003e\u003cbr \u003e\u003cbr \u003e\r\n \u003c/div\u003e\r\n \u003ch2\u003e\r\n THE VOID\r\n \u003c/h2\u003e\r\n\u003cpre\u003e\r\n But yet creation\u0027s neither crammed nor blocked\r\n About by body: there\u0027s in things a void\u0026mdash;\r\n Which to have known will serve thee many a turn,\r\n Nor will not leave thee wandering in doubt,\r\n Forever searching in the sum of all,\r\n And losing faith in these pronouncements mine.\r\n There\u0027s place intangible, a void and room.\r\n For were it not, things could in nowise move;\r\n Since body\u0027s property to block and check\r\n Would work on all and at an times the same.\r\n Thus naught could evermore push forth and go,\r\n Since naught elsewhere would yield a starting place.\r\n But now through oceans, lands, and heights of heaven,\r\n By divers causes and in divers modes,\r\n Before our eyes we mark how much may move,\r\n Which, finding not a void, would fail deprived\r\n Of stir and motion; nay, would then have been\r\n Nowise begot at all, since matter, then,\r\n Had staid at rest, its parts together crammed.\r\n Then too, however solid objects seem,\r\n They yet are formed of matter mixed with void:\r\n In rocks and caves the watery moisture seeps,\r\n And beady drops stand out like plenteous tears;\r\n And food finds way through every frame that lives;\r\n The trees increase and yield the season\u0027s fruit\r\n Because their food throughout the whole is poured,\r\n Even from the deepest roots, through trunks and boughs;\r\n And voices pass the solid walls and fly\r\n Reverberant through shut doorways of a house;\r\n And stiffening frost seeps inward to our bones.\r\n Which but for voids for bodies to go through\r\n \u0027Tis clear could happen in nowise at all.\r\n Again, why see we among objects some\r\n Of heavier weight, but of no bulkier size?\r\n Indeed, if in a ball of wool there be\r\n As much of body as in lump of lead,\r\n The two should weigh alike, since body tends\r\n To load things downward, while the void abides,\r\n By contrary nature, the imponderable.\r\n Therefore, an object just as large but lighter\r\n Declares infallibly its more of void;\r\n Even as the heavier more of matter shows,\r\n And how much less of vacant room inside.\r\n That which we\u0027re seeking with sagacious quest\r\n Exists, infallibly, commixed with things\u0026mdash;\r\n The void, the invisible inane.\r\n\r\n Right here\r\n I am compelled a question to expound,\r\n Forestalling something certain folk suppose,\r\n Lest it avail to lead thee off from truth:\r\n Waters (they say) before the shining breed\r\n Of the swift scaly creatures somehow give,\r\n And straightway open sudden liquid paths,\r\n Because the fishes leave behind them room\r\n To which at once the yielding billows stream.\r\n Thus things among themselves can yet be moved,\r\n And change their place, however full the Sum\u0026mdash;\r\n Received opinion, wholly false forsooth.\r\n For where can scaly creatures forward dart,\r\n Save where the waters give them room? Again,\r\n Where can the billows yield a way, so long\r\n As ever the fish are powerless to go?\r\n Thus either all bodies of motion are deprived,\r\n Or things contain admixture of a void\r\n Where each thing gets its start in moving on.\r\n\r\n Lastly, where after impact two broad bodies\r\n Suddenly spring apart, the air must crowd\r\n The whole new void between those bodies formed;\r\n But air, however it stream with hastening gusts,\r\n Can yet not fill the gap at once\u0026mdash;for first\r\n It makes for one place, ere diffused through all.\r\n And then, if haply any think this comes,\r\n When bodies spring apart, because the air\r\n Somehow condenses, wander they from truth:\r\n For then a void is formed, where none before;\r\n And, too, a void is filled which was before.\r\n Nor can air be condensed in such a wise;\r\n Nor, granting it could, without a void, I hold,\r\n It still could not contract upon itself\r\n And draw its parts together into one.\r\n Wherefore, despite demur and counter-speech,\r\n Confess thou must there is a void in things.\r\n\r\n And still I might by many an argument\r\n Here scrape together credence for my words.\r\n But for the keen eye these mere footprints serve,\r\n Whereby thou mayest know the rest thyself.\r\n As dogs full oft with noses on the ground,\r\n Find out the silent lairs, though hid in brush,\r\n Of beasts, the mountain-rangers, when but once\r\n They scent the certain footsteps of the way,\r\n Thus thou thyself in themes like these alone\r\n Can hunt from thought to thought, and keenly wind\r\n Along even onward to the secret places\r\n And drag out truth. But, if thou loiter loth\r\n Or veer, however little, from the point,\r\n This I can promise, Memmius, for a fact:\r\n Such copious drafts my singing tongue shall pour\r\n From the large well-springs of my plenished breast\r\n That much I dread slow age will steal and coil\r\n Along our members, and unloose the gates\r\n Of life within us, ere for thee my verse\r\n Hath put within thine ears the stores of proofs\r\n At hand for one soever question broached.\r\n\u003c/pre\u003e\r\n \u003cp\u003e\r\n \u003ca id=\"link2H_4_0004\"\u003e\r\n \u003c!– H2 anchor –\u003e \u003c/a\u003e\r\n \u003c/p\u003e\r\n \u003cdiv style=\"height: 4em;\"\u003e\r\n \u003cbr \u003e\u003cbr \u003e\u003cbr \u003e\u003cbr \u003e\r\n \u003c/div\u003e\r\n \u003ch2\u003e\r\n NOTHING EXISTS per se EXCEPT ATOMS AND THE VOID\r\n \u003c/h2\u003e\r\n\u003cpre\u003e\r\n But, now again to weave the tale begun,\r\n All nature, then, as self-sustained, consists\r\n Of twain of things: of bodies and of void\r\n In which they\u0027re set, and where they\u0027re moved around.\r\n For common instinct of our race declares\r\n That body of itself exists: unless\r\n This primal faith, deep-founded, fail us not,\r\n Naught will there be whereunto to appeal\r\n On things occult when seeking aught to prove\r\n By reasonings of mind. Again, without\r\n That place and room, which we do call the inane,\r\n Nowhere could bodies then be set, nor go\r\n Hither or thither at all\u0026mdash;as shown before.\r\n Besides, there\u0027s naught of which thou canst declare\r\n It lives disjoined from body, shut from void\u0026mdash;\r\n A kind of third in nature. For whatever\r\n Exists must be a somewhat; and the same,\r\n If tangible, however fight and slight,\r\n Will yet increase the count of body\u0027s sum,\r\n With its own augmentation big or small;\r\n But, if intangible and powerless ever\r\n To keep a thing from passing through itself\r\n On any side, \u0027twill be naught else but that\r\n Which we do call the empty, the inane.\r\n Again, whate\u0027er exists, as of itself,\r\n Must either act or suffer action on it,\r\n Or else be that wherein things move and be:\r\n Naught, saving body, acts, is acted on;\r\n Naught but the inane can furnish room. And thus,\r\n Beside the inane and bodies, is no third\r\n Nature amid the number of all things\u0026mdash;\r\n Remainder none to fall at any time\r\n Under our senses, nor be seized and seen\r\n By any man through reasonings of mind.\r\n Name o\u0027er creation with what names thou wilt,\r\n Thou\u0027lt find but properties of those first twain,\r\n Or see but accidents those twain produce.\r\n\r\n A property is that which not at all\r\n Can be disjoined and severed from a thing\r\n Without a fatal dissolution: such,\r\n Weight to the rocks, heat to the fire, and flow\r\n To the wide waters, touch to corporal things,\r\n Intangibility to the viewless void.\r\n But state of slavery, pauperhood, and wealth,\r\n Freedom, and war, and concord, and all else\r\n Which come and go whilst nature stands the same,\r\n We\u0027re wont, and rightly, to call accidents.\r\n Even time exists not of itself; but sense\r\n Reads out of things what happened long ago,\r\n What presses now, and what shall follow after:\r\n No man, we must admit, feels time itself,\r\n Disjoined from motion and repose of things.\r\n Thus, when they say there \"is\" the ravishment\r\n Of Princess Helen, \"is\" the siege and sack\r\n Of Trojan Town, look out, they force us not\r\n To admit these acts existent by themselves,\r\n Merely because those races of mankind\r\n (Of whom these acts were accidents) long since\r\n Irrevocable age has borne away:\r\n For all past actions may be said to be\r\n But accidents, in one way, of mankind,\u0026mdash;\r\n In other, of some region of the world.\r\n Add, too, had been no matter, and no room\r\n Wherein all things go on, the fire of love\r\n Upblown by that fair form, the glowing coal\r\n Under the Phrygian Alexander\u0027s breast,\r\n Had ne\u0027er enkindled that renowned strife\r\n Of savage war, nor had the wooden horse\r\n Involved in flames old Pergama, by a birth\r\n At midnight of a brood of the Hellenes.\r\n And thus thou canst remark that every act\r\n At bottom exists not of itself, nor is\r\n As body is, nor has like name with void;\r\n But rather of sort more fitly to be called\r\n An accident of body, and of place\r\n Wherein all things go on.\r\n\u003c/pre\u003e\r\n \u003cp\u003e\r\n \u003ca id=\"link2H_4_0005\"\u003e\r\n \u003c!– H2 anchor –\u003e \u003c/a\u003e\r\n \u003c/p\u003e\r\n \u003cdiv style=\"height: 4em;\"\u003e\r\n \u003cbr \u003e\u003cbr \u003e\u003cbr \u003e\u003cbr \u003e\r\n \u003c/div\u003e\r\n \u003ch2\u003e\r\n CHARACTER OF THE ATOMS\r\n \u003c/h2\u003e\r\n\u003cpre\u003e\r\n Bodies, again,\r\n Are partly primal germs of things, and partly\r\n Unions deriving from the primal germs.\r\n And those which are the primal germs of things\r\n No power can quench; for in the end they conquer\r\n By their own solidness; though hard it be\r\n To think that aught in things has solid frame;\r\n For lightnings pass, no less than voice and shout,\r\n Through hedging walls of houses, and the iron\r\n White-dazzles in the fire, and rocks will burn\r\n With exhalations fierce and burst asunder.\r\n Totters the rigid gold dissolved in heat;\r\n The ice of bronze melts conquered in the flame;\r\n Warmth and the piercing cold through silver seep,\r\n Since, with the cups held rightly in the hand,\r\n We oft feel both, as from above is poured\r\n The dew of waters between their shining sides:\r\n So true it is no solid form is found.\r\n But yet because true reason and nature of things\r\n Constrain us, come, whilst in few verses now\r\n I disentangle how there still exist\r\n Bodies of solid, everlasting frame\u0026mdash;\r\n The seeds of things, the primal germs we teach,\r\n Whence all creation around us came to be.\r\n First since we know a twofold nature exists,\r\n Of things, both twain and utterly unlike\u0026mdash;\r\n Body, and place in which an things go on\u0026mdash;\r\n Then each must be both for and through itself,\r\n And all unmixed: where\u0027er be empty space,\r\n There body\u0027s not; and so where body bides,\r\n There not at all exists the void inane.\r\n Thus primal bodies are solid, without a void.\r\n But since there\u0027s void in all begotten things,\r\n All solid matter must be round the same;\r\n Nor, by true reason canst thou prove aught hides\r\n And holds a void within its body, unless\r\n Thou grant what holds it be a solid. Know,\r\n That which can hold a void of things within\r\n Can be naught else than matter in union knit.\r\n Thus matter, consisting of a solid frame,\r\n Hath power to be eternal, though all else,\r\n Though all creation, be dissolved away.\r\n Again, were naught of empty and inane,\r\n The world were then a solid; as, without\r\n Some certain bodies to fill the places held,\r\n The world that is were but a vacant void.\r\n And so, infallibly, alternate-wise\r\n Body and void are still distinguished,\r\n Since nature knows no wholly full nor void.\r\n There are, then, certain bodies, possessed of power\r\n To vary forever the empty and the full;\r\n And these can nor be sundered from without\r\n By beats and blows, nor from within be torn\r\n By penetration, nor be overthrown\r\n By any assault soever through the world\u0026mdash;\r\n For without void, naught can be crushed, it seems,\r\n Nor broken, nor severed by a cut in twain,\r\n Nor can it take the damp, or seeping cold\r\n Or piercing fire, those old destroyers three;\r\n But the more void within a thing, the more\r\n Entirely it totters at their sure assault.\r\n Thus if first bodies be, as I have taught,\r\n Solid, without a void, they must be then\r\n Eternal; and, if matter ne\u0027er had been\r\n Eternal, long ere now had all things gone\r\n Back into nothing utterly, and all\r\n We see around from nothing had been born\u0026mdash;\r\n But since I taught above that naught can be\r\n From naught created, nor the once begotten\r\n To naught be summoned back, these primal germs\r\n Must have an immortality of frame.\r\n And into these must each thing be resolved,\r\n When comes its supreme hour, that thus there be\r\n At hand the stuff for plenishing the world.\r\n\r\n\u003c/pre\u003e\r\n \u003chr \u003e\r\n\u003cpre\u003e\r\n So primal germs have solid singleness\r\n Nor otherwise could they have been conserved\r\n Through aeons and infinity of time\r\n For the replenishment of wasted worlds.\r\n Once more, if nature had given a scope for things\r\n To be forever broken more and more,\r\n By now the bodies of matter would have been\r\n So far reduced by breakings in old days\r\n That from them nothing could, at season fixed,\r\n Be born, and arrive its prime and top of life.\r\n For, lo, each thing is quicker marred than made;\r\n And so whate\u0027er the long infinitude\r\n Of days and all fore-passed time would now\r\n By this have broken and ruined and dissolved,\r\n That same could ne\u0027er in all remaining time\r\n Be builded up for plenishing the world.\r\n But mark: infallibly a fixed bound\r\n Remaineth stablished \u0027gainst their breaking down;\r\n Since we behold each thing soever renewed,\r\n And unto all, their seasons, after their kind,\r\n Wherein they arrive the flower of their age.\r\n\r\n Again, if bounds have not been set against\r\n The breaking down of this corporeal world,\r\n Yet must all bodies of whatever things\r\n Have still endured from everlasting time\r\n Unto this present, as not yet assailed\r\n By shocks of peril. But because the same\r\n Are, to thy thinking, of a nature frail,\r\n It ill accords that thus they could remain\r\n (As thus they do) through everlasting time,\r\n Vexed through the ages (as indeed they are)\r\n By the innumerable blows of chance.\r\n\r\n So in our programme of creation, mark\r\n How \u0027tis that, though the bodies of all stuff\r\n Are solid to the core, we yet explain\r\n The ways whereby some things are fashioned soft\u0026mdash;\r\n Air, water, earth, and fiery exhalations\u0026mdash;\r\n And by what force they function and go on:\r\n The fact is founded in the void of things.\r\n But if the primal germs themselves be soft,\r\n Reason cannot be brought to bear to show\r\n The ways whereby may be created these\r\n Great crags of basalt and the during iron;\r\n For their whole nature will profoundly lack\r\n The first foundations of a solid frame.\r\n But powerful in old simplicity,\r\n Abide the solid, the primeval germs;\r\n And by their combinations more condensed,\r\n All objects can be tightly knit and bound\r\n And made to show unconquerable strength.\r\n Again, since all things kind by kind obtain\r\n Fixed bounds of growing and conserving life;\r\n Since Nature hath inviolably decreed\r\n What each can do, what each can never do;\r\n Since naught is changed, but all things so abide\r\n That ever the variegated birds reveal\r\n The spots or stripes peculiar to their kind,\r\n Spring after spring: thus surely all that is\r\n Must be composed of matter immutable.\r\n For if the primal germs in any wise\r\n Were open to conquest and to change, \u0027twould be\r\n Uncertain also what could come to birth\r\n And what could not, and by what law to each\r\n Its scope prescribed, its boundary stone that clings\r\n So deep in Time. Nor could the generations\r\n Kind after kind so often reproduce\r\n The nature, habits, motions, ways of life,\r\n Of their progenitors.\r\n\r\n And then again,\r\n Since there is ever an extreme bounding point\r\n\r\n\u003c/pre\u003e\r\n \u003chr \u003e\r\n\u003cpre\u003e\r\n Of that first body which our senses now\r\n Cannot perceive: That bounding point indeed\r\n Exists without all parts, a minimum\r\n Of nature, nor was e\u0027er a thing apart,\r\n As of itself,\u0026mdash;nor shall hereafter be,\r\n Since \u0027tis itself still parcel of another,\r\n A first and single part, whence other parts\r\n And others similar in order lie\r\n In a packed phalanx, filling to the full\r\n The nature of first body: being thus\r\n Not self-existent, they must cleave to that\r\n From which in nowise they can sundered be.\r\n So primal germs have solid singleness,\r\n Which tightly packed and closely joined cohere\r\n By virtue of their minim particles\u0026mdash;\r\n No compound by mere union of the same;\r\n But strong in their eternal singleness,\r\n Nature, reserving them as seeds for things,\r\n Permitteth naught of rupture or decrease.\r\n\r\n Moreover, were there not a minimum,\r\n The smallest bodies would have infinites,\r\n Since then a half-of-half could still be halved,\r\n With limitless division less and less.\r\n Then what the difference \u0027twixt the sum and least?\r\n None: for however infinite the sum,\r\n Yet even the smallest would consist the same\r\n Of infinite parts. But since true reason here\r\n Protests, denying that the mind can think it,\r\n Convinced thou must confess such things there are\r\n As have no parts, the minimums of nature.\r\n And since these are, likewise confess thou must\r\n That primal bodies are solid and eterne.\r\n Again, if Nature, creatress of all things,\r\n Were wont to force all things to be resolved\r\n Unto least parts, then would she not avail\r\n To reproduce from out them anything;\r\n Because whate\u0027er is not endowed with parts\r\n Cannot possess those properties required\r\n Of generative stuff\u0026mdash;divers connections,\r\n Weights, blows, encounters, motions, whereby things\r\n Forevermore have being and go on.\r\n\u003c/pre\u003e\r\n \u003cp\u003e\r\n \u003ca id=\"link2H_4_0006\"\u003e\r\n \u003c!– H2 anchor –\u003e \u003c/a\u003e\r\n \u003c/p\u003e\r\n \u003cdiv style=\"height: 4em;\"\u003e\r\n \u003cbr \u003e\u003cbr \u003e\u003cbr \u003e\u003cbr \u003e\r\n \u003c/div\u003e\r\n \u003ch2\u003e\r\n CONFUTATION OF OTHER PHILOSOPHERS\r\n \u003c/h2\u003e\r\n\u003cpre\u003e\r\n And on such grounds it is that those who held\r\n The stuff of things is fire, and out of fire\r\n Alone the cosmic sum is formed, are seen\r\n Mightily from true reason to have lapsed.\r\n Of whom, chief leader to do battle, comes\r\n That Heraclitus, famous for dark speech\r\n Among the silly, not the serious Greeks\r\n Who search for truth. For dolts are ever prone\r\n That to bewonder and adore which hides\r\n Beneath distorted words, holding that true\r\n Which sweetly tickles in their stupid ears,\r\n Or which is rouged in finely finished phrase.\r\n For how, I ask, can things so varied be,\r\n If formed of fire, single and pure? No whit\r\n \u0027Twould help for fire to be condensed or thinned,\r\n If all the parts of fire did still preserve\r\n But fire\u0027s own nature, seen before in gross.\r\n The heat were keener with the parts compressed,\r\n Milder, again, when severed or dispersed\u0026mdash;\r\n And more than this thou canst conceive of naught\r\n That from such causes could become; much less\r\n Might earth\u0027s variety of things be born\r\n From any fires soever, dense or rare.\r\n This too: if they suppose a void in things,\r\n Then fires can be condensed and still left rare;\r\n But since they see such opposites of thought\r\n Rising against them, and are loath to leave\r\n An unmixed void in things, they fear the steep\r\n And lose the road of truth. Nor do they see,\r\n That, if from things we take away the void,\r\n All things are then condensed, and out of all\r\n One body made, which has no power to dart\r\n Swiftly from out itself not anything\u0026mdash;\r\n As throws the fire its light and warmth around,\r\n Giving thee proof its parts are not compact.\r\n But if perhaps they think, in other wise,\r\n Fires through their combinations can be quenched\r\n And change their substance, very well: behold,\r\n If fire shall spare to do so in no part,\r\n Then heat will perish utterly and all,\r\n And out of nothing would the world be formed.\r\n For change in anything from out its bounds\r\n Means instant death of that which was before;\r\n And thus a somewhat must persist unharmed\r\n Amid the world, lest all return to naught,\r\n And, born from naught, abundance thrive anew.\r\n Now since indeed there are those surest bodies\r\n Which keep their nature evermore the same,\r\n Upon whose going out and coming in\r\n And changed order things their nature change,\r\n And all corporeal substances transformed,\r\n \u0027Tis thine to know those primal bodies, then,\r\n Are not of fire. For \u0027twere of no avail\r\n Should some depart and go away, and some\r\n Be added new, and some be changed in order,\r\n If still all kept their nature of old heat:\r\n For whatsoever they created then\r\n Would still in any case be only fire.\r\n The truth, I fancy, this: bodies there are\r\n Whose clashings, motions, order, posture, shapes\r\n Produce the fire and which, by order changed,\r\n Do change the nature of the thing produced,\r\n And are thereafter nothing like to fire\r\n Nor whatso else has power to send its bodies\r\n With impact touching on the senses\u0027 touch.\r\n\r\n Again, to say that all things are but fire\r\n And no true thing in number of all things\r\n Exists but fire, as this same fellow says,\r\n Seems crazed folly. For the man himself\r\n Against the senses by the senses fights,\r\n And hews at that through which is all belief,\r\n Through which indeed unto himself is known\r\n The thing he calls the fire. For, though he thinks\r\n The senses truly can perceive the fire,\r\n He thinks they cannot as regards all else,\r\n Which still are palpably as clear to sense\u0026mdash;\r\n To me a thought inept and crazy too.\r\n For whither shall we make appeal? for what\r\n More certain than our senses can there be\r\n Whereby to mark asunder error and truth?\r\n Besides, why rather do away with all,\r\n And wish to allow heat only, then deny\r\n The fire and still allow all else to be?\u0026mdash;\r\n Alike the madness either way it seems.\r\n Thus whosoe\u0027er have held the stuff of things\r\n To be but fire, and out of fire the sum,\r\n And whosoever have constituted air\r\n As first beginning of begotten things,\r\n And all whoever have held that of itself\r\n Water alone contrives things, or that earth\r\n Createth all and changes things anew\r\n To divers natures, mightily they seem\r\n A long way to have wandered from the truth.\r\n\r\n Add, too, whoever make the primal stuff\r\n Twofold, by joining air to fire, and earth\r\n To water; add who deem that things can grow\r\n Out of the four\u0026mdash;fire, earth, and breath, and rain;\r\n As first Empedocles of Acragas,\r\n Whom that three-cornered isle of all the lands\r\n Bore on her coasts, around which flows and flows\r\n In mighty bend and bay the Ionic seas,\r\n Splashing the brine from off their gray-green waves.\r\n Here, billowing onward through the narrow straits,\r\n Swift ocean cuts her boundaries from the shores\r\n Of the Italic mainland. Here the waste\r\n Charybdis; and here Aetna rumbles threats\r\n To gather anew such furies of its flames\r\n As with its force anew to vomit fires,\r\n Belched from its throat, and skyward bear anew\r\n Its lightnings\u0027 flash. And though for much she seem\r\n The mighty and the wondrous isle to men,\r\n Most rich in all good things, and fortified\r\n With generous strength of heroes, she hath ne\u0027er\r\n Possessed within her aught of more renown,\r\n Nor aught more holy, wonderful, and dear\r\n Than this true man. Nay, ever so far and pure\r\n The lofty music of his breast divine\r\n Lifts up its voice and tells of glories found,\r\n That scarce he seems of human stock create.\r\n\r\n Yet he and those forementioned (known to be\r\n So far beneath him, less than he in all),\r\n Though, as discoverers of much goodly truth,\r\n They gave, as \u0027twere from out of the heart\u0027s own shrine,\r\n Responses holier and soundlier based\r\n Than ever the Pythia pronounced for men\r\n From out the tripod and the Delphian laurel,\r\n Have still in matter of first-elements\r\n Made ruin of themselves, and, great men, great\r\n Indeed and heavy there for them the fall:\r\n First, because, banishing the void from things,\r\n They yet assign them motion, and allow\r\n Things soft and loosely textured to exist,\r\n As air, dew, fire, earth, animals, and grains,\r\n Without admixture of void amid their frame.\r\n Next, because, thinking there can be no end\r\n In cutting bodies down to less and less\r\n Nor pause established to their breaking up,\r\n They hold there is no minimum in things;\r\n Albeit we see the boundary point of aught\r\n Is that which to our senses seems its least,\r\n Whereby thou mayst conjecture, that, because\r\n The things thou canst not mark have boundary points,\r\n They surely have their minimums. Then, too,\r\n Since these philosophers ascribe to things\r\n Soft primal germs, which we behold to be\r\n Of birth and body mortal, thus, throughout,\r\n The sum of things must be returned to naught,\r\n And, born from naught, abundance thrive anew\u0026mdash;\r\n Thou seest how far each doctrine stands from truth.\r\n And, next, these bodies are among themselves\r\n In many ways poisons and foes to each,\r\n Wherefore their congress will destroy them quite\r\n Or drive asunder as we see in storms\r\n Rains, winds, and lightnings all asunder fly.\r\n\r\n Thus too, if all things are create of four,\r\n And all again dissolved into the four,\r\n How can the four be called the primal germs\r\n Of things, more than all things themselves be thought,\r\n By retroversion, primal germs of them?\r\n For ever alternately are both begot,\r\n With interchange of nature and aspect\r\n From immemorial time. But if percase\r\n Thou think\u0027st the frame of fire and earth, the air,\r\n The dew of water can in such wise meet\r\n As not by mingling to resign their nature,\r\n From them for thee no world can be create\u0026mdash;\r\n No thing of breath, no stock or stalk of tree:\r\n In the wild congress of this varied heap\r\n Each thing its proper nature will display,\r\n And air will palpably be seen mixed up\r\n With earth together, unquenched heat with water.\r\n But primal germs in bringing things to birth\r\n Must have a latent, unseen quality,\r\n Lest some outstanding alien element\r\n Confuse and minish in the thing create\r\n Its proper being.\r\n\r\n But these men begin\r\n From heaven, and from its fires; and first they feign\r\n That fire will turn into the winds of air,\r\n Next, that from air the rain begotten is,\r\n And earth created out of rain, and then\r\n That all, reversely, are returned from earth\u0026mdash;\r\n The moisture first, then air thereafter heat\u0026mdash;\r\n And that these same ne\u0027er cease in interchange,\r\n To go their ways from heaven to earth, from earth\r\n Unto the stars of the aethereal world\u0026mdash;\r\n Which in no wise at all the germs can do.\r\n Since an immutable somewhat still must be,\r\n Lest all things utterly be sped to naught;\r\n For change in anything from out its bounds\r\n Means instant death of that which was before.\r\n Wherefore, since those things, mentioned heretofore,\r\n Suffer a changed state, they must derive\r\n From others ever unconvertible,\r\n Lest an things utterly return to naught.\r\n Then why not rather presuppose there be\r\n Bodies with such a nature furnished forth\r\n That, if perchance they have created fire,\r\n Can still (by virtue of a few withdrawn,\r\n Or added few, and motion and order changed)\r\n Fashion the winds of air, and thus all things\r\n Forevermore be interchanged with all?\r\n\r\n \"But facts in proof are manifest,\" thou sayest,\r\n \"That all things grow into the winds of air\r\n And forth from earth are nourished, and unless\r\n The season favour at propitious hour\r\n With rains enough to set the trees a-reel\r\n Under the soak of bulking thunderheads,\r\n And sun, for its share, foster and give heat,\r\n No grains, nor trees, nor breathing things can grow.\"\r\n True\u0026mdash;and unless hard food and moisture soft\r\n Recruited man, his frame would waste away,\r\n And life dissolve from out his thews and bones;\r\n For out of doubt recruited and fed are we\r\n By certain things, as other things by others.\r\n Because in many ways the many germs\r\n Common to many things are mixed in things,\r\n No wonder \u0027tis that therefore divers things\r\n By divers things are nourished. And, again,\r\n Often it matters vastly with what others,\r\n In what positions the primordial germs\r\n Are bound together, and what motions, too,\r\n They give and get among themselves; for these\r\n Same germs do put together sky, sea, lands,\r\n Rivers, and sun, grains, trees, and breathing things,\r\n But yet commixed they are in divers modes\r\n With divers things, forever as they move.\r\n Nay, thou beholdest in our verses here\r\n Elements many, common to many worlds,\r\n Albeit thou must confess each verse, each word\r\n From one another differs both in sense\r\n And ring of sound\u0026mdash;so much the elements\r\n Can bring about by change of order alone.\r\n But those which are the primal germs of things\r\n Have power to work more combinations still,\r\n Whence divers things can be produced in turn.\r\n\r\n Now let us also take for scrutiny\r\n The homeomeria of Anaxagoras,\r\n So called by Greeks, for which our pauper-speech\r\n Yieldeth no name in the Italian tongue,\r\n Although the thing itself is not o\u0027erhard\r\n For explanation. First, then, when he speaks\r\n Of this homeomeria of things, he thinks\r\n Bones to be sprung from littlest bones minute,\r\n And from minute and littlest flesh all flesh,\r\n And blood created out of drops of blood,\r\n Conceiving gold compact of grains of gold,\r\n And earth concreted out of bits of earth,\r\n Fire made of fires, and water out of waters,\r\n Feigning the like with all the rest of stuff.\r\n Yet he concedes not any void in things,\r\n Nor any limit to cutting bodies down.\r\n Wherefore to me he seems on both accounts\r\n To err no less than those we named before.\r\n Add too: these germs he feigns are far too frail\u0026mdash;\r\n If they be germs primordial furnished forth\r\n With but same nature as the things themselves,\r\n And travail and perish equally with those,\r\n And no rein curbs them from annihilation.\r\n For which will last against the grip and crush\r\n Under the teeth of death? the fire? the moist?\r\n Or else the air? which then? the blood? the bones?\r\n No one, methinks, when every thing will be\r\n At bottom as mortal as whate\u0027er we mark\r\n To perish by force before our gazing eyes.\r\n But my appeal is to the proofs above\r\n That things cannot fall back to naught, nor yet\r\n From naught increase. And now again, since food\r\n Augments and nourishes the human frame,\r\n \u0027Tis thine to know our veins and blood and bones\r\n And thews are formed of particles unlike\r\n To them in kind; or if they say all foods\r\n Are of mixed substance having in themselves\r\n Small bodies of thews, and bones, and also veins\r\n And particles of blood, then every food,\r\n Solid or liquid, must itself be thought\r\n As made and mixed of things unlike in kind\u0026mdash;\r\n Of bones, of thews, of ichor and of blood.\r\n Again, if all the bodies which upgrow\r\n From earth, are first within the earth, then earth\r\n Must be compound of alien substances.\r\n Which spring and bloom abroad from out the earth.\r\n Transfer the argument, and thou may\u0027st use\r\n The selfsame words: if flame and smoke and ash\r\n Still lurk unseen within the wood, the wood\r\n Must be compound of alien substances\r\n Which spring from out the wood.\r\n\r\n Right here remains\r\n A certain slender means to skulk from truth,\r\n Which Anaxagoras takes unto himself,\r\n Who holds that all things lurk commixed with all\r\n While that one only comes to view, of which\r\n The bodies exceed in number all the rest,\r\n And lie more close to hand and at the fore\u0026mdash;\r\n A notion banished from true reason far.\r\n For then \u0027twere meet that kernels of the grains\r\n Should oft, when crunched between the might of stones,\r\n Give forth a sign of blood, or of aught else\r\n Which in our human frame is fed; and that\r\n Rock rubbed on rock should yield a gory ooze.\r\n Likewise the herbs ought oft to give forth drops\r\n Of sweet milk, flavoured like the uddered sheep\u0027s;\r\n Indeed we ought to find, when crumbling up\r\n The earthy clods, there herbs, and grains, and leaves,\r\n All sorts dispersed minutely in the soil;\r\n Lastly we ought to find in cloven wood\r\n Ashes and smoke and bits of fire there hid.\r\n But since fact teaches this is not the case,\r\n \u0027Tis thine to know things are not mixed with things\r\n Thuswise; but seeds, common to many things,\r\n Commixed in many ways, must lurk in things.\r\n\r\n \"But often it happens on skiey hills\" thou sayest,\r\n \"That neighbouring tops of lofty trees are rubbed\r\n One against other, smote by the blustering south,\r\n Till all ablaze with bursting flower of flame.\"\r\n Good sooth\u0026mdash;yet fire is not ingraft in wood,\r\n But many are the seeds of heat, and when\r\n Rubbing together they together flow,\r\n They start the conflagrations in the forests.\r\n Whereas if flame, already fashioned, lay\r\n Stored up within the forests, then the fires\r\n Could not for any time be kept unseen,\r\n But would be laying all the wildwood waste\r\n And burning all the boscage. Now dost see\r\n (Even as we said a little space above)\r\n How mightily it matters with what others,\r\n In what positions these same primal germs\r\n Are bound together? And what motions, too,\r\n They give and get among themselves? how, hence,\r\n The same, if altered \u0027mongst themselves, can body\r\n Both igneous and ligneous objects forth\u0026mdash;\r\n Precisely as these words themselves are made\r\n By somewhat altering their elements,\r\n Although we mark with name indeed distinct\r\n The igneous from the ligneous. Once again,\r\n If thou suppose whatever thou beholdest,\r\n Among all visible objects, cannot be,\r\n Unless thou feign bodies of matter endowed\r\n With a like nature,\u0026mdash;by thy vain device\r\n For thee will perish all the germs of things:\r\n \u0027Twill come to pass they\u0027ll laugh aloud, like men,\r\n Shaken asunder by a spasm of mirth,\r\n Or moisten with salty tear-drops cheeks and chins.\r\n\u003c/pre\u003e\r\n \u003cp\u003e\r\n \u003ca id=\"link2H_4_0007\"\u003e\r\n \u003c!– H2 anchor –\u003e \u003c/a\u003e\r\n \u003c/p\u003e\r\n \u003cdiv style=\"height: 4em;\"\u003e\r\n \u003cbr \u003e\u003cbr \u003e\u003cbr \u003e\u003cbr \u003e\r\n \u003c/div\u003e\r\n \u003ch2\u003e\r\n THE INFINITY OF THE UNIVERSE\r\n \u003c/h2\u003e\r\n\u003cpre\u003e\r\n Now learn of what remains! More keenly hear!\r\n And for myself, my mind is not deceived\r\n How dark it is: But the large hope of praise\r\n Hath strook with pointed thyrsus through my heart;\r\n On the same hour hath strook into my breast\r\n Sweet love of the Muses, wherewith now instinct,\r\n I wander afield, thriving in sturdy thought,\r\n Through unpathed haunts of the Pierides,\r\n Trodden by step of none before. I joy\r\n To come on undefiled fountains there,\r\n To drain them deep; I joy to pluck new flowers,\r\n To seek for this my head a signal crown\r\n From regions where the Muses never yet\r\n Have garlanded the temples of a man:\r\n First, since I teach concerning mighty things,\r\n And go right on to loose from round the mind\r\n The tightened coils of dread religion;\r\n Next, since, concerning themes so dark, I frame\r\n Songs so pellucid, touching all throughout\r\n Even with the Muses\u0027 charm\u0026mdash;which, as \u0027twould seem,\r\n Is not without a reasonable ground:\r\n But as physicians, when they seek to give\r\n Young boys the nauseous wormwood, first do touch\r\n The brim around the cup with the sweet juice\r\n And yellow of the honey, in order that\r\n The thoughtless age of boyhood be cajoled\r\n As far as the lips, and meanwhile swallow down\r\n The wormwood\u0027s bitter draught, and, though befooled,\r\n Be yet not merely duped, but rather thus\r\n Grow strong again with recreated health:\r\n So now I too (since this my doctrine seems\r\n In general somewhat woeful unto those\r\n Who\u0027ve had it not in hand, and since the crowd\r\n Starts back from it in horror) have desired\r\n To expound our doctrine unto thee in song\r\n Soft-speaking and Pierian, and, as \u0027twere,\r\n To touch it with sweet honey of the Muse\u0026mdash;\r\n If by such method haply I might hold\r\n The mind of thee upon these lines of ours,\r\n Till thou see through the nature of all things,\r\n And how exists the interwoven frame.\r\n\r\n But since I\u0027ve taught that bodies of matter, made\r\n Completely solid, hither and thither fly\r\n Forevermore unconquered through all time,\r\n Now come, and whether to the sum of them\r\n There be a limit or be none, for thee\r\n Let us unfold; likewise what has been found\r\n To be the wide inane, or room, or space\r\n Wherein all things soever do go on,\r\n Let us examine if it finite be\r\n All and entire, or reach unmeasured round\r\n And downward an illimitable profound.\r\n\r\n Thus, then, the All that is is limited\r\n In no one region of its onward paths,\r\n For then \u0027tmust have forever its beyond.\r\n And a beyond \u0027tis seen can never be\r\n For aught, unless still further on there be\r\n A somewhat somewhere that may bound the same\u0026mdash;\r\n So that the thing be seen still on to where\r\n The nature of sensation of that thing\r\n Can follow it no longer. Now because\r\n Confess we must there\u0027s naught beside the sum,\r\n There\u0027s no beyond, and so it lacks all end.\r\n It matters nothing where thou post thyself,\r\n In whatsoever regions of the same;\r\n Even any place a man has set him down\r\n Still leaves about him the unbounded all\r\n Outward in all directions; or, supposing\r\n A moment the all of space finite to be,\r\n If some one farthest traveller runs forth\r\n Unto the extreme coasts and throws ahead\r\n A flying spear, is\u0027t then thy wish to think\r\n It goes, hurled off amain, to where \u0027twas sent\r\n And shoots afar, or that some object there\r\n Can thwart and stop it? For the one or other\r\n Thou must admit and take. Either of which\r\n Shuts off escape for thee, and does compel\r\n That thou concede the all spreads everywhere,\r\n Owning no confines. Since whether there be\r\n Aught that may block and check it so it comes\r\n Not where \u0027twas sent, nor lodges in its goal,\r\n Or whether borne along, in either view\r\n \u0027Thas started not from any end. And so\r\n I\u0027ll follow on, and whereso\u0027er thou set\r\n The extreme coasts, I\u0027ll query, \"what becomes\r\n Thereafter of thy spear?\" \u0027Twill come to pass\r\n That nowhere can a world\u0027s-end be, and that\r\n The chance for further flight prolongs forever\r\n The flight itself. Besides, were all the space\r\n Of the totality and sum shut in\r\n With fixed coasts, and bounded everywhere,\r\n Then would the abundance of world\u0027s matter flow\r\n Together by solid weight from everywhere\r\n Still downward to the bottom of the world,\r\n Nor aught could happen under cope of sky,\r\n Nor could there be a sky at all or sun\u0026mdash;\r\n Indeed, where matter all one heap would lie,\r\n By having settled during infinite time.\r\n But in reality, repose is given\r\n Unto no bodies \u0027mongst the elements,\r\n Because there is no bottom whereunto\r\n They might, as \u0027twere, together flow, and where\r\n They might take up their undisturbed abodes.\r\n In endless motion everything goes on\r\n Forevermore; out of all regions, even\r\n Out of the pit below, from forth the vast,\r\n Are hurtled bodies evermore supplied.\r\n The nature of room, the space of the abyss\r\n Is such that even the flashing thunderbolts\r\n Can neither speed upon their courses through,\r\n Gliding across eternal tracts of time,\r\n Nor, further, bring to pass, as on they run,\r\n That they may bate their journeying one whit:\r\n Such huge abundance spreads for things around\u0026mdash;\r\n Room off to every quarter, without end.\r\n Lastly, before our very eyes is seen\r\n Thing to bound thing: air hedges hill from hill,\r\n And mountain walls hedge air; land ends the sea,\r\n And sea in turn all lands; but for the All\r\n Truly is nothing which outside may bound.\r\n That, too, the sum of things itself may not\r\n Have power to fix a measure of its own,\r\n Great nature guards, she who compels the void\r\n To bound all body, as body all the void,\r\n Thus rendering by these alternates the whole\r\n An infinite; or else the one or other,\r\n Being unbounded by the other, spreads,\r\n Even by its single nature, ne\u0027ertheless\r\n Immeasurably forth….\r\n Nor sea, nor earth, nor shining vaults of sky,\r\n Nor breed of mortals, nor holy limbs of gods\r\n Could keep their place least portion of an hour:\r\n For, driven apart from out its meetings fit,\r\n The stock of stuff, dissolved, would be borne\r\n Along the illimitable inane afar,\r\n Or rather, in fact, would ne\u0027er have once combined\r\n And given a birth to aught, since, scattered wide,\r\n It could not be united. For of truth\r\n Neither by counsel did the primal germs\r\n \u0027Stablish themselves, as by keen act of mind,\r\n Each in its proper place; nor did they make,\r\n Forsooth, a compact how each germ should move;\r\n But since, being many and changed in many modes\r\n Along the All, they\u0027re driven abroad and vexed\r\n By blow on blow, even from all time of old,\r\n They thus at last, after attempting all\r\n The kinds of motion and conjoining, come\r\n Into those great arrangements out of which\r\n This sum of things established is create,\r\n By which, moreover, through the mighty years,\r\n It is preserved, when once it has been thrown\r\n Into the proper motions, bringing to pass\r\n That ever the streams refresh the greedy main\r\n With river-waves abounding, and that earth,\r\n Lapped in warm exhalations of the sun,\r\n Renews her broods, and that the lusty race\r\n Of breathing creatures bears and blooms, and that\r\n The gliding fires of ether are alive\u0026mdash;\r\n What still the primal germs nowise could do,\r\n Unless from out the infinite of space\r\n Could come supply of matter, whence in season\r\n They\u0027re wont whatever losses to repair.\r\n For as the nature of breathing creatures wastes,\r\n Losing its body, when deprived of food:\r\n So all things have to be dissolved as soon\r\n As matter, diverted by what means soever\r\n From off its course, shall fail to be on hand.\r\n Nor can the blows from outward still conserve,\r\n On every side, whatever sum of a world\r\n Has been united in a whole. They can\r\n Indeed, by frequent beating, check a part,\r\n Till others arriving may fulfil the sum;\r\n But meanwhile often are they forced to spring\r\n Rebounding back, and, as they spring, to yield,\r\n Unto those elements whence a world derives,\r\n Room and a time for flight, permitting them\r\n To be from off the massy union borne\r\n Free and afar. Wherefore, again, again:\r\n Needs must there come a many for supply;\r\n And also, that the blows themselves shall be\r\n Unfailing ever, must there ever be\r\n An infinite force of matter all sides round.\r\n\r\n And in these problems, shrink, my Memmius, far\r\n From yielding faith to that notorious talk:\r\n That all things inward to the centre press;\r\n And thus the nature of the world stands firm\r\n With never blows from outward, nor can be\r\n Nowhere disparted\u0026mdash;since all height and depth\r\n Have always inward to the centre pressed\r\n (If thou art ready to believe that aught\r\n Itself can rest upon itself ); or that\r\n The ponderous bodies which be under earth\r\n Do all press upwards and do come to rest\r\n Upon the earth, in some way upside down,\r\n Like to those images of things we see\r\n At present through the waters. They contend,\r\n With like procedure, that all breathing things\r\n Head downward roam about, and yet cannot\r\n Tumble from earth to realms of sky below,\r\n No more than these our bodies wing away\r\n Spontaneously to vaults of sky above;\r\n That, when those creatures look upon the sun,\r\n We view the constellations of the night;\r\n And that with us the seasons of the sky\r\n They thus alternately divide, and thus\r\n Do pass the night coequal to our days,\r\n But a vain error has given these dreams to fools,\r\n Which they\u0027ve embraced with reasoning perverse\r\n For centre none can be where world is still\r\n Boundless, nor yet, if now a centre were,\r\n Could aught take there a fixed position more\r\n Than for some other cause \u0027tmight be dislodged.\r\n For all of room and space we call the void\r\n Must both through centre and non-centre yield\r\n Alike to weights where\u0027er their motions tend.\r\n Nor is there any place, where, when they\u0027ve come,\r\n Bodies can be at standstill in the void,\r\n Deprived of force of weight; nor yet may void\r\n Furnish support to any,\u0026mdash;nay, it must,\r\n True to its bent of nature, still give way.\r\n Thus in such manner not at all can things\r\n Be held in union, as if overcome\r\n By craving for a centre.\r\n\r\n But besides,\r\n Seeing they feign that not all bodies press\r\n To centre inward, rather only those\r\n Of earth and water (liquid of the sea,\r\n And the big billows from the mountain slopes,\r\n And whatsoever are encased, as \u0027twere,\r\n In earthen body), contrariwise, they teach\r\n How the thin air, and with it the hot fire,\r\n Is borne asunder from the centre, and how,\r\n For this all ether quivers with bright stars,\r\n And the sun\u0027s flame along the blue is fed\r\n (Because the heat, from out the centre flying,\r\n All gathers there), and how, again, the boughs\r\n Upon the tree-tops could not sprout their leaves,\r\n Unless, little by little, from out the earth\r\n For each were nutriment…\r\n\r\n\u003c/pre\u003e\r\n \u003chr \u003e\r\n\u003cpre\u003e\r\n Lest, after the manner of the winged flames,\r\n The ramparts of the world should flee away,\r\n Dissolved amain throughout the mighty void,\r\n And lest all else should likewise follow after,\r\n Aye, lest the thundering vaults of heaven should burst\r\n And splinter upward, and the earth forthwith\r\n Withdraw from under our feet, and all its bulk,\r\n Among its mingled wrecks and those of heaven,\r\n With slipping asunder of the primal seeds,\r\n Should pass, along the immeasurable inane,\r\n Away forever, and, that instant, naught\r\n Of wrack and remnant would be left, beside\r\n The desolate space, and germs invisible.\r\n For on whatever side thou deemest first\r\n The primal bodies lacking, lo, that side\r\n Will be for things the very door of death:\r\n Wherethrough the throng of matter all will dash,\r\n Out and abroad.\r\n\r\n These points, if thou wilt ponder,\r\n Then, with but paltry trouble led along…\r\n\r\n\u003c/pre\u003e\r\n \u003chr \u003e\r\n\u003cpre\u003e\r\n For one thing after other will grow clear,\r\n Nor shall the blind night rob thee of the road,\r\n To hinder thy gaze on nature\u0027s Farthest-forth.\r\n Thus things for things shall kindle torches new.\r\n\u003c/pre\u003e\r\n \u003cp\u003e\r\n \u003ca id=\"link2H_4_0008\"\u003e\r\n \u003c!– H2 anchor –\u003e \u003c/a\u003e\r\n \u003c/p\u003e\r\n \u003cdiv style=\"height: 4em;\"\u003e\r\n \u003cbr \u003e\u003cbr \u003e\u003cbr \u003e\u003cbr \u003e\r\n \u003c/div\u003e\r\n \u003ch2\u003e\r\n BOOK II\r\n \u003c/h2\u003e\r\n \u003cp\u003e\r\n \u003ca id=\"link2H_4_0009\"\u003e\r\n \u003c!– H2 anchor –\u003e \u003c/a\u003e\r\n \u003c/p\u003e\r\n \u003cdiv style=\"height: 4em;\"\u003e\r\n \u003cbr \u003e\u003cbr \u003e\u003cbr \u003e\u003cbr \u003e\r\n \u003c/div\u003e\r\n \u003ch2\u003e\r\n PROEM\r\n \u003c/h2\u003e\r\n\u003cpre\u003e\r\n \u0027Tis sweet, when, down the mighty main, the winds\r\n Roll up its waste of waters, from the land\r\n To watch another\u0027s labouring anguish far,\r\n Not that we joyously delight that man\r\n Should thus be smitten, but because \u0027tis sweet\r\n To mark what evils we ourselves be spared;\r\n \u0027Tis sweet, again, to view the mighty strife\r\n Of armies embattled yonder o\u0027er the plains,\r\n Ourselves no sharers in the peril; but naught\r\n There is more goodly than to hold the high\r\n Serene plateaus, well fortressed by the wise,\r\n Whence thou may\u0027st look below on other men\r\n And see them ev\u0027rywhere wand\u0027ring, all dispersed\r\n In their lone seeking for the road of life;\r\n Rivals in genius, or emulous in rank,\r\n Pressing through days and nights with hugest toil\r\n For summits of power and mastery of the world.\r\n O wretched minds of men! O blinded hearts!\r\n In how great perils, in what darks of life\r\n Are spent the human years, however brief!\u0026mdash;\r\n O not to see that nature for herself\r\n Barks after nothing, save that pain keep off,\r\n Disjoined from the body, and that mind enjoy\r\n Delightsome feeling, far from care and fear!\r\n Therefore we see that our corporeal life\r\n Needs little, altogether, and only such\r\n As takes the pain away, and can besides\r\n Strew underneath some number of delights.\r\n More grateful \u0027tis at times (for nature craves\r\n No artifice nor luxury), if forsooth\r\n There be no golden images of boys\r\n Along the halls, with right hands holding out\r\n The lamps ablaze, the lights for evening feasts,\r\n And if the house doth glitter not with gold\r\n Nor gleam with silver, and to the lyre resound\r\n No fretted and gilded ceilings overhead,\r\n Yet still to lounge with friends in the soft grass\r\n Beside a river of water, underneath\r\n A big tree\u0027s boughs, and merrily to refresh\r\n Our frames, with no vast outlay\u0026mdash;most of all\r\n If the weather is laughing and the times of the year\r\n Besprinkle the green of the grass around with flowers.\r\n Nor yet the quicker will hot fevers go,\r\n If on a pictured tapestry thou toss,\r\n Or purple robe, than if \u0027tis thine to lie\r\n Upon the poor man\u0027s bedding. Wherefore, since\r\n Treasure, nor rank, nor glory of a reign\r\n Avail us naught for this our body, thus\r\n Reckon them likewise nothing for the mind:\r\n Save then perchance, when thou beholdest forth\r\n Thy legions swarming round the Field of Mars,\r\n Rousing a mimic warfare\u0026mdash;either side\r\n Strengthened with large auxiliaries and horse,\r\n Alike equipped with arms, alike inspired;\r\n Or save when also thou beholdest forth\r\n Thy fleets to swarm, deploying down the sea:\r\n For then, by such bright circumstance abashed,\r\n Religion pales and flees thy mind; O then\r\n The fears of death leave heart so free of care.\r\n But if we note how all this pomp at last\r\n Is but a drollery and a mocking sport,\r\n And of a truth man\u0027s dread, with cares at heels,\r\n Dreads not these sounds of arms, these savage swords\r\n But among kings and lords of all the world\r\n Mingles undaunted, nor is overawed\r\n By gleam of gold nor by the splendour bright\r\n Of purple robe, canst thou then doubt that this\r\n Is aught, but power of thinking?\u0026mdash;when, besides\r\n The whole of life but labours in the dark.\r\n For just as children tremble and fear all\r\n In the viewless dark, so even we at times\r\n Dread in the light so many things that be\r\n No whit more fearsome than what children feign,\r\n Shuddering, will be upon them in the dark.\r\n This terror then, this darkness of the mind,\r\n Not sunrise with its flaring spokes of light,\r\n Nor glittering arrows of morning can disperse,\r\n But only nature\u0027s aspect and her law.\r\n\u003c/pre\u003e\r\n \u003cp\u003e\r\n \u003ca id=\"link2H_4_0010\"\u003e\r\n \u003c!– H2 anchor –\u003e \u003c/a\u003e\r\n \u003c/p\u003e\r\n \u003cdiv style=\"height: 4em;\"\u003e\r\n \u003cbr \u003e\u003cbr \u003e\u003cbr \u003e\u003cbr \u003e\r\n \u003c/div\u003e\r\n \u003ch2\u003e\r\n ATOMIC MOTIONS\r\n \u003c/h2\u003e\r\n\u003cpre\u003e\r\n Now come: I will untangle for thy steps\r\n Now by what motions the begetting bodies\r\n Of the world-stuff beget the varied world,\r\n And then forever resolve it when begot,\r\n And by what force they are constrained to this,\r\n And what the speed appointed unto them\r\n Wherewith to travel down the vast inane:\r\n Do thou remember to yield thee to my words.\r\n For truly matter coheres not, crowds not tight,\r\n Since we behold each thing to wane away,\r\n And we observe how all flows on and off,\r\n As \u0027twere, with age-old time, and from our eyes\r\n How eld withdraws each object at the end,\r\n Albeit the sum is seen to bide the same,\r\n Unharmed, because these motes that leave each thing\r\n Diminish what they part from, but endow\r\n With increase those to which in turn they come,\r\n Constraining these to wither in old age,\r\n And those to flower at the prime (and yet\r\n Biding not long among them). Thus the sum\r\n Forever is replenished, and we live\r\n As mortals by eternal give and take.\r\n The nations wax, the nations wane away;\r\n In a brief space the generations pass,\r\n And like to runners hand the lamp of life\r\n One unto other.\r\n\r\n But if thou believe\r\n That the primordial germs of things can stop,\r\n And in their stopping give new motions birth,\r\n Afar thou wanderest from the road of truth.\r\n For since they wander through the void inane,\r\n All the primordial germs of things must needs\r\n Be borne along, either by weight their own,\r\n Or haply by another\u0027s blow without.\r\n For, when, in their incessancy so oft\r\n They meet and clash, it comes to pass amain\r\n They leap asunder, face to face: not strange\u0026mdash;\r\n Being most hard, and solid in their weights,\r\n And naught opposing motion, from behind.\r\n And that more clearly thou perceive how all\r\n These mites of matter are darted round about,\r\n Recall to mind how nowhere in the sum\r\n Of All exists a bottom,\u0026mdash;nowhere is\r\n A realm of rest for primal bodies; since\r\n (As amply shown and proved by reason sure)\r\n Space has no bound nor measure, and extends\r\n Unmetered forth in all directions round.\r\n Since this stands certain, thus \u0027tis out of doubt\r\n No rest is rendered to the primal bodies\r\n Along the unfathomable inane; but rather,\r\n Inveterately plied by motions mixed,\r\n Some, at their jamming, bound aback and leave\r\n Huge gaps between, and some from off the blow\r\n Are hurried about with spaces small between.\r\n And all which, brought together with slight gaps,\r\n In more condensed union bound aback,\r\n Linked by their own all inter-tangled shapes,\u0026mdash;\r\n These form the irrefragable roots of rocks\r\n And the brute bulks of iron, and what else\r\n Is of their kind…\r\n The rest leap far asunder, far recoil,\r\n Leaving huge gaps between: and these supply\r\n For us thin air and splendour-lights of the sun.\r\n And many besides wander the mighty void\u0026mdash;\r\n Cast back from unions of existing things,\r\n Nowhere accepted in the universe,\r\n And nowise linked in motions to the rest.\r\n And of this fact (as I record it here)\r\n An image, a type goes on before our eyes\r\n Present each moment; for behold whenever\r\n The sun\u0027s light and the rays, let in, pour down\r\n Across dark halls of houses: thou wilt see\r\n The many mites in many a manner mixed\r\n Amid a void in the very light of the rays,\r\n And battling on, as in eternal strife,\r\n And in battalions contending without halt,\r\n In meetings, partings, harried up and down.\r\n From this thou mayest conjecture of what sort\r\n The ceaseless tossing of primordial seeds\r\n Amid the mightier void\u0026mdash;at least so far\r\n As small affair can for a vaster serve,\r\n And by example put thee on the spoor\r\n Of knowledge. For this reason too \u0027tis fit\r\n Thou turn thy mind the more unto these bodies\r\n Which here are witnessed tumbling in the light:\r\n Namely, because such tumblings are a sign\r\n That motions also of the primal stuff\r\n Secret and viewless lurk beneath, behind.\r\n For thou wilt mark here many a speck, impelled\r\n By viewless blows, to change its little course,\r\n And beaten backwards to return again,\r\n Hither and thither in all directions round.\r\n Lo, all their shifting movement is of old,\r\n From the primeval atoms; for the same\r\n Primordial seeds of things first move of self,\r\n And then those bodies built of unions small\r\n And nearest, as it were, unto the powers\r\n Of the primeval atoms, are stirred up\r\n By impulse of those atoms\u0027 unseen blows,\r\n And these thereafter goad the next in size:\r\n Thus motion ascends from the primevals on,\r\n And stage by stage emerges to our sense,\r\n Until those objects also move which we\r\n Can mark in sunbeams, though it not appears\r\n What blows do urge them.\r\n\r\n Herein wonder not\r\n How \u0027tis that, while the seeds of things are all\r\n Moving forever, the sum yet seems to stand\r\n Supremely still, except in cases where\r\n A thing shows motion of its frame as whole.\r\n For far beneath the ken of senses lies\r\n The nature of those ultimates of the world;\r\n And so, since those themselves thou canst not see,\r\n Their motion also must they veil from men\u0026mdash;\r\n For mark, indeed, how things we can see, oft\r\n Yet hide their motions, when afar from us\r\n Along the distant landscape. Often thus,\r\n Upon a hillside will the woolly flocks\r\n Be cropping their goodly food and creeping about\r\n Whither the summons of the grass, begemmed\r\n With the fresh dew, is calling, and the lambs,\r\n Well filled, are frisking, locking horns in sport:\r\n Yet all for us seem blurred and blent afar\u0026mdash;\r\n A glint of white at rest on a green hill.\r\n Again, when mighty legions, marching round,\r\n Fill all the quarters of the plains below,\r\n Rousing a mimic warfare, there the sheen\r\n Shoots up the sky, and all the fields about\r\n Glitter with brass, and from beneath, a sound\r\n Goes forth from feet of stalwart soldiery,\r\n And mountain walls, smote by the shouting, send\r\n The voices onward to the stars of heaven,\r\n And hither and thither darts the cavalry,\r\n And of a sudden down the midmost fields\r\n Charges with onset stout enough to rock\r\n The solid earth: and yet some post there is\r\n Up the high mountains, viewed from which they seem\r\n To stand\u0026mdash;a gleam at rest along the plains.\r\n\r\n Now what the speed to matter\u0027s atoms given\r\n Thou mayest in few, my Memmius, learn from this:\r\n When first the dawn is sprinkling with new light\r\n The lands, and all the breed of birds abroad\r\n Flit round the trackless forests, with liquid notes\r\n Filling the regions along the mellow air,\r\n We see \u0027tis forthwith manifest to man\r\n How suddenly the risen sun is wont\r\n At such an hour to overspread and clothe\r\n The whole with its own splendour; but the sun\u0027s\r\n Warm exhalations and this serene light\r\n Travel not down an empty void; and thus\r\n They are compelled more slowly to advance,\r\n Whilst, as it were, they cleave the waves of air;\r\n Nor one by one travel these particles\r\n Of the warm exhalations, but are all\r\n Entangled and enmassed, whereby at once\r\n Each is restrained by each, and from without\r\n Checked, till compelled more slowly to advance.\r\n But the primordial atoms with their old\r\n Simple solidity, when forth they travel\r\n Along the empty void, all undelayed\r\n By aught outside them there, and they, each one\r\n Being one unit from nature of its parts,\r\n Are borne to that one place on which they strive\r\n Still to lay hold, must then, beyond a doubt,\r\n Outstrip in speed, and be more swiftly borne\r\n Than light of sun, and over regions rush,\r\n Of space much vaster, in the self-same time\r\n The sun\u0027s effulgence widens round the sky.\r\n\r\n\u003c/pre\u003e\r\n\u003cpre\u003e\r\n Nor to pursue the atoms one by one,\r\n To see the law whereby each thing goes on.\r\n But some men, ignorant of matter, think,\r\n Opposing this, that not without the gods,\r\n In such adjustment to our human ways,\r\n Can nature change the seasons of the years,\r\n And bring to birth the grains and all of else\r\n To which divine Delight, the guide of life,\r\n Persuades mortality and leads it on,\r\n That, through her artful blandishments of love,\r\n It propagate the generations still,\r\n Lest humankind should perish. When they feign\r\n That gods have stablished all things but for man,\r\n They seem in all ways mightily to lapse\r\n From reason\u0027s truth: for ev\u0027n if ne\u0027er I knew\r\n What seeds primordial are, yet would I dare\r\n This to affirm, ev\u0027n from deep judgment based\r\n Upon the ways and conduct of the skies\u0026mdash;\r\n This to maintain by many a fact besides\u0026mdash;\r\n That in no wise the nature of the world\r\n For us was builded by a power divine\u0026mdash;\r\n So great the faults it stands encumbered with:\r\n The which, my Memmius, later on, for thee\r\n We will clear up. Now as to what remains\r\n Concerning motions we\u0027ll unfold our thought.\r\n\r\n Now is the place, meseems, in these affairs\r\n To prove for thee this too: nothing corporeal\r\n Of its own force can e\u0027er be upward borne,\r\n Or upward go\u0026mdash;nor let the bodies of flames\r\n Deceive thee here: for they engendered are\r\n With urge to upwards, taking thus increase,\r\n Whereby grow upwards shining grains and trees,\r\n Though all the weight within them downward bears.\r\n Nor, when the fires will leap from under round\r\n The roofs of houses, and swift flame laps up\r\n Timber and beam, \u0027tis then to be supposed\r\n They act of own accord, no force beneath\r\n To urge them up. \u0027Tis thus that blood, discharged\r\n From out our bodies, spurts its jets aloft\r\n And spatters gore. And hast thou never marked\r\n With what a force the water will disgorge\r\n Timber and beam? The deeper, straight and down,\r\n We push them in, and, many though we be,\r\n The more we press with main and toil, the more\r\n The water vomits up and flings them back,\r\n That, more than half their length, they there emerge,\r\n Rebounding. Yet we never doubt, meseems,\r\n That all the weight within them downward bears\r\n Through empty void. Well, in like manner, flames\r\n Ought also to be able, when pressed out,\r\n Through winds of air to rise aloft, even though\r\n The weight within them strive to draw them down.\r\n Hast thou not seen, sweeping so far and high,\r\n The meteors, midnight flambeaus of the sky,\r\n How after them they draw long trails of flame\r\n Wherever Nature gives a thoroughfare?\r\n How stars and constellations drop to earth,\r\n Seest not? Nay, too, the sun from peak of heaven\r\n Sheds round to every quarter its large heat,\r\n And sows the new-ploughed intervales with light:\r\n Thus also sun\u0027s heat downward tends to earth.\r\n Athwart the rain thou seest the lightning fly;\r\n Now here, now there, bursting from out the clouds,\r\n The fires dash zig-zag\u0026mdash;and that flaming power\r\n Falls likewise down to earth.\r\n\r\n In these affairs\r\n We wish thee also well aware of this:\r\n The atoms, as their own weight bears them down\r\n Plumb through the void, at scarce determined times,\r\n In scarce determined places, from their course\r\n Decline a little\u0026mdash;call it, so to speak,\r\n Mere changed trend. For were it not their wont\r\n Thuswise to swerve, down would they fall, each one,\r\n Like drops of rain, through the unbottomed void;\r\n And then collisions ne\u0027er could be nor blows\r\n Among the primal elements; and thus\r\n Nature would never have created aught.\r\n\r\n But, if perchance be any that believe\r\n The heavier bodies, as more swiftly borne\r\n Plumb down the void, are able from above\r\n To strike the lighter, thus engendering blows\r\n Able to cause those procreant motions, far\r\n From highways of true reason they retire.\r\n For whatsoever through the waters fall,\r\n Or through thin air, must quicken their descent,\r\n Each after its weight\u0026mdash;on this account, because\r\n Both bulk of water and the subtle air\r\n By no means can retard each thing alike,\r\n But give more quick before the heavier weight;\r\n But contrariwise the empty void cannot,\r\n On any side, at any time, to aught\r\n Oppose resistance, but will ever yield,\r\n True to its bent of nature. Wherefore all,\r\n With equal speed, though equal not in weight,\r\n Must rush, borne downward through the still inane.\r\n Thus ne\u0027er at all have heavier from above\r\n Been swift to strike the lighter, gendering strokes\r\n Which cause those divers motions, by whose means\r\n Nature transacts her work. And so I say,\r\n The atoms must a little swerve at times\u0026mdash;\r\n But only the least, lest we should seem to feign\r\n Motions oblique, and fact refute us there.\r\n For this we see forthwith is manifest:\r\n Whatever the weight, it can\u0027t obliquely go,\r\n Down on its headlong journey from above,\r\n At least so far as thou canst mark; but who\r\n Is there can mark by sense that naught can swerve\r\n At all aside from off its road\u0027s straight line?\r\n\r\n Again, if ev\u0027r all motions are co-linked,\r\n And from the old ever arise the new\r\n In fixed order, and primordial seeds\r\n Produce not by their swerving some new start\r\n Of motion to sunder the covenants of fate,\r\n That cause succeed not cause from everlasting,\r\n Whence this free will for creatures o\u0027er the lands,\r\n Whence is it wrested from the fates,\u0026mdash;this will\r\n Whereby we step right forward where desire\r\n Leads each man on, whereby the same we swerve\r\n In motions, not as at some fixed time,\r\n Nor at some fixed line of space, but where\r\n The mind itself has urged? For out of doubt\r\n In these affairs \u0027tis each man\u0027s will itself\r\n That gives the start, and hence throughout our limbs\r\n Incipient motions are diffused. Again,\r\n Dost thou not see, when, at a point of time,\r\n The bars are opened, how the eager strength\r\n Of horses cannot forward break as soon\r\n As pants their mind to do? For it behooves\r\n That all the stock of matter, through the frame,\r\n Be roused, in order that, through every joint,\r\n Aroused, it press and follow mind\u0027s desire;\r\n So thus thou seest initial motion\u0027s gendered\r\n From out the heart, aye, verily, proceeds\r\n First from the spirit\u0027s will, whence at the last\r\n \u0027Tis given forth through joints and body entire.\r\n Quite otherwise it is, when forth we move,\r\n Impelled by a blow of another\u0027s mighty powers\r\n And mighty urge; for then \u0027tis clear enough\r\n All matter of our total body goes,\r\n Hurried along, against our own desire\u0026mdash;\r\n Until the will has pulled upon the reins\r\n And checked it back, throughout our members all;\r\n At whose arbitrament indeed sometimes\r\n The stock of matter\u0027s forced to change its path,\r\n Throughout our members and throughout our joints,\r\n And, after being forward cast, to be\r\n Reined up, whereat it settles back again.\r\n So seest thou not, how, though external force\r\n Drive men before, and often make them move,\r\n Onward against desire, and headlong snatched,\r\n Yet is there something in these breasts of ours\r\n Strong to combat, strong to withstand the same?\u0026mdash;\r\n Wherefore no less within the primal seeds\r\n Thou must admit, besides all blows and weight,\r\n Some other cause of motion, whence derives\r\n This power in us inborn, of some free act.\u0026mdash;\r\n Since naught from nothing can become, we see.\r\n For weight prevents all things should come to pass\r\n Through blows, as \u0027twere, by some external force;\r\n But that man\u0027s mind itself in all it does\r\n Hath not a fixed necessity within,\r\n Nor is not, like a conquered thing, compelled\r\n To bear and suffer,\u0026mdash;this state comes to man\r\n From that slight swervement of the elements\r\n In no fixed line of space, in no fixed time.\r\n\r\n Nor ever was the stock of stuff more crammed,\r\n Nor ever, again, sundered by bigger gaps:\r\n For naught gives increase and naught takes away;\r\n On which account, just as they move to-day,\r\n The elemental bodies moved of old\r\n And shall the same hereafter evermore.\r\n And what was wont to be begot of old\r\n Shall be begotten under selfsame terms\r\n And grow and thrive in power, so far as given\r\n To each by Nature\u0027s changeless, old decrees.\r\n The sum of things there is no power can change,\r\n For naught exists outside, to which can flee\r\n Out of the world matter of any kind,\r\n Nor forth from which a fresh supply can spring,\r\n Break in upon the founded world, and change\r\n Whole nature of things, and turn their motions about.\r\n\u003c/pre\u003e\r\n \u003cp\u003e\r\n \u003ca id=\"link2H_4_0011\"\u003e\r\n \u003c!– H2 anchor –\u003e \u003c/a\u003e\r\n \u003c/p\u003e\r\n \u003cdiv style=\"height: 4em;\"\u003e\r\n \u003cbr \u003e\u003cbr \u003e\u003cbr \u003e\u003cbr \u003e\r\n \u003c/div\u003e\r\n \u003ch2\u003e\r\n ATOMIC FORMS AND THEIR COMBINATIONS\r\n \u003c/h2\u003e\r\n\u003cpre\u003e\r\n Now come, and next hereafter apprehend\r\n What sorts, how vastly different in form,\r\n How varied in multitudinous shapes they are\u0026mdash;\r\n These old beginnings of the universe;\r\n Not in the sense that only few are furnished\r\n With one like form, but rather not at all\r\n In general have they likeness each with each,\r\n No marvel: since the stock of them\u0027s so great\r\n That there\u0027s no end (as I have taught) nor sum,\r\n They must indeed not one and all be marked\r\n By equal outline and by shape the same.\r\n\r\n\u003c/pre\u003e\r\n\u003cpre\u003e\r\n Moreover, humankind, and the mute flocks\r\n Of scaly creatures swimming in the streams,\r\n And joyous herds around, and all the wild,\r\n And all the breeds of birds\u0026mdash;both those that teem\r\n In gladsome regions of the water-haunts,\r\n About the river-banks and springs and pools,\r\n And those that throng, flitting from tree to tree,\r\n Through trackless woods\u0026mdash;Go, take which one thou wilt,\r\n In any kind: thou wilt discover still\r\n Each from the other still unlike in shape.\r\n Nor in no other wise could offspring know\r\n Mother, nor mother offspring\u0026mdash;which we see\r\n They yet can do, distinguished one from other,\r\n No less than human beings, by clear signs.\r\n Thus oft before fair temples of the gods,\r\n Beside the incense-burning altars slain,\r\n Drops down the yearling calf, from out its breast\r\n Breathing warm streams of blood; the orphaned mother,\r\n Ranging meanwhile green woodland pastures round,\r\n Knows well the footprints, pressed by cloven hoofs,\r\n With eyes regarding every spot about,\r\n For sight somewhere of youngling gone from her;\r\n And, stopping short, filleth the leafy lanes\r\n With her complaints; and oft she seeks again\r\n Within the stall, pierced by her yearning still.\r\n Nor tender willows, nor dew-quickened grass,\r\n Nor the loved streams that glide along low banks,\r\n Can lure her mind and turn the sudden pain;\r\n Nor other shapes of calves that graze thereby\r\n Distract her mind or lighten pain the least\u0026mdash;\r\n So keen her search for something known and hers.\r\n Moreover, tender kids with bleating throats\r\n Do know their horned dams, and butting lambs\r\n The flocks of sheep, and thus they patter on,\r\n Unfailingly each to its proper teat,\r\n As nature intends. Lastly, with any grain,\r\n Thou\u0027lt see that no one kernel in one kind\r\n Is so far like another, that there still\r\n Is not in shapes some difference running through.\r\n By a like law we see how earth is pied\r\n With shells and conchs, where, with soft waves, the sea\r\n Beats on the thirsty sands of curving shores.\r\n Wherefore again, again, since seeds of things\r\n Exist by nature, nor were wrought with hands\r\n After a fixed pattern of one other,\r\n They needs must flitter to and fro with shapes\r\n In types dissimilar to one another.\r\n\r\n\u003c/pre\u003e\r\n \u003chr \u003e\r\n\u003cpre\u003e\r\n Easy enough by thought of mind to solve\r\n Why fires of lightning more can penetrate\r\n Than these of ours from pitch-pine born on earth.\r\n For thou canst say lightning\u0027s celestial fire,\r\n So subtle, is formed of figures finer far,\r\n And passes thus through holes which this our fire,\r\n Born from the wood, created from the pine,\r\n Cannot. Again, light passes through the horn\r\n On the lantern\u0027s side, while rain is dashed away.\r\n And why?\u0026mdash;unless those bodies of light should be\r\n Finer than those of water\u0027s genial showers.\r\n We see how quickly through a colander\r\n The wines will flow; how, on the other hand,\r\n The sluggish olive-oil delays: no doubt,\r\n Because \u0027tis wrought of elements more large,\r\n Or else more crook\u0027d and intertangled. Thus\r\n It comes that the primordials cannot be\r\n So suddenly sundered one from other, and seep,\r\n One through each several hole of anything.\r\n\r\n And note, besides, that liquor of honey or milk\r\n Yields in the mouth agreeable taste to tongue,\r\n Whilst nauseous wormwood, pungent centaury,\r\n With their foul flavour set the lips awry;\r\n Thus simple \u0027tis to see that whatsoever\r\n Can touch the senses pleasingly are made\r\n Of smooth and rounded elements, whilst those\r\n Which seem the bitter and the sharp, are held\r\n Entwined by elements more crook\u0027d, and so\r\n Are wont to tear their ways into our senses,\r\n And rend our body as they enter in.\r\n In short all good to sense, all bad to touch,\r\n Being up-built of figures so unlike,\r\n Are mutually at strife\u0026mdash;lest thou suppose\r\n That the shrill rasping of a squeaking saw\r\n Consists of elements as smooth as song\r\n Which, waked by nimble fingers, on the strings\r\n The sweet musicians fashion; or suppose\r\n That same-shaped atoms through men\u0027s nostrils pierce\r\n When foul cadavers burn, as when the stage\r\n Is with Cilician saffron sprinkled fresh,\r\n And the altar near exhales Panchaean scent;\r\n Or hold as of like seed the goodly hues\r\n Of things which feast our eyes, as those which sting\r\n Against the smarting pupil and draw tears,\r\n Or show, with gruesome aspect, grim and vile.\r\n For never a shape which charms our sense was made\r\n Without some elemental smoothness; whilst\r\n Whate\u0027er is harsh and irksome has been framed\r\n Still with some roughness in its elements.\r\n Some, too, there are which justly are supposed\r\n To be nor smooth nor altogether hooked,\r\n With bended barbs, but slightly angled-out,\r\n To tickle rather than to wound the sense\u0026mdash;\r\n And of which sort is the salt tartar of wine\r\n And flavours of the gummed elecampane.\r\n Again, that glowing fire and icy rime\r\n Are fanged with teeth unlike whereby to sting\r\n Our body\u0027s sense, the touch of each gives proof.\r\n For touch\u0026mdash;by sacred majesties of Gods!\u0026mdash;\r\n Touch is indeed the body\u0027s only sense\u0026mdash;\r\n Be\u0027t that something in-from-outward works,\r\n Be\u0027t that something in the body born\r\n Wounds, or delighteth as it passes out\r\n Along the procreant paths of Aphrodite;\r\n Or be\u0027t the seeds by some collision whirl\r\n Disordered in the body and confound\r\n By tumult and confusion all the sense\u0026mdash;\r\n As thou mayst find, if haply with the hand\r\n Thyself thou strike thy body\u0027s any part.\r\n On which account, the elemental forms\r\n Must differ widely, as enabled thus\r\n To cause diverse sensations.\r\n\r\n And, again,\r\n What seems to us the hardened and condensed\r\n Must be of atoms among themselves more hooked,\r\n Be held compacted deep within, as \u0027twere\r\n By branch-like atoms\u0026mdash;of which sort the chief\r\n Are diamond stones, despisers of all blows,\r\n And stalwart flint and strength of solid iron,\r\n And brazen bars, which, budging hard in locks,\r\n Do grate and scream. But what are liquid, formed\r\n Of fluid body, they indeed must be\r\n Of elements more smooth and round\u0026mdash;because\r\n Their globules severally will not cohere:\r\n To suck the poppy-seeds from palm of hand\r\n Is quite as easy as drinking water down,\r\n And they, once struck, roll like unto the same.\r\n But that thou seest among the things that flow\r\n Some bitter, as the brine of ocean is,\r\n Is not the least a marvel…\r\n For since \u0027tis fluid, smooth its atoms are\r\n And round, with painful rough ones mixed therein;\r\n Yet need not these be held together hooked:\r\n In fact, though rough, they\u0027re globular besides,\r\n Able at once to roll, and rasp the sense.\r\n And that the more thou mayst believe me here,\r\n That with smooth elements are mixed the rough\r\n (Whence Neptune\u0027s salt astringent body comes),\r\n There is a means to separate the twain,\r\n And thereupon dividedly to see\r\n How the sweet water, after filtering through\r\n So often underground, flows freshened forth\r\n Into some hollow; for it leaves above\r\n The primal germs of nauseating brine,\r\n Since cling the rough more readily in earth.\r\n Lastly, whatso thou markest to disperse\r\n Upon the instant\u0026mdash;smoke, and cloud, and flame\u0026mdash;\r\n Must not (even though not all of smooth and round)\r\n Be yet co-linked with atoms intertwined,\r\n That thus they can, without together cleaving,\r\n So pierce our body and so bore the rocks.\r\n Whatever we see…\r\n Given to senses, that thou must perceive\r\n They\u0027re not from linked but pointed elements.\r\n\r\n The which now having taught, I will go on\r\n To bind thereto a fact to this allied\r\n And drawing from this its proof: these primal germs\r\n Vary, yet only with finite tale of shapes.\r\n For were these shapes quite infinite, some seeds\r\n Would have a body of infinite increase.\r\n For in one seed, in one small frame of any,\r\n The shapes can\u0027t vary from one another much.\r\n Assume, we\u0027ll say, that of three minim parts\r\n Consist the primal bodies, or add a few:\r\n When, now, by placing all these parts of one\r\n At top and bottom, changing lefts and rights,\r\n Thou hast with every kind of shift found out\r\n What the aspect of shape of its whole body\r\n Each new arrangement gives, for what remains,\r\n If thou percase wouldst vary its old shapes,\r\n New parts must then be added; follows next,\r\n If thou percase wouldst vary still its shapes,\r\n That by like logic each arrangement still\r\n Requires its increment of other parts.\r\n Ergo, an augmentation of its frame\r\n Follows upon each novelty of forms.\r\n Wherefore, it cannot be thou\u0027lt undertake\r\n That seeds have infinite differences in form,\r\n Lest thus thou forcest some indeed to be\r\n Of an immeasurable immensity\u0026mdash;\r\n Which I have taught above cannot be proved.\r\n\r\n\u003c/pre\u003e\r\n \u003chr \u003e\r\n\u003cpre\u003e\r\n And now for thee barbaric robes, and gleam\r\n Of Meliboean purple, touched with dye\r\n Of the Thessalian shell…\r\n The peacock\u0027s golden generations, stained\r\n With spotted gaieties, would lie o\u0027erthrown\r\n By some new colour of new things more bright;\r\n The odour of myrrh and savours of honey despised;\r\n The swan\u0027s old lyric, and Apollo\u0027s hymns,\r\n Once modulated on the many chords,\r\n Would likewise sink o\u0027ermastered and be mute:\r\n For, lo, a somewhat, finer than the rest,\r\n Would be arising evermore. So, too,\r\n Into some baser part might all retire,\r\n Even as we said to better might they come:\r\n For, lo, a somewhat, loathlier than the rest\r\n To nostrils, ears, and eyes, and taste of tongue,\r\n Would then, by reasoning reversed, be there.\r\n Since \u0027tis not so, but unto things are given\r\n Their fixed limitations which do bound\r\n Their sum on either side, \u0027tmust be confessed\r\n That matter, too, by finite tale of shapes\r\n Does differ. Again, from earth\u0027s midsummer heats\r\n Unto the icy hoar-frosts of the year\r\n The forward path is fixed, and by like law\r\n O\u0027ertravelled backwards at the dawn of spring.\r\n For each degree of hot, and each of cold,\r\n And the half-warm, all filling up the sum\r\n In due progression, lie, my Memmius, there\r\n Betwixt the two extremes: the things create\r\n Must differ, therefore, by a finite change,\r\n Since at each end marked off they ever are\r\n By fixed point\u0026mdash;on one side plagued by flames\r\n And on the other by congealing frosts.\r\n\r\n The which now having taught, I will go on\r\n To bind thereto a fact to this allied\r\n And drawing from this its proof: those primal germs\r\n Which have been fashioned all of one like shape\r\n Are infinite in tale; for, since the forms\r\n Themselves are finite in divergences,\r\n Then those which are alike will have to be\r\n Infinite, else the sum of stuff remains\r\n A finite\u0026mdash;what I\u0027ve proved is not the fact,\r\n Showing in verse how corpuscles of stuff,\r\n From everlasting and to-day the same,\r\n Uphold the sum of things, all sides around\r\n By old succession of unending blows.\r\n For though thou view\u0027st some beasts to be more rare,\r\n And mark\u0027st in them a less prolific stock,\r\n Yet in another region, in lands remote,\r\n That kind abounding may make up the count;\r\n Even as we mark among the four-foot kind\r\n Snake-handed elephants, whose thousands wall\r\n With ivory ramparts India about,\r\n That her interiors cannot entered be\u0026mdash;\r\n So big her count of brutes of which we see\r\n Such few examples. Or suppose, besides,\r\n We feign some thing, one of its kind and sole\r\n With body born, to which is nothing like\r\n In all the lands: yet now unless shall be\r\n An infinite count of matter out of which\r\n Thus to conceive and bring it forth to life,\r\n It cannot be created and\u0026mdash;what\u0027s more\u0026mdash;\r\n It cannot take its food and get increase.\r\n Yea, if through all the world in finite tale\r\n Be tossed the procreant bodies of one thing,\r\n Whence, then, and where in what mode, by what power,\r\n Shall they to meeting come together there,\r\n In such vast ocean of matter and tumult strange?\u0026mdash;\r\n No means they have of joining into one.\r\n But, just as, after mighty ship-wrecks piled,\r\n The mighty main is wont to scatter wide\r\n The rowers\u0027 banks, the ribs, the yards, the prow,\r\n The masts and swimming oars, so that afar\r\n Along all shores of lands are seen afloat\r\n The carven fragments of the rended poop,\r\n Giving a lesson to mortality\r\n To shun the ambush of the faithless main,\r\n The violence and the guile, and trust it not\r\n At any hour, however much may smile\r\n The crafty enticements of the placid deep:\r\n Exactly thus, if once thou holdest true\r\n That certain seeds are finite in their tale,\r\n The various tides of matter, then, must needs\r\n Scatter them flung throughout the ages all,\r\n So that not ever can they join, as driven\r\n Together into union, nor remain\r\n In union, nor with increment can grow\u0026mdash;\r\n But facts in proof are manifest for each:\r\n Things can be both begotten and increase.\r\n \u0027Tis therefore manifest that primal germs,\r\n Are infinite in any class thou wilt\u0026mdash;\r\n From whence is furnished matter for all things.\r\n\r\n Nor can those motions that bring death prevail\r\n Forever, nor eternally entomb\r\n The welfare of the world; nor, further, can\r\n Those motions that give birth to things and growth\r\n Keep them forever when created there.\r\n Thus the long war, from everlasting waged,\r\n With equal strife among the elements\r\n Goes on and on. Now here, now there, prevail\r\n The vital forces of the world\u0026mdash;or fall.\r\n Mixed with the funeral is the wildered wail\r\n Of infants coming to the shores of light:\r\n No night a day, no dawn a night hath followed\r\n That heard not, mingling with the small birth-cries,\r\n The wild laments, companions old of death\r\n And the black rites.\r\n\r\n This, too, in these affairs\r\n \u0027Tis fit thou hold well sealed, and keep consigned\r\n With no forgetting brain: nothing there is\r\n Whose nature is apparent out of hand\r\n That of one kind of elements consists\u0026mdash;\r\n Nothing there is that\u0027s not of mixed seed.\r\n And whatsoe\u0027er possesses in itself\r\n More largely many powers and properties\r\n Shows thus that here within itself there are\r\n The largest number of kinds and differing shapes\r\n Of elements. And, chief of all, the earth\r\n Hath in herself first bodies whence the springs,\r\n Rolling chill waters, renew forevermore\r\n The unmeasured main; hath whence the fires arise\u0026mdash;\r\n For burns in many a spot her flamed crust,\r\n Whilst the impetuous Aetna raves indeed\r\n From more profounder fires\u0026mdash;and she, again,\r\n Hath in herself the seed whence she can raise\r\n The shining grains and gladsome trees for men;\r\n Whence, also, rivers, fronds, and gladsome pastures\r\n Can she supply for mountain-roaming beasts.\r\n Wherefore great mother of gods, and mother of beasts,\r\n And parent of man hath she alone been named.\r\n\r\n Her hymned the old and learned bards of Greece\r\n\r\n\u003c/pre\u003e\r\n \u003chr \u003e\r\n\u003cpre\u003e\r\n Seated in chariot o\u0027er the realms of air\r\n To drive her team of lions, teaching thus\r\n That the great earth hangs poised and cannot lie\r\n Resting on other earth. Unto her car\r\n They\u0027ve yoked the wild beasts, since a progeny,\r\n However savage, must be tamed and chid\r\n By care of parents. They have girt about\r\n With turret-crown the summit of her head,\r\n Since, fortressed in her goodly strongholds high,\r\n \u0027Tis she sustains the cities; now, adorned\r\n With that same token, to-day is carried forth,\r\n With solemn awe through many a mighty land,\r\n The image of that mother, the divine.\r\n Her the wide nations, after antique rite,\r\n Do name Idaean Mother, giving her\r\n Escort of Phrygian bands, since first, they say,\r\n From out those regions \u0027twas that grain began\r\n Through all the world. To her do they assign\r\n The Galli, the emasculate, since thus\r\n They wish to show that men who violate\r\n The majesty of the mother and have proved\r\n Ingrate to parents are to be adjudged\r\n Unfit to give unto the shores of light\r\n A living progeny. The Galli come:\r\n And hollow cymbals, tight-skinned tambourines\r\n Resound around to bangings of their hands;\r\n The fierce horns threaten with a raucous bray;\r\n The tubed pipe excites their maddened minds\r\n In Phrygian measures; they bear before them knives,\r\n Wild emblems of their frenzy, which have power\r\n The rabble\u0027s ingrate heads and impious hearts\r\n To panic with terror of the goddess\u0027 might.\r\n And so, when through the mighty cities borne,\r\n She blesses man with salutations mute,\r\n They strew the highway of her journeyings\r\n With coin of brass and silver, gifting her\r\n With alms and largesse, and shower her and shade\r\n With flowers of roses falling like the snow\r\n Upon the Mother and her companion-bands.\r\n Here is an armed troop, the which by Greeks\r\n Are called the Phrygian Curetes. Since\r\n Haply among themselves they use to play\r\n In games of arms and leap in measure round\r\n With bloody mirth and by their nodding shake\r\n The terrorizing crests upon their heads,\r\n This is the armed troop that represents\r\n The arm\u0027d Dictaean Curetes, who, in Crete,\r\n As runs the story, whilom did out-drown\r\n That infant cry of Zeus, what time their band,\r\n Young boys, in a swift dance around the boy,\r\n To measured step beat with the brass on brass,\r\n That Saturn might not get him for his jaws,\r\n And give its mother an eternal wound\r\n Along her heart. And \u0027tis on this account\r\n That armed they escort the mighty Mother,\r\n Or else because they signify by this\r\n That she, the goddess, teaches men to be\r\n Eager with armed valour to defend\r\n Their motherland, and ready to stand forth,\r\n The guard and glory of their parents\u0027 years.\r\n A tale, however beautifully wrought,\r\n That\u0027s wide of reason by a long remove:\r\n For all the gods must of themselves enjoy\r\n Immortal aeons and supreme repose,\r\n Withdrawn from our affairs, detached, afar:\r\n Immune from peril and immune from pain,\r\n Themselves abounding in riches of their own,\r\n Needing not us, they are not touched by wrath\r\n They are not taken by service or by gift.\r\n Truly is earth insensate for all time;\r\n But, by obtaining germs of many things,\r\n In many a way she brings the many forth\r\n Into the light of sun. And here, whoso\r\n Decides to call the ocean Neptune, or\r\n The grain-crop Ceres, and prefers to abuse\r\n The name of Bacchus rather than pronounce\r\n The liquor\u0027s proper designation, him\r\n Let us permit to go on calling earth\r\n Mother of Gods, if only he will spare\r\n To taint his soul with foul religion.\r\n So, too, the wooly flocks, and horned kine,\r\n And brood of battle-eager horses, grazing\r\n Often together along one grassy plain,\r\n Under the cope of one blue sky, and slaking\r\n From out one stream of water each its thirst,\r\n All live their lives with face and form unlike,\r\n Keeping the parents\u0027 nature, parents\u0027 habits,\r\n Which, kind by kind, through ages they repeat.\r\n So great in any sort of herb thou wilt,\r\n So great again in any river of earth\r\n Are the distinct diversities of matter.\r\n Hence, further, every creature\u0026mdash;any one\r\n From out them all\u0026mdash;compounded is the same\r\n Of bones, blood, veins, heat, moisture, flesh, and thews\u0026mdash;\r\n All differing vastly in their forms, and built\r\n Of elements dissimilar in shape.\r\n Again, all things by fire consumed ablaze,\r\n Within their frame lay up, if naught besides,\r\n At least those atoms whence derives their power\r\n To throw forth fire and send out light from under,\r\n To shoot the sparks and scatter embers wide.\r\n If, with like reasoning of mind, all else\r\n Thou traverse through, thou wilt discover thus\r\n That in their frame the seeds of many things\r\n They hide, and divers shapes of seeds contain.\r\n Further, thou markest much, to which are given\r\n Along together colour and flavour and smell,\r\n Among which, chief, are most burnt offerings.\r\n\r\n\u003c/pre\u003e\r\n \u003chr \u003e\r\n\u003cpre\u003e\r\n Thus must they be of divers shapes composed.\r\n A smell of scorching enters in our frame\r\n Where the bright colour from the dye goes not;\r\n And colour in one way, flavour in quite another\r\n Works inward to our senses\u0026mdash;so mayst see\r\n They differ too in elemental shapes.\r\n Thus unlike forms into one mass combine,\r\n And things exist by intermixed seed.\r\n\r\n But still \u0027tmust not be thought that in all ways\r\n All things can be conjoined; for then wouldst view\r\n Portents begot about thee every side:\r\n Hulks of mankind half brute astarting up,\r\n At times big branches sprouting from man\u0027s trunk,\r\n Limbs of a sea-beast to a land-beast knit,\r\n And nature along the all-producing earth\r\n Feeding those dire Chimaeras breathing flame\r\n From hideous jaws\u0026mdash;Of which \u0027tis simple fact\r\n That none have been begot; because we see\r\n All are from fixed seed and fixed dam\r\n Engendered and so function as to keep\r\n Throughout their growth their own ancestral type.\r\n This happens surely by a fixed law:\r\n For from all food-stuff, when once eaten down,\r\n Go sundered atoms, suited to each creature,\r\n Throughout their bodies, and, conjoining there,\r\n Produce the proper motions; but we see\r\n How, contrariwise, nature upon the ground\r\n Throws off those foreign to their frame; and many\r\n With viewless bodies from their bodies fly,\r\n By blows impelled\u0026mdash;those impotent to join\r\n To any part, or, when inside, to accord\r\n And to take on the vital motions there.\r\n But think not, haply, living forms alone\r\n Are bound by these laws: they distinguished all.\r\n\r\n\u003c/pre\u003e\r\n \u003chr \u003e\r\n\u003cpre\u003e\r\n For just as all things of creation are,\r\n In their whole nature, each to each unlike,\r\n So must their atoms be in shape unlike\u0026mdash;\r\n Not since few only are fashioned of like form,\r\n But since they all, as general rule, are not\r\n The same as all. Nay, here in these our verses,\r\n Elements many, common to many words,\r\n Thou seest, though yet \u0027tis needful to confess\r\n The words and verses differ, each from each,\r\n Compounded out of different elements\u0026mdash;\r\n Not since few only, as common letters, run\r\n Through all the words, or no two words are made,\r\n One and the other, from all like elements,\r\n But since they all, as general rule, are not\r\n The same as all. Thus, too, in other things,\r\n Whilst many germs common to many things\r\n There are, yet they, combined among themselves,\r\n Can form new wholes to others quite unlike.\r\n Thus fairly one may say that humankind,\r\n The grains, the gladsome trees, are all made up\r\n Of different atoms. Further, since the seeds\r\n Are different, difference must there also be\r\n In intervening spaces, thoroughfares,\r\n Connections, weights, blows, clashings, motions, all\r\n Which not alone distinguish living forms,\r\n But sunder earth\u0027s whole ocean from the lands,\r\n And hold all heaven from the lands away.\r\n\u003c/pre\u003e\r\n \u003cp\u003e\r\n ABSENCE OF SECONDARY QUALITIES\r\n \u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cpre\u003e\r\n Now come, this wisdom by my sweet toil sought\r\n Look thou perceive, lest haply thou shouldst guess\r\n That the white objects shining to thine eyes\r\n Are gendered of white atoms, or the black\r\n Of a black seed; or yet believe that aught\r\n That\u0027s steeped in any hue should take its dye\r\n From bits of matter tinct with hue the same.\r\n For matter\u0027s bodies own no hue the least\u0026mdash;\r\n Or like to objects or, again, unlike.\r\n But, if percase it seem to thee that mind\r\n Itself can dart no influence of its own\r\n Into these bodies, wide thou wand\u0027rest off.\r\n For since the blind-born, who have ne\u0027er surveyed\r\n The light of sun, yet recognise by touch\r\n Things that from birth had ne\u0027er a hue for them,\r\n \u0027Tis thine to know that bodies can be brought\r\n No less unto the ken of our minds too,\r\n Though yet those bodies with no dye be smeared.\r\n Again, ourselves whatever in the dark\r\n We touch, the same we do not find to be\r\n Tinctured with any colour.\r\n\r\n Now that here\r\n I win the argument, I next will teach\r\n\r\n\u003c/pre\u003e\r\n \u003chr \u003e\r\n\u003cpre\u003e\r\n Now, every colour changes, none except,\r\n And every…\r\n Which the primordials ought nowise to do.\r\n Since an immutable somewhat must remain,\r\n Lest all things utterly be brought to naught.\r\n For change of anything from out its bounds\r\n Means instant death of that which was before.\r\n Wherefore be mindful not to stain with colour\r\n The seeds of things, lest things return for thee\r\n All utterly to naught.\r\n\r\n But now, if seeds\r\n Receive no property of colour, and yet\r\n Be still endowed with variable forms\r\n From which all kinds of colours they beget\r\n And vary (by reason that ever it matters much\r\n With what seeds, and in what positions joined,\r\n And what the motions that they give and get),\r\n Forthwith most easily thou mayst devise\r\n Why what was black of hue an hour ago\r\n Can of a sudden like the marble gleam,\u0026mdash;\r\n As ocean, when the high winds have upheaved\r\n Its level plains, is changed to hoary waves\r\n Of marble whiteness: for, thou mayst declare,\r\n That, when the thing we often see as black\r\n Is in its matter then commixed anew,\r\n Some atoms rearranged, and some withdrawn,\r\n And added some, \u0027tis seen forthwith to turn\r\n Glowing and white. But if of azure seeds\r\n Consist the level waters of the deep,\r\n They could in nowise whiten: for however\r\n Thou shakest azure seeds, the same can never\r\n Pass into marble hue. But, if the seeds\u0026mdash;\r\n Which thus produce the ocean\u0027s one pure sheen\u0026mdash;\r\n Be now with one hue, now another dyed,\r\n As oft from alien forms and divers shapes\r\n A cube\u0027s produced all uniform in shape,\r\n \u0027Twould be but natural, even as in the cube\r\n We see the forms to be dissimilar,\r\n That thus we\u0027d see in brightness of the deep\r\n (Or in whatever one pure sheen thou wilt)\r\n Colours diverse and all dissimilar.\r\n Besides, the unlike shapes don\u0027t thwart the least\r\n The whole in being externally a cube;\r\n But differing hues of things do block and keep\r\n The whole from being of one resultant hue.\r\n Then, too, the reason which entices us\r\n At times to attribute colours to the seeds\r\n Falls quite to pieces, since white things are not\r\n Create from white things, nor are black from black,\r\n But evermore they are create from things\r\n Of divers colours. Verily, the white\r\n Will rise more readily, is sooner born\r\n Out of no colour, than of black or aught\r\n Which stands in hostile opposition thus.\r\n\r\n Besides, since colours cannot be, sans light,\r\n And the primordials come not forth to light,\r\n \u0027Tis thine to know they are not clothed with colour\u0026mdash;\r\n Truly, what kind of colour could there be\r\n In the viewless dark? Nay, in the light itself\r\n A colour changes, gleaming variedly,\r\n When smote by vertical or slanting ray.\r\n Thus in the sunlight shows the down of doves\r\n That circles, garlanding, the nape and throat:\r\n Now it is ruddy with a bright gold-bronze,\r\n Now, by a strange sensation it becomes\r\n Green-emerald blended with the coral-red.\r\n The peacock\u0027s tail, filled with the copious light,\r\n Changes its colours likewise, when it turns.\r\n Wherefore, since by some blow of light begot,\r\n Without such blow these colours can\u0027t become.\r\n\r\n And since the pupil of the eye receives\r\n Within itself one kind of blow, when said\r\n To feel a white hue, then another kind,\r\n When feeling a black or any other hue,\r\n And since it matters nothing with what hue\r\n The things thou touchest be perchance endowed,\r\n But rather with what sort of shape equipped,\r\n \u0027Tis thine to know the atoms need not colour,\r\n But render forth sensations, as of touch,\r\n That vary with their varied forms.\r\n\r\n Besides,\r\n Since special shapes have not a special colour,\r\n And all formations of the primal germs\r\n Can be of any sheen thou wilt, why, then,\r\n Are not those objects which are of them made\r\n Suffused, each kind with colours of every kind?\r\n For then \u0027twere meet that ravens, as they fly,\r\n Should dartle from white pinions a white sheen,\r\n Or swans turn black from seed of black, or be\r\n Of any single varied dye thou wilt.\r\n\r\n Again, the more an object\u0027s rent to bits,\r\n The more thou see its colour fade away\r\n Little by little till \u0027tis quite extinct;\r\n As happens when the gaudy linen\u0027s picked\r\n Shred after shred away: the purple there,\r\n Phoenician red, most brilliant of all dyes,\r\n Is lost asunder, ravelled thread by thread;\r\n Hence canst perceive the fragments die away\r\n From out their colour, long ere they depart\r\n Back to the old primordials of things.\r\n And, last, since thou concedest not all bodies\r\n Send out a voice or smell, it happens thus\r\n That not to all thou givest sounds and smells.\r\n So, too, since we behold not all with eyes,\r\n \u0027Tis thine to know some things there are as much\r\n Orphaned of colour, as others without smell,\r\n And reft of sound; and those the mind alert\r\n No less can apprehend than it can mark\r\n The things that lack some other qualities.\r\n\r\n But think not haply that the primal bodies\r\n Remain despoiled alone of colour: so,\r\n Are they from warmth dissevered and from cold\r\n And from hot exhalations; and they move,\r\n Both sterile of sound and dry of juice; and throw\r\n Not any odour from their proper bodies.\r\n Just as, when undertaking to prepare\r\n A liquid balm of myrrh and marjoram,\r\n And flower of nard, which to our nostrils breathes\r\n Odour of nectar, first of all behooves\r\n Thou seek, as far as find thou may and can,\r\n The inodorous olive-oil (which never sends\r\n One whiff of scent to nostrils), that it may\r\n The least debauch and ruin with sharp tang\r\n The odorous essence with its body mixed\r\n And in it seethed. And on the same account\r\n The primal germs of things must not be thought\r\n To furnish colour in begetting things,\r\n Nor sound, since pow\u0027rless they to send forth aught\r\n From out themselves, nor any flavour, too,\r\n Nor cold, nor exhalation hot or warm.\r\n\r\n\u003c/pre\u003e\r\n \u003chr \u003e\r\n\u003cpre\u003e\r\n The rest; yet since these things are mortal all\u0026mdash;\r\n The pliant mortal, with a body soft;\r\n The brittle mortal, with a crumbling frame;\r\n The hollow with a porous-all must be\r\n Disjoined from the primal elements,\r\n If still we wish under the world to lay\r\n Immortal ground-works, whereupon may rest\r\n The sum of weal and safety, lest for thee\r\n All things return to nothing utterly.\r\n\r\n Now, too: whate\u0027er we see possessing sense\r\n Must yet confessedly be stablished all\r\n From elements insensate. And those signs,\r\n So clear to all and witnessed out of hand,\r\n Do not refute this dictum nor oppose;\r\n But rather themselves do lead us by the hand,\r\n Compelling belief that living things are born\r\n Of elements insensate, as I say.\r\n Sooth, we may see from out the stinking dung\r\n Live worms spring up, when, after soaking rains,\r\n The drenched earth rots; and all things change the same:\r\n Lo, change the rivers, the fronds, the gladsome pastures\r\n Into the cattle, the cattle their nature change\r\n Into our bodies, and from our body, oft\r\n Grow strong the powers and bodies of wild beasts\r\n And mighty-winged birds. Thus nature changes\r\n All foods to living frames, and procreates\r\n From them the senses of live creatures all,\r\n In manner about as she uncoils in flames\r\n Dry logs of wood and turns them all to fire.\r\n And seest not, therefore, how it matters much\r\n After what order are set the primal germs,\r\n And with what other germs they all are mixed,\r\n And what the motions that they give and get?\r\n\r\n But now, what is\u0027t that strikes thy sceptic mind,\r\n Constraining thee to sundry arguments\r\n Against belief that from insensate germs\r\n The sensible is gendered?\u0026mdash;Verily,\r\n \u0027Tis this: that liquids, earth, and wood, though mixed,\r\n Are yet unable to gender vital sense.\r\n And, therefore, \u0027twill be well in these affairs\r\n This to remember: that I have not said\r\n Senses are born, under conditions all,\r\n From all things absolutely which create\r\n Objects that feel; but much it matters here\r\n Firstly, how small the seeds which thus compose\r\n The feeling thing, then, with what shapes endowed,\r\n And lastly what they in positions be,\r\n In motions, in arrangements. Of which facts\r\n Naught we perceive in logs of wood and clods;\r\n And yet even these, when sodden by the rains,\r\n Give birth to wormy grubs, because the bodies\r\n Of matter, from their old arrangements stirred\r\n By the new factor, then combine anew\r\n In such a way as genders living things.\r\n\r\n Next, they who deem that feeling objects can\r\n From feeling objects be create, and these,\r\n In turn, from others that are wont to feel\r\n\r\n\u003c/pre\u003e\r\n \u003chr \u003e\r\n\u003cpre\u003e\r\n When soft they make them; for all sense is linked\r\n With flesh, and thews, and veins\u0026mdash;and such, we see,\r\n Are fashioned soft and of a mortal frame.\r\n Yet be\u0027t that these can last forever on:\r\n They\u0027ll have the sense that\u0027s proper to a part,\r\n Or else be judged to have a sense the same\r\n As that within live creatures as a whole.\r\n But of themselves those parts can never feel,\r\n For all the sense in every member back\r\n To something else refers\u0026mdash;a severed hand,\r\n Or any other member of our frame,\r\n Itself alone cannot support sensation.\r\n It thus remains they must resemble, then,\r\n Live creatures as a whole, to have the power\r\n Of feeling sensation concordant in each part\r\n With the vital sense; and so they\u0027re bound to feel\r\n The things we feel exactly as do we.\r\n If such the case, how, then, can they be named\r\n The primal germs of things, and how avoid\r\n The highways of destruction?\u0026mdash;since they be\r\n Mere living things and living things be all\r\n One and the same with mortal. Grant they could,\r\n Yet by their meetings and their unions all,\r\n Naught would result, indeed, besides a throng\r\n And hurly-burly all of living things\u0026mdash;\r\n Precisely as men, and cattle, and wild beasts,\r\n By mere conglomeration each with each\r\n Can still beget not anything of new.\r\n But if by chance they lose, inside a body,\r\n Their own sense and another sense take on,\r\n What, then, avails it to assign them that\r\n Which is withdrawn thereafter? And besides,\r\n To touch on proof that we pronounced before,\r\n Just as we see the eggs of feathered fowls\r\n To change to living chicks, and swarming worms\r\n To bubble forth when from the soaking rains\r\n The earth is sodden, sure, sensations all\r\n Can out of non-sensations be begot.\r\n\r\n But if one say that sense can so far rise\r\n From non-sense by mutation, or because\r\n Brought forth as by a certain sort of birth,\r\n \u0027Twill serve to render plain to him and prove\r\n There is no birth, unless there be before\r\n Some formed union of the elements,\r\n Nor any change, unless they be unite.\r\n\r\n In first place, senses can\u0027t in body be\r\n Before its living nature\u0027s been begot,\u0026mdash;\r\n Since all its stuff, in faith, is held dispersed\r\n About through rivers, air, and earth, and all\r\n That is from earth created, nor has met\r\n In combination, and, in proper mode,\r\n Conjoined into those vital motions which\r\n Kindle the all-perceiving senses\u0026mdash;they\r\n That keep and guard each living thing soever.\r\n\r\n Again, a blow beyond its nature\u0027s strength\r\n Shatters forthwith each living thing soe\u0027er,\r\n And on it goes confounding all the sense\r\n Of body and mind. For of the primal germs\r\n Are loosed their old arrangements, and, throughout,\r\n The vital motions blocked,\u0026mdash;until the stuff,\r\n Shaken profoundly through the frame entire,\r\n Undoes the vital knots of soul from body\r\n And throws that soul, to outward wide-dispersed,\r\n Through all the pores. For what may we surmise\r\n A blow inflicted can achieve besides\r\n Shaking asunder and loosening all apart?\r\n It happens also, when less sharp the blow,\r\n The vital motions which are left are wont\r\n Oft to win out\u0026mdash;win out, and stop and still\r\n The uncouth tumults gendered by the blow,\r\n And call each part to its own courses back,\r\n And shake away the motion of death which now\r\n Begins its own dominion in the body,\r\n And kindle anew the senses almost gone.\r\n For by what other means could they the more\r\n Collect their powers of thought and turn again\r\n From very doorways of destruction\r\n Back unto life, rather than pass whereto\r\n They be already well-nigh sped and so\r\n Pass quite away?\r\n\r\n Again, since pain is there\r\n Where bodies of matter, by some force stirred up,\r\n Through vitals and through joints, within their seats\r\n Quiver and quake inside, but soft delight,\r\n When they remove unto their place again:\r\n \u0027Tis thine to know the primal germs can be\r\n Assaulted by no pain, nor from themselves\r\n Take no delight; because indeed they are\r\n Not made of any bodies of first things,\r\n Under whose strange new motions they might ache\r\n Or pluck the fruit of any dear new sweet.\r\n And so they must be furnished with no sense.\r\n\r\n Once more, if thus, that every living thing\r\n May have sensation, needful \u0027tis to assign\r\n Sense also to its elements, what then\r\n Of those fixed elements from which mankind\r\n Hath been, by their peculiar virtue, formed?\r\n Of verity, they\u0027ll laugh aloud, like men,\r\n Shaken asunder by a spasm of mirth,\r\n Or sprinkle with dewy tear-drops cheeks and chins,\r\n And have the cunning hardihood to say\r\n Much on the composition of the world,\r\n And in their turn inquire what elements\r\n They have themselves,\u0026mdash;since, thus the same in kind\r\n As a whole mortal creature, even they\r\n Must also be from other elements,\r\n And then those others from others evermore\u0026mdash;\r\n So that thou darest nowhere make a stop.\r\n Oho, I\u0027ll follow thee until thou grant\r\n The seed (which here thou say\u0027st speaks, laughs, and\r\n\r\n\u003c/pre\u003e\r\n\u003cpre\u003e\r\n thinks)\r\n Is yet derived out of other seeds\r\n Which in their turn are doing just the same.\r\n But if we see what raving nonsense this,\r\n And that a man may laugh, though not, forsooth,\r\n Compounded out of laughing elements,\r\n And think and utter reason with learn\u0027d speech,\r\n Though not himself compounded, for a fact,\r\n Of sapient seeds and eloquent, why, then,\r\n Cannot those things which we perceive to have\r\n Their own sensation be composed as well\r\n Of intermixed seeds quite void of sense?\r\n\u003c/pre\u003e\r\n \u003cp\u003e\r\n \u003ca id=\"link2H_4_0012\"\u003e\r\n \u003c!– H2 anchor –\u003e \u003c/a\u003e\r\n \u003c/p\u003e\r\n \u003cdiv style=\"height: 4em;\"\u003e\r\n \u003cbr \u003e\u003cbr \u003e\u003cbr \u003e\u003cbr \u003e\r\n \u003c/div\u003e\r\n \u003ch2\u003e\r\n INFINITE WORLDS\r\n \u003c/h2\u003e\r\n\u003cpre\u003e\r\n Once more, we all from seed celestial spring,\r\n To all is that same father, from whom earth,\r\n The fostering mother, as she takes the drops\r\n Of liquid moisture, pregnant bears her broods\u0026mdash;\r\n The shining grains, and gladsome shrubs and trees,\r\n And bears the human race and of the wild\r\n The generations all, the while she yields\r\n The foods wherewith all feed their frames and lead\r\n The genial life and propagate their kind;\r\n Wherefore she owneth that maternal name,\r\n By old desert. What was before from earth,\r\n The same in earth sinks back, and what was sent\r\n From shores of ether, that, returning home,\r\n The vaults of sky receive. Nor thus doth death\r\n So far annihilate things that she destroys\r\n The bodies of matter; but she dissipates\r\n Their combinations, and conjoins anew\r\n One element with others; and contrives\r\n That all things vary forms and change their colours\r\n And get sensations and straight give them o\u0027er.\r\n And thus may\u0027st know it matters with what others\r\n And in what structure the primordial germs\r\n Are held together, and what motions they\r\n Among themselves do give and get; nor think\r\n That aught we see hither and thither afloat\r\n Upon the crest of things, and now a birth\r\n And straightway now a ruin, inheres at rest\r\n Deep in the eternal atoms of the world.\r\n\r\n Why, even in these our very verses here\r\n It matters much with what and in what order\r\n Each element is set: the same denote\r\n Sky, and the ocean, lands, and streams, and sun;\r\n The same, the grains, and trees, and living things.\r\n And if not all alike, at least the most\u0026mdash;\r\n But what distinctions by positions wrought!\r\n And thus no less in things themselves, when once\r\n Around are changed the intervals between,\r\n The paths of matter, its connections, weights,\r\n Blows, clashings, motions, order, structure, shapes,\r\n The things themselves must likewise changed be.\r\n\r\n Now to true reason give thy mind for us.\r\n Since here strange truth is putting forth its might\r\n To hit thee in thine ears, a new aspect\r\n Of things to show its front. Yet naught there is\r\n So easy that it standeth not at first\r\n More hard to credit than it after is;\r\n And naught soe\u0027er that\u0027s great to such degree,\r\n Nor wonderful so far, but all mankind\r\n Little by little abandon their surprise.\r\n Look upward yonder at the bright clear sky\r\n And what it holds\u0026mdash;the stars that wander o\u0027er,\r\n The moon, the radiance of the splendour-sun:\r\n Yet all, if now they first for mortals were,\r\n If unforeseen now first asudden shown,\r\n What might there be more wonderful to tell,\r\n What that the nations would before have dared\r\n Less to believe might be?\u0026mdash;I fancy, naught\u0026mdash;\r\n So strange had been the marvel of that sight.\r\n The which o\u0027erwearied to behold, to-day\r\n None deigns look upward to those lucent realms.\r\n Then, spew not reason from thy mind away,\r\n Beside thyself because the matter\u0027s new,\r\n But rather with keen judgment nicely weigh;\r\n And if to thee it then appeareth true,\r\n Render thy hands, or, if \u0027tis false at last,\r\n Gird thee to combat. For my mind-of-man\r\n Now seeks the nature of the vast Beyond\r\n There on the other side, that boundless sum\r\n Which lies without the ramparts of the world,\r\n Toward which the spirit longs to peer afar,\r\n Toward which indeed the swift elan of thought\r\n Flies unencumbered forth.\r\n\r\n Firstly, we find,\r\n Off to all regions round, on either side,\r\n Above, beneath, throughout the universe\r\n End is there none\u0026mdash;as I have taught, as too\r\n The very thing of itself declares aloud,\r\n And as from nature of the unbottomed deep\r\n Shines clearly forth. Nor can we once suppose\r\n In any way \u0027tis likely, (seeing that space\r\n To all sides stretches infinite and free,\r\n And seeds, innumerable in number, in sum\r\n Bottomless, there in many a manner fly,\r\n Bestirred in everlasting motion there),\r\n That only this one earth and sky of ours\r\n Hath been create and that those bodies of stuff,\r\n So many, perform no work outside the same;\r\n Seeing, moreover, this world too hath been\r\n By nature fashioned, even as seeds of things\r\n By innate motion chanced to clash and cling\u0026mdash;\r\n After they\u0027d been in many a manner driven\r\n Together at random, without design, in vain\u0026mdash;\r\n And as at last those seeds together dwelt,\r\n Which, when together of a sudden thrown,\r\n Should alway furnish the commencements fit\r\n Of mighty things\u0026mdash;the earth, the sea, the sky,\r\n And race of living creatures. Thus, I say,\r\n Again, again, \u0027tmust be confessed there are\r\n Such congregations of matter otherwhere,\r\n Like this our world which vasty ether holds\r\n In huge embrace.\r\n\r\n Besides, when matter abundant\r\n Is ready there, when space on hand, nor object\r\n Nor any cause retards, no marvel \u0027tis\r\n That things are carried on and made complete,\r\n Perforce. And now, if store of seeds there is\r\n So great that not whole life-times of the living\r\n Can count the tale…\r\n And if their force and nature abide the same,\r\n Able to throw the seeds of things together\r\n Into their places, even as here are thrown\r\n The seeds together in this world of ours,\r\n \u0027Tmust be confessed in other realms there are\r\n Still other worlds, still other breeds of men,\r\n And other generations of the wild.\r\n\r\n Hence too it happens in the sum there is\r\n No one thing single of its kind in birth,\r\n And single and sole in growth, but rather it is\r\n One member of some generated race,\r\n Among full many others of like kind.\r\n First, cast thy mind abroad upon the living:\r\n Thou\u0027lt find the race of mountain-ranging wild\r\n Even thus to be, and thus the scions of men\r\n To be begot, and lastly the mute flocks\r\n Of scaled fish, and winged frames of birds.\r\n Wherefore confess we must on grounds the same\r\n That earth, sun, moon, and ocean, and all else,\r\n Exist not sole and single\u0026mdash;rather in number\r\n Exceeding number. Since that deeply set\r\n Old boundary stone of life remains for them\r\n No less, and theirs a body of mortal birth\r\n No less, than every kind which here on earth\r\n Is so abundant in its members found.\r\n\r\n Which well perceived if thou hold in mind,\r\n Then Nature, delivered from every haughty lord,\r\n And forthwith free, is seen to do all things\r\n Herself and through herself of own accord,\r\n Rid of all gods. For\u0026mdash;by their holy hearts\r\n Which pass in long tranquillity of peace\r\n Untroubled ages and a serene life!\u0026mdash;\r\n Who hath the power (I ask), who hath the power\r\n To rule the sum of the immeasurable,\r\n To hold with steady hand the giant reins\r\n Of the unfathomed deep? Who hath the power\r\n At once to roll a multitude of skies,\r\n At once to heat with fires ethereal all\r\n The fruitful lands of multitudes of worlds,\r\n To be at all times in all places near,\r\n To stablish darkness by his clouds, to shake\r\n The serene spaces of the sky with sound,\r\n And hurl his lightnings,\u0026mdash;ha, and whelm how oft\r\n In ruins his own temples, and to rave,\r\n Retiring to the wildernesses, there\r\n At practice with that thunderbolt of his,\r\n Which yet how often shoots the guilty by,\r\n And slays the honourable blameless ones!\r\n\r\n Ere since the birth-time of the world, ere since\r\n The risen first-born day of sea, earth, sun,\r\n Have many germs been added from outside,\r\n Have many seeds been added round about,\r\n Which the great All, the while it flung them on,\r\n Brought hither, that from them the sea and lands\r\n Could grow more big, and that the house of heaven\r\n Might get more room and raise its lofty roofs\r\n Far over earth, and air arise around.\r\n For bodies all, from out all regions, are\r\n Divided by blows, each to its proper thing,\r\n And all retire to their own proper kinds:\r\n The moist to moist retires; earth gets increase\r\n From earthy body; and fires, as on a forge,\r\n Beat out new fire; and ether forges ether;\r\n Till nature, author and ender of the world,\r\n Hath led all things to extreme bound of growth:\r\n As haps when that which hath been poured inside\r\n The vital veins of life is now no more\r\n Than that which ebbs within them and runs off.\r\n This is the point where life for each thing ends;\r\n This is the point where nature with her powers\r\n Curbs all increase. For whatsoe\u0027er thou seest\r\n Grow big with glad increase, and step by step\r\n Climb upward to ripe age, these to themselves\r\n Take in more bodies than they send from selves,\r\n Whilst still the food is easily infused\r\n Through all the veins, and whilst the things are not\r\n So far expanded that they cast away\r\n Such numerous atoms as to cause a waste\r\n Greater than nutriment whereby they wax.\r\n For \u0027tmust be granted, truly, that from things\r\n Many a body ebbeth and runs off;\r\n But yet still more must come, until the things\r\n Have touched development\u0027s top pinnacle;\r\n Then old age breaks their powers and ripe strength\r\n And falls away into a worser part.\r\n For ever the ampler and more wide a thing,\r\n As soon as ever its augmentation ends,\r\n It scatters abroad forthwith to all sides round\r\n More bodies, sending them from out itself.\r\n Nor easily now is food disseminate\r\n Through all its veins; nor is that food enough\r\n To equal with a new supply on hand\r\n Those plenteous exhalations it gives off.\r\n Thus, fairly, all things perish, when with ebbing\r\n They\u0027re made less dense and when from blows without\r\n They are laid low; since food at last will fail\r\n Extremest eld, and bodies from outside\r\n Cease not with thumping to undo a thing\r\n And overmaster by infesting blows.\r\n\r\n Thus, too, the ramparts of the mighty world\r\n On all sides round shall taken be by storm,\r\n And tumble to wrack and shivered fragments down.\r\n For food it is must keep things whole, renewing;\r\n \u0027Tis food must prop and give support to all,\u0026mdash;\r\n But to no purpose, since nor veins suffice\r\n To hold enough, nor nature ministers\r\n As much as needful. And even now \u0027tis thus:\r\n Its age is broken and the earth, outworn\r\n With many parturitions, scarce creates\r\n The little lives\u0026mdash;she who created erst\r\n All generations and gave forth at birth\r\n Enormous bodies of wild beasts of old.\r\n For never, I fancy, did a golden cord\r\n From off the firmament above let down\r\n The mortal generations to the fields;\r\n Nor sea, nor breakers pounding on the rocks\r\n Created them; but earth it was who bore\u0026mdash;\r\n The same to-day who feeds them from herself.\r\n Besides, herself of own accord, she first\r\n The shining grains and vineyards of all joy\r\n Created for mortality; herself\r\n Gave the sweet fruitage and the pastures glad,\r\n Which now to-day yet scarcely wax in size,\r\n Even when aided by our toiling arms.\r\n We break the ox, and wear away the strength\r\n Of sturdy farm-hands; iron tools to-day\r\n Barely avail for tilling of the fields,\r\n So niggardly they grudge our harvestings,\r\n So much increase our labour. Now to-day\r\n The aged ploughman, shaking of his head,\r\n Sighs o\u0027er and o\u0027er that labours of his hands\r\n Have fallen out in vain, and, as he thinks\r\n How present times are not as times of old,\r\n Often he praises the fortunes of his sire,\r\n And crackles, prating, how the ancient race,\r\n Fulfilled with piety, supported life\r\n With simple comfort in a narrow plot,\r\n Since, man for man, the measure of each field\r\n Was smaller far i\u0027 the old days. And, again,\r\n The gloomy planter of the withered vine\r\n Rails at the season\u0027s change and wearies heaven,\r\n Nor grasps that all of things by sure degrees\r\n Are wasting away and going to the tomb,\r\n Outworn by venerable length of life.\r\n\u003c/pre\u003e\r\n \u003cp\u003e\r\n \u003ca id=\"link2H_4_0013\"\u003e\r\n \u003c!– H2 anchor –\u003e \u003c/a\u003e\r\n \u003c/p\u003e\r\n \u003cdiv style=\"height: 4em;\"\u003e\r\n \u003cbr \u003e\u003cbr \u003e\u003cbr \u003e\u003cbr \u003e\r\n \u003c/div\u003e\r\n \u003ch2\u003e\r\n BOOK III\r\n \u003c/h2\u003e\r\n \u003cp\u003e\r\n \u003ca id=\"link2H_4_0014\"\u003e\r\n \u003c!– H2 anchor –\u003e \u003c/a\u003e\r\n \u003c/p\u003e\r\n \u003cdiv style=\"height: 4em;\"\u003e\r\n \u003cbr \u003e\u003cbr \u003e\u003cbr \u003e\u003cbr \u003e\r\n \u003c/div\u003e\r\n \u003ch2\u003e\r\n PROEM\r\n \u003c/h2\u003e\r\n\u003cpre\u003e\r\n O thou who first uplifted in such dark\r\n So clear a torch aloft, who first shed light\r\n Upon the profitable ends of man,\r\n O thee I follow, glory of the Greeks,\r\n And set my footsteps squarely planted now\r\n Even in the impress and the marks of thine\u0026mdash;\r\n Less like one eager to dispute the palm,\r\n More as one craving out of very love\r\n That I may copy thee!\u0026mdash;for how should swallow\r\n Contend with swans or what compare could be\r\n In a race between young kids with tumbling legs\r\n And the strong might of the horse? Our father thou,\r\n And finder-out of truth, and thou to us\r\n Suppliest a father\u0027s precepts; and from out\r\n Those scriven leaves of thine, renowned soul\r\n (Like bees that sip of all in flowery wolds),\r\n We feed upon thy golden sayings all\u0026mdash;\r\n Golden, and ever worthiest endless life.\r\n For soon as ever thy planning thought that sprang\r\n From god-like mind begins its loud proclaim\r\n Of nature\u0027s courses, terrors of the brain\r\n Asunder flee, the ramparts of the world\r\n Dispart away, and through the void entire\r\n I see the movements of the universe.\r\n Rises to vision the majesty of gods,\r\n And their abodes of everlasting calm\r\n Which neither wind may shake nor rain-cloud splash,\r\n Nor snow, congealed by sharp frosts, may harm\r\n With its white downfall: ever, unclouded sky\r\n O\u0027er roofs, and laughs with far-diffused light.\r\n And nature gives to them their all, nor aught\r\n May ever pluck their peace of mind away.\r\n But nowhere to my vision rise no more\r\n The vaults of Acheron, though the broad earth\r\n Bars me no more from gazing down o\u0027er all\r\n Which under our feet is going on below\r\n Along the void. O, here in these affairs\r\n Some new divine delight and trembling awe\r\n Takes hold through me, that thus by power of thine\r\n Nature, so plain and manifest at last,\r\n Hath been on every side laid bare to man!\r\n\r\n And since I\u0027ve taught already of what sort\r\n The seeds of all things are, and how, distinct\r\n In divers forms, they flit of own accord,\r\n Stirred with a motion everlasting on,\r\n And in what mode things be from them create,\r\n Now, after such matters, should my verse, meseems,\r\n Make clear the nature of the mind and soul,\r\n And drive that dread of Acheron without,\r\n Headlong, which so confounds our human life\r\n Unto its deeps, pouring o\u0027er all that is\r\n The black of death, nor leaves not anything\r\n To prosper\u0026mdash;a liquid and unsullied joy.\r\n For as to what men sometimes will affirm:\r\n That more than Tartarus (the realm of death)\r\n They fear diseases and a life of shame,\r\n And know the substance of the soul is blood,\r\n Or rather wind (if haply thus their whim),\r\n And so need naught of this our science, then\r\n Thou well may\u0027st note from what\u0027s to follow now\r\n That more for glory do they braggart forth\r\n Than for belief. For mark these very same:\r\n Exiles from country, fugitives afar\r\n From sight of men, with charges foul attaint,\r\n Abased with every wretchedness, they yet\r\n Live, and where\u0027er the wretches come, they yet\r\n Make the ancestral sacrifices there,\r\n Butcher the black sheep, and to gods below\r\n Offer the honours, and in bitter case\r\n Turn much more keenly to religion.\r\n Wherefore, it\u0027s surer testing of a man\r\n In doubtful perils\u0026mdash;mark him as he is\r\n Amid adversities; for then alone\r\n Are the true voices conjured from his breast,\r\n The mask off-stripped, reality behind.\r\n And greed, again, and the blind lust of honours\r\n Which force poor wretches past the bounds of law,\r\n And, oft allies and ministers of crime,\r\n To push through nights and days with hugest toil\r\n To rise untrammelled to the peaks of power\u0026mdash;\r\n These wounds of life in no mean part are kept\r\n Festering and open by this fright of death.\r\n For ever we see fierce Want and foul Disgrace\r\n Dislodged afar from secure life and sweet,\r\n Like huddling Shapes before the doors of death.\r\n And whilst, from these, men wish to scape afar,\r\n Driven by false terror, and afar remove,\r\n With civic blood a fortune they amass,\r\n They double their riches, greedy, heapers-up\r\n Of corpse on corpse they have a cruel laugh\r\n For the sad burial of a brother-born,\r\n And hatred and fear of tables of their kin.\r\n Likewise, through this same terror, envy oft\r\n Makes them to peak because before their eyes\r\n That man is lordly, that man gazed upon\r\n Who walks begirt with honour glorious,\r\n Whilst they in filth and darkness roll around;\r\n Some perish away for statues and a name,\r\n And oft to that degree, from fright of death,\r\n Will hate of living and beholding light\r\n Take hold on humankind that they inflict\r\n Their own destruction with a gloomy heart\u0026mdash;\r\n Forgetful that this fear is font of cares,\r\n This fear the plague upon their sense of shame,\r\n And this that breaks the ties of comradry\r\n And oversets all reverence and faith,\r\n Mid direst slaughter. For long ere to-day\r\n Often were traitors to country and dear parents\r\n Through quest to shun the realms of Acheron.\r\n For just as children tremble and fear all\r\n In the viewless dark, so even we at times\r\n Dread in the light so many things that be\r\n No whit more fearsome than what children feign,\r\n Shuddering, will be upon them in the dark.\r\n This terror, then, this darkness of the mind,\r\n Not sunrise with its flaring spokes of light,\r\n Nor glittering arrows of morning sun disperse,\r\n But only nature\u0027s aspect and her law.\r\n\u003c/pre\u003e\r\n \u003cp\u003e\r\n \u003ca id=\"link2H_4_0015\"\u003e\r\n \u003c!– H2 anchor –\u003e \u003c/a\u003e\r\n \u003c/p\u003e\r\n \u003cdiv style=\"height: 4em;\"\u003e\r\n \u003cbr \u003e\u003cbr \u003e\u003cbr \u003e\u003cbr \u003e\r\n \u003c/div\u003e\r\n \u003ch2\u003e\r\n NATURE AND COMPOSITION OF THE MIND\r\n \u003c/h2\u003e\r\n\u003cpre\u003e\r\n First, then, I say, the mind which oft we call\r\n The intellect, wherein is seated life\u0027s\r\n Counsel and regimen, is part no less\r\n Of man than hand and foot and eyes are parts\r\n Of one whole breathing creature. [But some hold]\r\n That sense of mind is in no fixed part seated,\r\n But is of body some one vital state,\u0026mdash;\r\n Named \"harmony\" by Greeks, because thereby\r\n We live with sense, though intellect be not\r\n In any part: as oft the body is said\r\n To have good health (when health, however, \u0027s not\r\n One part of him who has it), so they place\r\n The sense of mind in no fixed part of man.\r\n Mightily, diversly, meseems they err.\r\n Often the body palpable and seen\r\n Sickens, while yet in some invisible part\r\n We feel a pleasure; oft the other way,\r\n A miserable in mind feels pleasure still\r\n Throughout his body\u0026mdash;quite the same as when\r\n A foot may pain without a pain in head.\r\n Besides, when these our limbs are given o\u0027er\r\n To gentle sleep and lies the burdened frame\r\n At random void of sense, a something else\r\n Is yet within us, which upon that time\r\n Bestirs itself in many a wise, receiving\r\n All motions of joy and phantom cares of heart.\r\n Now, for to see that in man\u0027s members dwells\r\n Also the soul, and body ne\u0027er is wont\r\n To feel sensation by a \"harmony\"\r\n Take this in chief: the fact that life remains\r\n Oft in our limbs, when much of body\u0027s gone;\r\n Yet that same life, when particles of heat,\r\n Though few, have scattered been, and through the mouth\r\n Air has been given forth abroad, forthwith\r\n Forever deserts the veins, and leaves the bones.\r\n Thus mayst thou know that not all particles\r\n Perform like parts, nor in like manner all\r\n Are props of weal and safety: rather those\u0026mdash;\r\n The seeds of wind and exhalations warm\u0026mdash;\r\n Take care that in our members life remains.\r\n Therefore a vital heat and wind there is\r\n Within the very body, which at death\r\n Deserts our frames. And so, since nature of mind\r\n And even of soul is found to be, as \u0027twere,\r\n A part of man, give over \"harmony\"\u0026mdash;\r\n Name to musicians brought from Helicon,\u0026mdash;\r\n Unless themselves they filched it otherwise,\r\n To serve for what was lacking name till then.\r\n Whate\u0027er it be, they\u0027re welcome to it\u0026mdash;thou,\r\n Hearken my other maxims.\r\n\r\n Mind and soul,\r\n I say, are held conjoined one with other,\r\n And form one single nature of themselves;\r\n But chief and regnant through the frame entire\r\n Is still that counsel which we call the mind,\r\n And that cleaves seated in the midmost breast.\r\n Here leap dismay and terror; round these haunts\r\n Be blandishments of joys; and therefore here\r\n The intellect, the mind. The rest of soul,\r\n Throughout the body scattered, but obeys\u0026mdash;\r\n Moved by the nod and motion of the mind.\r\n This, for itself, sole through itself, hath thought;\r\n This for itself hath mirth, even when the thing\r\n That moves it, moves nor soul nor body at all.\r\n And as, when head or eye in us is smit\r\n By assailing pain, we are not tortured then\r\n Through all the body, so the mind alone\r\n Is sometimes smitten, or livens with a joy,\r\n Whilst yet the soul\u0027s remainder through the limbs\r\n And through the frame is stirred by nothing new.\r\n But when the mind is moved by shock more fierce,\r\n We mark the whole soul suffering all at once\r\n Along man\u0027s members: sweats and pallors spread\r\n Over the body, and the tongue is broken,\r\n And fails the voice away, and ring the ears,\r\n Mists blind the eyeballs, and the joints collapse,\u0026mdash;\r\n Aye, men drop dead from terror of the mind.\r\n Hence, whoso will can readily remark\r\n That soul conjoined is with mind, and, when\r\n \u0027Tis strook by influence of the mind, forthwith\r\n In turn it hits and drives the body too.\r\n\r\n And this same argument establisheth\r\n That nature of mind and soul corporeal is:\r\n For when \u0027tis seen to drive the members on,\r\n To snatch from sleep the body, and to change\r\n The countenance, and the whole state of man\r\n To rule and turn,\u0026mdash;what yet could never be\r\n Sans contact, and sans body contact fails\u0026mdash;\r\n Must we not grant that mind and soul consist\r\n Of a corporeal nature?\u0026mdash;And besides\r\n Thou markst that likewise with this body of ours\r\n Suffers the mind and with our body feels.\r\n If the dire speed of spear that cleaves the bones\r\n And bares the inner thews hits not the life,\r\n Yet follows a fainting and a foul collapse,\r\n And, on the ground, dazed tumult in the mind,\r\n And whiles a wavering will to rise afoot.\r\n So nature of mind must be corporeal, since\r\n From stroke and spear corporeal \u0027tis in throes.\r\n\r\n Now, of what body, what components formed\r\n Is this same mind I will go on to tell.\r\n First, I aver, \u0027tis superfine, composed\r\n Of tiniest particles\u0026mdash;that such the fact\r\n Thou canst perceive, if thou attend, from this:\r\n Nothing is seen to happen with such speed\r\n As what the mind proposes and begins;\r\n Therefore the same bestirs itself more swiftly\r\n Than aught whose nature\u0027s palpable to eyes.\r\n But what\u0027s so agile must of seeds consist\r\n Most round, most tiny, that they may be moved,\r\n When hit by impulse slight. So water moves,\r\n In waves along, at impulse just the least\u0026mdash;\r\n Being create of little shapes that roll;\r\n But, contrariwise, the quality of honey\r\n More stable is, its liquids more inert,\r\n More tardy its flow; for all its stock of matter\r\n Cleaves more together, since, indeed, \u0027tis made\r\n Of atoms not so smooth, so fine, and round.\r\n For the light breeze that hovers yet can blow\r\n High heaps of poppy-seed away for thee\r\n Downward from off the top; but, contrariwise,\r\n A pile of stones or spiny ears of wheat\r\n It can\u0027t at all. Thus, in so far as bodies\r\n Are small and smooth, is their mobility;\r\n But, contrariwise, the heavier and more rough,\r\n The more immovable they prove. Now, then,\r\n Since nature of mind is movable so much,\r\n Consist it must of seeds exceeding small\r\n And smooth and round. Which fact once known to thee,\r\n Good friend, will serve thee opportune in else.\r\n This also shows the nature of the same,\r\n How nice its texture, in how small a space\r\n \u0027Twould go, if once compacted as a pellet:\r\n When death\u0027s unvexed repose gets hold on man\r\n And mind and soul retire, thou markest there\r\n From the whole body nothing ta\u0027en in form,\r\n Nothing in weight. Death grants ye everything,\r\n But vital sense and exhalation hot.\r\n Thus soul entire must be of smallmost seeds,\r\n Twined through the veins, the vitals, and the thews,\r\n Seeing that, when \u0027tis from whole body gone,\r\n The outward figuration of the limbs\r\n Is unimpaired and weight fails not a whit.\r\n Just so, when vanished the bouquet of wine,\r\n Or when an unguent\u0027s perfume delicate\r\n Into the winds away departs, or when\r\n From any body savour\u0027s gone, yet still\r\n The thing itself seems minished naught to eyes,\r\n Thereby, nor aught abstracted from its weight\u0026mdash;\r\n No marvel, because seeds many and minute\r\n Produce the savours and the redolence\r\n In the whole body of the things. And so,\r\n Again, again, nature of mind and soul\r\n \u0027Tis thine to know created is of seeds\r\n The tiniest ever, since at flying-forth\r\n It beareth nothing of the weight away.\r\n\r\n Yet fancy not its nature simple so.\r\n For an impalpable aura, mixed with heat,\r\n Deserts the dying, and heat draws off the air;\r\n And heat there\u0027s none, unless commixed with air:\r\n For, since the nature of all heat is rare,\r\n Athrough it many seeds of air must move.\r\n Thus nature of mind is triple; yet those all\r\n Suffice not for creating sense\u0026mdash;since mind\r\n Accepteth not that aught of these can cause\r\n Sense-bearing motions, and much less the thoughts\r\n A man revolves in mind. So unto these\r\n Must added be a somewhat, and a fourth;\r\n That somewhat\u0027s altogether void of name;\r\n Than which existeth naught more mobile, naught\r\n More an impalpable, of elements\r\n More small and smooth and round. That first transmits\r\n Sense-bearing motions through the frame, for that\r\n Is roused the first, composed of little shapes;\r\n Thence heat and viewless force of wind take up\r\n The motions, and thence air, and thence all things\r\n Are put in motion; the blood is strook, and then\r\n The vitals all begin to feel, and last\r\n To bones and marrow the sensation comes\u0026mdash;\r\n Pleasure or torment. Nor will pain for naught\r\n Enter so far, nor a sharp ill seep through,\r\n But all things be perturbed to that degree\r\n That room for life will fail, and parts of soul\r\n Will scatter through the body\u0027s every pore.\r\n Yet as a rule, almost upon the skin\r\n These motion aIl are stopped, and this is why\r\n We have the power to retain our life.\r\n\r\n Now in my eagerness to tell thee how\r\n They are commixed, through what unions fit\r\n They function so, my country\u0027s pauper-speech\r\n Constrains me sadly. As I can, however,\r\n I\u0027ll touch some points and pass. In such a wise\r\n Course these primordials \u0027mongst one another\r\n With inter-motions that no one can be\r\n From other sundered, nor its agency\r\n Perform, if once divided by a space;\r\n Like many powers in one body they work.\r\n As in the flesh of any creature still\r\n Is odour and savour and a certain warmth,\r\n And yet from all of these one bulk of body\r\n Is made complete, so, viewless force of wind\r\n And warmth and air, commingled, do create\r\n One nature, by that mobile energy\r\n Assisted which from out itself to them\r\n Imparts initial motion, whereby first\r\n Sense-bearing motion along the vitals springs.\r\n For lurks this essence far and deep and under,\r\n Nor in our body is aught more shut from view,\r\n And \u0027tis the very soul of all the soul.\r\n And as within our members and whole frame\r\n The energy of mind and power of soul\r\n Is mixed and latent, since create it is\r\n Of bodies small and few, so lurks this fourth,\r\n This essence void of name, composed of small,\r\n And seems the very soul of all the soul,\r\n And holds dominion o\u0027er the body all.\r\n And by like reason wind and air and heat\r\n Must function so, commingled through the frame,\r\n And now the one subside and now another\r\n In interchange of dominance, that thus\r\n From all of them one nature be produced,\r\n Lest heat and wind apart, and air apart,\r\n Make sense to perish, by disseverment.\r\n There is indeed in mind that heat it gets\r\n When seething in rage, and flashes from the eyes\r\n More swiftly fire; there is, again, that wind,\r\n Much, and so cold, companion of all dread,\r\n Which rouses the shudder in the shaken frame;\r\n There is no less that state of air composed,\r\n Making the tranquil breast, the serene face.\r\n But more of hot have they whose restive hearts,\r\n Whose minds of passion quickly seethe in rage\u0026mdash;\r\n Of which kind chief are fierce abounding lions,\r\n Who often with roaring burst the breast o\u0027erwrought,\r\n Unable to hold the surging wrath within;\r\n But the cold mind of stags has more of wind,\r\n And speedier through their inwards rouses up\r\n The icy currents which make their members quake.\r\n But more the oxen live by tranquil air,\r\n Nor e\u0027er doth smoky torch of wrath applied,\r\n O\u0027erspreading with shadows of a darkling murk,\r\n Rouse them too far; nor will they stiffen stark,\r\n Pierced through by icy javelins of fear;\r\n But have their place half-way between the two\u0026mdash;\r\n Stags and fierce lions. Thus the race of men:\r\n Though training make them equally refined,\r\n It leaves those pristine vestiges behind\r\n Of each mind\u0027s nature. Nor may we suppose\r\n Evil can e\u0027er be rooted up so far\r\n That one man\u0027s not more given to fits of wrath,\r\n Another\u0027s not more quickly touched by fear,\r\n A third not more long-suffering than he should.\r\n And needs must differ in many things besides\r\n The varied natures and resulting habits\r\n Of humankind\u0026mdash;of which not now can I\r\n Expound the hidden causes, nor find names\r\n Enough for all the divers shapes of those\r\n Primordials whence this variation springs.\r\n But this meseems I\u0027m able to declare:\r\n Those vestiges of natures left behind\r\n Which reason cannot quite expel from us\r\n Are still so slight that naught prevents a man\r\n From living a life even worthy of the gods.\r\n\r\n So then this soul is kept by all the body,\r\n Itself the body\u0027s guard, and source of weal:\r\n For they with common roots cleave each to each,\r\n Nor can be torn asunder without death.\r\n Not easy \u0027tis from lumps of frankincense\r\n To tear their fragrance forth, without its nature\r\n Perishing likewise: so, not easy \u0027tis\r\n From all the body nature of mind and soul\r\n To draw away, without the whole dissolved.\r\n With seeds so intertwined even from birth,\r\n They\u0027re dowered conjointly with a partner-life;\r\n No energy of body or mind, apart,\r\n Each of itself without the other\u0027s power,\r\n Can have sensation; but our sense, enkindled\r\n Along the vitals, to flame is blown by both\r\n With mutual motions. Besides the body alone\r\n Is nor begot nor grows, nor after death\r\n Seen to endure. For not as water at times\r\n Gives off the alien heat, nor is thereby\r\n Itself destroyed, but unimpaired remains\u0026mdash;\r\n Not thus, I say, can the deserted frame\r\n Bear the dissevering of its joined soul,\r\n But, rent and ruined, moulders all away.\r\n Thus the joint contact of the body and soul\r\n Learns from their earliest age the vital motions,\r\n Even when still buried in the mother\u0027s womb;\r\n So no dissevering can hap to them,\r\n Without their bane and ill. And thence mayst see\r\n That, as conjoined is their source of weal,\r\n Conjoined also must their nature be.\r\n\r\n If one, moreover, denies that body feel,\r\n And holds that soul, through all the body mixed,\r\n Takes on this motion which we title \"sense,\"\r\n He battles in vain indubitable facts:\r\n For who\u0027ll explain what body\u0027s feeling is,\r\n Except by what the public fact itself\r\n Has given and taught us?\"But when soul is parted,\r\n Body\u0027s without all sense.\" True!\u0026mdash;loses what\r\n Was even in its life-time not its own;\r\n And much beside it loses, when soul\u0027s driven\r\n Forth from that life-time. Or, to say that eyes\r\n Themselves can see no thing, but through the same\r\n The mind looks forth, as out of opened doors,\r\n Is\u0026mdash;a hard saying; since the feel in eyes\r\n Says the reverse. For this itself draws on\r\n And forces into the pupils of our eyes\r\n Our consciousness. And note the case when often\r\n We lack the power to see refulgent things,\r\n Because our eyes are hampered by their light\u0026mdash;\r\n With a mere doorway this would happen not;\r\n For, since it is our very selves that see,\r\n No open portals undertake the toil.\r\n Besides, if eyes of ours but act as doors,\r\n Methinks that, were our sight removed, the mind\r\n Ought then still better to behold a thing\u0026mdash;\r\n When even the door-posts have been cleared away.\r\n\r\n Herein in these affairs nowise take up\r\n What honoured sage, Democritus, lays down\u0026mdash;\r\n That proposition, that primordials\r\n Of body and mind, each super-posed on each,\r\n Vary alternately and interweave\r\n The fabric of our members. For not only\r\n Are the soul-elements smaller far than those\r\n Which this our body and inward parts compose,\r\n But also are they in their number less,\r\n And scattered sparsely through our frame. And thus\r\n This canst thou guarantee: soul\u0027s primal germs\r\n Maintain between them intervals as large\r\n At least as are the smallest bodies, which,\r\n When thrown against us, in our body rouse\r\n Sense-bearing motions. Hence it comes that we\r\n Sometimes don\u0027t feel alighting on our frames\r\n The clinging dust, or chalk that settles soft;\r\n Nor mists of night, nor spider\u0027s gossamer\r\n We feel against us, when, upon our road,\r\n Its net entangles us, nor on our head\r\n The dropping of its withered garmentings;\r\n Nor bird-feathers, nor vegetable down,\r\n Flying about, so light they barely fall;\r\n Nor feel the steps of every crawling thing,\r\n Nor each of all those footprints on our skin\r\n Of midges and the like. To that degree\r\n Must many primal germs be stirred in us\r\n Ere once the seeds of soul that through our frame\r\n Are intermingled \u0027gin to feel that those\r\n Primordials of the body have been strook,\r\n And ere, in pounding with such gaps between,\r\n They clash, combine and leap apart in turn.\r\n\r\n But mind is more the keeper of the gates,\r\n Hath more dominion over life than soul.\r\n For without intellect and mind there\u0027s not\r\n One part of soul can rest within our frame\r\n Least part of time; companioning, it goes\r\n With mind into the winds away, and leaves\r\n The icy members in the cold of death.\r\n But he whose mind and intellect abide\r\n Himself abides in life. However much\r\n The trunk be mangled, with the limbs lopped off,\r\n The soul withdrawn and taken from the limbs,\r\n Still lives the trunk and draws the vital air.\r\n Even when deprived of all but all the soul,\r\n Yet will it linger on and cleave to life,\u0026mdash;\r\n Just as the power of vision still is strong,\r\n If but the pupil shall abide unharmed,\r\n Even when the eye around it\u0027s sorely rent\u0026mdash;\r\n Provided only thou destroyest not\r\n Wholly the ball, but, cutting round the pupil,\r\n Leavest that pupil by itself behind\u0026mdash;\r\n For more would ruin sight. But if that centre,\r\n That tiny part of eye, be eaten through,\r\n Forthwith the vision fails and darkness comes,\r\n Though in all else the unblemished ball be clear.\r\n \u0027Tis by like compact that the soul and mind\r\n Are each to other bound forevermore.\r\n\u003c/pre\u003e\r\n \u003cp\u003e\r\n \u003ca id=\"link2H_4_0016\"\u003e\r\n \u003c!– H2 anchor –\u003e \u003c/a\u003e\r\n \u003c/p\u003e\r\n \u003cdiv style=\"height: 4em;\"\u003e\r\n \u003cbr \u003e\u003cbr \u003e\u003cbr \u003e\u003cbr \u003e\r\n \u003c/div\u003e\r\n \u003ch2\u003e\r\n THE SOUL IS MORTAL\r\n \u003c/h2\u003e\r\n\u003cpre\u003e\r\n Now come: that thou mayst able be to know\r\n That minds and the light souls of all that live\r\n Have mortal birth and death, I will go on\r\n Verses to build meet for thy rule of life,\r\n Sought after long, discovered with sweet toil.\r\n But under one name I\u0027d have thee yoke them both;\r\n And when, for instance, I shall speak of soul,\r\n Teaching the same to be but mortal, think\r\n Thereby I\u0027m speaking also of the mind\u0026mdash;\r\n Since both are one, a substance inter-joined.\r\n First, then, since I have taught how soul exists\r\n A subtle fabric, of particles minute,\r\n Made up from atoms smaller much than those\r\n Of water\u0027s liquid damp, or fog, or smoke,\r\n So in mobility it far excels,\r\n More prone to move, though strook by lighter cause\r\n Even moved by images of smoke or fog\u0026mdash;\r\n As where we view, when in our sleeps we\u0027re lulled,\r\n The altars exhaling steam and smoke aloft\u0026mdash;\r\n For, beyond doubt, these apparitions come\r\n To us from outward. Now, then, since thou seest,\r\n Their liquids depart, their waters flow away,\r\n When jars are shivered, and since fog and smoke\r\n Depart into the winds away, believe\r\n The soul no less is shed abroad and dies\r\n More quickly far, more quickly is dissolved\r\n Back to its primal bodies, when withdrawn\r\n From out man\u0027s members it has gone away.\r\n For, sure, if body (container of the same\r\n Like as a jar), when shivered from some cause,\r\n And rarefied by loss of blood from veins,\r\n Cannot for longer hold the soul, how then\r\n Thinkst thou it can be held by any air\u0026mdash;\r\n A stuff much rarer than our bodies be?\r\n\r\n Besides we feel that mind to being comes\r\n Along with body, with body grows and ages.\r\n For just as children totter round about\r\n With frames infirm and tender, so there follows\r\n A weakling wisdom in their minds; and then,\r\n Where years have ripened into robust powers,\r\n Counsel is also greater, more increased\r\n The power of mind; thereafter, where already\r\n The body\u0027s shattered by master-powers of eld,\r\n And fallen the frame with its enfeebled powers,\r\n Thought hobbles, tongue wanders, and the mind gives way;\r\n All fails, all\u0027s lacking at the selfsame time.\r\n Therefore it suits that even the soul\u0027s dissolved,\r\n Like smoke, into the lofty winds of air;\r\n Since we behold the same to being come\r\n Along with body and grow, and, as I\u0027ve taught,\r\n Crumble and crack, therewith outworn by eld.\r\n\r\n Then, too, we see, that, just as body takes\r\n Monstrous diseases and the dreadful pain,\r\n So mind its bitter cares, the grief, the fear;\r\n Wherefore it tallies that the mind no less\r\n Partaker is of death; for pain and disease\r\n Are both artificers of death,\u0026mdash;as well\r\n We\u0027ve learned by the passing of many a man ere now.\r\n Nay, too, in diseases of body, often the mind\r\n Wanders afield; for \u0027tis beside itself,\r\n And crazed it speaks, or many a time it sinks,\r\n With eyelids closing and a drooping nod,\r\n In heavy drowse, on to eternal sleep;\r\n From whence nor hears it any voices more,\r\n Nor able is to know the faces here\r\n Of those about him standing with wet cheeks\r\n Who vainly call him back to light and life.\r\n Wherefore mind too, confess we must, dissolves,\r\n Seeing, indeed, contagions of disease\r\n Enter into the same. Again, O why,\r\n When the strong wine has entered into man,\r\n And its diffused fire gone round the veins,\r\n Why follows then a heaviness of limbs,\r\n A tangle of the legs as round he reels,\r\n A stuttering tongue, an intellect besoaked,\r\n Eyes all aswim, and hiccups, shouts, and brawls,\r\n And whatso else is of that ilk?\u0026mdash;Why this?\u0026mdash;\r\n If not that violent and impetuous wine\r\n Is wont to confound the soul within the body?\r\n But whatso can confounded be and balked,\r\n Gives proof, that if a hardier cause got in,\r\n \u0027Twould hap that it would perish then, bereaved\r\n Of any life thereafter. And, moreover,\r\n Often will some one in a sudden fit,\r\n As if by stroke of lightning, tumble down\r\n Before our eyes, and sputter foam, and grunt,\r\n Blither, and twist about with sinews taut,\r\n Gasp up in starts, and weary out his limbs\r\n With tossing round. No marvel, since distract\r\n Through frame by violence of disease.\r\n\r\n\u003c/pre\u003e\r\n \u003chr \u003e\r\n\u003cpre\u003e\r\n Confounds, he foams, as if to vomit soul,\r\n As on the salt sea boil the billows round\r\n Under the master might of winds. And now\r\n A groan\u0027s forced out, because his limbs are griped,\r\n But, in the main, because the seeds of voice\r\n Are driven forth and carried in a mass\r\n Outwards by mouth, where they are wont to go,\r\n And have a builded highway. He becomes\r\n Mere fool, since energy of mind and soul\r\n Confounded is, and, as I\u0027ve shown, to-riven,\r\n Asunder thrown, and torn to pieces all\r\n By the same venom. But, again, where cause\r\n Of that disease has faced about, and back\r\n Retreats sharp poison of corrupted frame\r\n Into its shadowy lairs, the man at first\r\n Arises reeling, and gradually comes back\r\n To all his senses and recovers soul.\r\n Thus, since within the body itself of man\r\n The mind and soul are by such great diseases\r\n Shaken, so miserably in labour distraught,\r\n Why, then, believe that in the open air,\r\n Without a body, they can pass their life,\r\n Immortal, battling with the master winds?\r\n And, since we mark the mind itself is cured,\r\n Like the sick body, and restored can be\r\n By medicine, this is forewarning too\r\n That mortal lives the mind. For proper it is\r\n That whosoe\u0027er begins and undertakes\r\n To alter the mind, or meditates to change\r\n Any another nature soever, should add\r\n New parts, or readjust the order given,\r\n Or from the sum remove at least a bit.\r\n But what\u0027s immortal willeth for itself\r\n Its parts be nor increased, nor rearranged,\r\n Nor any bit soever flow away:\r\n For change of anything from out its bounds\r\n Means instant death of that which was before.\r\n Ergo, the mind, whether in sickness fallen,\r\n Or by the medicine restored, gives signs,\r\n As I have taught, of its mortality.\r\n So surely will a fact of truth make head\r\n \u0027Gainst errors\u0027 theories all, and so shut off\r\n All refuge from the adversary, and rout\r\n Error by two-edged confutation.\r\n\r\n And since the mind is of a man one part,\r\n Which in one fixed place remains, like ears,\r\n And eyes, and every sense which pilots life;\r\n And just as hand, or eye, or nose, apart,\r\n Severed from us, can neither feel nor be,\r\n But in the least of time is left to rot,\r\n Thus mind alone can never be, without\r\n The body and the man himself, which seems,\r\n As \u0027twere the vessel of the same\u0026mdash;or aught\r\n Whate\u0027er thou\u0027lt feign as yet more closely joined:\r\n Since body cleaves to mind by surest bonds.\r\n\r\n Again, the body\u0027s and the mind\u0027s live powers\r\n Only in union prosper and enjoy;\r\n For neither can nature of mind, alone of self\r\n Sans body, give the vital motions forth;\r\n Nor, then, can body, wanting soul, endure\r\n And use the senses. Verily, as the eye,\r\n Alone, up-rended from its roots, apart\r\n From all the body, can peer about at naught,\r\n So soul and mind it seems are nothing able,\r\n When by themselves. No marvel, because, commixed\r\n Through veins and inwards, and through bones and thews,\r\n Their elements primordial are confined\r\n By all the body, and own no power free\r\n To bound around through interspaces big,\r\n Thus, shut within these confines, they take on\r\n Motions of sense, which, after death, thrown out\r\n Beyond the body to the winds of air,\r\n Take on they cannot\u0026mdash;and on this account,\r\n Because no more in such a way confined.\r\n For air will be a body, be alive,\r\n If in that air the soul can keep itself,\r\n And in that air enclose those motions all\r\n Which in the thews and in the body itself\r\n A while ago \u0027twas making. So for this,\r\n Again, again, I say confess we must,\r\n That, when the body\u0027s wrappings are unwound,\r\n And when the vital breath is forced without,\r\n The soul, the senses of the mind dissolve,\u0026mdash;\r\n Since for the twain the cause and ground of life\r\n Is in the fact of their conjoined estate.\r\n\r\n Once more, since body\u0027s unable to sustain\r\n Division from the soul, without decay\r\n And obscene stench, how canst thou doubt but that\r\n The soul, uprisen from the body\u0027s deeps,\r\n Has filtered away, wide-drifted like a smoke,\r\n Or that the changed body crumbling fell\r\n With ruin so entire, because, indeed,\r\n Its deep foundations have been moved from place,\r\n The soul out-filtering even through the frame,\r\n And through the body\u0027s every winding way\r\n And orifice? And so by many means\r\n Thou\u0027rt free to learn that nature of the soul\r\n Hath passed in fragments out along the frame,\r\n And that \u0027twas shivered in the very body\r\n Ere ever it slipped abroad and swam away\r\n Into the winds of air. For never a man\r\n Dying appears to feel the soul go forth\r\n As one sure whole from all his body at once,\r\n Nor first come up the throat and into mouth;\r\n But feels it failing in a certain spot,\r\n Even as he knows the senses too dissolve\r\n Each in its own location in the frame.\r\n But were this mind of ours immortal mind,\r\n Dying \u0027twould scarce bewail a dissolution,\r\n But rather the going, the leaving of its coat,\r\n Like to a snake. Wherefore, when once the body\r\n Hath passed away, admit we must that soul,\r\n Shivered in all that body, perished too.\r\n Nay, even when moving in the bounds of life,\r\n Often the soul, now tottering from some cause,\r\n Craves to go out, and from the frame entire\r\n Loosened to be; the countenance becomes\r\n Flaccid, as if the supreme hour were there;\r\n And flabbily collapse the members all\r\n Against the bloodless trunk\u0026mdash;the kind of case\r\n We see when we remark in common phrase,\r\n \"That man\u0027s quite gone,\" or \"fainted dead away\";\r\n And where there\u0027s now a bustle of alarm,\r\n And all are eager to get some hold upon\r\n The man\u0027s last link of life. For then the mind\r\n And all the power of soul are shook so sore,\r\n And these so totter along with all the frame,\r\n That any cause a little stronger might\r\n Dissolve them altogether.\u0026mdash;Why, then, doubt\r\n That soul, when once without the body thrust,\r\n There in the open, an enfeebled thing,\r\n Its wrappings stripped away, cannot endure\r\n Not only through no everlasting age,\r\n But even, indeed, through not the least of time?\r\n\r\n Then, too, why never is the intellect,\r\n The counselling mind, begotten in the head,\r\n The feet, the hands, instead of cleaving still\r\n To one sole seat, to one fixed haunt, the breast,\r\n If not that fixed places be assigned\r\n For each thing\u0027s birth, where each, when \u0027tis create,\r\n Is able to endure, and that our frames\r\n Have such complex adjustments that no shift\r\n In order of our members may appear?\r\n To that degree effect succeeds to cause,\r\n Nor is the flame once wont to be create\r\n In flowing streams, nor cold begot in fire.\r\n\r\n Besides, if nature of soul immortal be,\r\n And able to feel, when from our frame disjoined,\r\n The same, I fancy, must be thought to be\r\n Endowed with senses five,\u0026mdash;nor is there way\r\n But this whereby to image to ourselves\r\n How under-souls may roam in Acheron.\r\n Thus painters and the elder race of bards\r\n Have pictured souls with senses so endowed.\r\n But neither eyes, nor nose, nor hand, alone\r\n Apart from body can exist for soul,\r\n Nor tongue nor ears apart. And hence indeed\r\n Alone by self they can nor feel nor be.\r\n\r\n And since we mark the vital sense to be\r\n In the whole body, all one living thing,\r\n If of a sudden a force with rapid stroke\r\n Should slice it down the middle and cleave in twain,\r\n Beyond a doubt likewise the soul itself,\r\n Divided, dissevered, asunder will be flung\r\n Along with body. But what severed is\r\n And into sundry parts divides, indeed\r\n Admits it owns no everlasting nature.\r\n We hear how chariots of war, areek\r\n With hurly slaughter, lop with flashing scythes\r\n The limbs away so suddenly that there,\r\n Fallen from the trunk, they quiver on the earth,\r\n The while the mind and powers of the man\r\n Can feel no pain, for swiftness of his hurt,\r\n And sheer abandon in the zest of battle:\r\n With the remainder of his frame he seeks\r\n Anew the battle and the slaughter, nor marks\r\n How the swift wheels and scythes of ravin have dragged\r\n Off with the horses his left arm and shield;\r\n Nor other how his right has dropped away,\r\n Mounting again and on. A third attempts\r\n With leg dismembered to arise and stand,\r\n Whilst, on the ground hard by, the dying foot\r\n Twitches its spreading toes. And even the head,\r\n When from the warm and living trunk lopped off,\r\n Keeps on the ground the vital countenance\r\n And open eyes, until \u0027t has rendered up\r\n All remnants of the soul. Nay, once again:\r\n If, when a serpent\u0027s darting forth its tongue,\r\n And lashing its tail, thou gettest chance to hew\r\n With axe its length of trunk to many parts,\r\n Thou\u0027lt see each severed fragment writhing round\r\n With its fresh wound, and spattering up the sod,\r\n And there the fore-part seeking with the jaws\r\n After the hinder, with bite to stop the pain.\r\n So shall we say that these be souls entire\r\n In all those fractions?\u0026mdash;but from that \u0027twould follow\r\n One creature\u0027d have in body many souls.\r\n Therefore, the soul, which was indeed but one,\r\n Has been divided with the body too:\r\n Each is but mortal, since alike is each\r\n Hewn into many parts. Again, how often\r\n We view our fellow going by degrees,\r\n And losing limb by limb the vital sense;\r\n First nails and fingers of the feet turn blue,\r\n Next die the feet and legs, then o\u0027er the rest\r\n Slow crawl the certain footsteps of cold death.\r\n And since this nature of the soul is torn,\r\n Nor mounts away, as at one time, entire,\r\n We needs must hold it mortal. But perchance\r\n If thou supposest that the soul itself\r\n Can inward draw along the frame, and bring\r\n Its parts together to one place, and so\r\n From all the members draw the sense away,\r\n Why, then, that place in which such stock of soul\r\n Collected is, should greater seem in sense.\r\n But since such place is nowhere, for a fact,\r\n As said before, \u0027tis rent and scattered forth,\r\n And so goes under. Or again, if now\r\n I please to grant the false, and say that soul\r\n Can thus be lumped within the frames of those\r\n Who leave the sunshine, dying bit by bit,\r\n Still must the soul as mortal be confessed;\r\n Nor aught it matters whether to wrack it go,\r\n Dispersed in the winds, or, gathered in a mass\r\n From all its parts, sink down to brutish death,\r\n Since more and more in every region sense\r\n Fails the whole man, and less and less of life\r\n In every region lingers.\r\n\r\n And besides,\r\n If soul immortal is, and winds its way\r\n Into the body at the birth of man,\r\n Why can we not remember something, then,\r\n Of life-time spent before? why keep we not\r\n Some footprints of the things we did of, old?\r\n But if so changed hath been the power of mind,\r\n That every recollection of things done\r\n Is fallen away, at no o\u0027erlong remove\r\n Is that, I trow, from what we mean by death.\r\n Wherefore \u0027tis sure that what hath been before\r\n Hath died, and what now is is now create.\r\n\r\n Moreover, if after the body hath been built\r\n Our mind\u0027s live powers are wont to be put in,\r\n Just at the moment that we come to birth,\r\n And cross the sills of life, \u0027twould scarcely fit\r\n For them to live as if they seemed to grow\r\n Along with limbs and frame, even in the blood,\r\n But rather as in a cavern all alone.\r\n (Yet all the body duly throngs with sense.)\r\n But public fact declares against all this:\r\n For soul is so entwined through the veins,\r\n The flesh, the thews, the bones, that even the teeth\r\n Share in sensation, as proven by dull ache,\r\n By twinge from icy water, or grating crunch\r\n Upon a stone that got in mouth with bread.\r\n Wherefore, again, again, souls must be thought\r\n Nor void of birth, nor free from law of death;\r\n Nor, if, from outward, in they wound their way,\r\n Could they be thought as able so to cleave\r\n To these our frames, nor, since so interwove,\r\n Appears it that they\u0027re able to go forth\r\n Unhurt and whole and loose themselves unscathed\r\n From all the thews, articulations, bones.\r\n But, if perchance thou thinkest that the soul,\r\n From outward winding in its way, is wont\r\n To seep and soak along these members ours,\r\n Then all the more \u0027twill perish, being thus\r\n With body fused\u0026mdash;for what will seep and soak\r\n Will be dissolved and will therefore die.\r\n For just as food, dispersed through all the pores\r\n Of body, and passed through limbs and all the frame,\r\n Perishes, supplying from itself the stuff\r\n For other nature, thus the soul and mind,\r\n Though whole and new into a body going,\r\n Are yet, by seeping in, dissolved away,\r\n Whilst, as through pores, to all the frame there pass\r\n Those particles from which created is\r\n This nature of mind, now ruler of our body,\r\n Born from that soul which perished, when divided\r\n Along the frame. Wherefore it seems that soul\r\n Hath both a natal and funeral hour.\r\n\r\n Besides are seeds of soul there left behind\r\n In the breathless body, or not? If there they are,\r\n It cannot justly be immortal deemed,\r\n Since, shorn of some parts lost, \u0027thas gone away:\r\n But if, borne off with members uncorrupt,\r\n \u0027Thas fled so absolutely all away\r\n It leaves not one remainder of itself\r\n Behind in body, whence do cadavers, then,\r\n From out their putrid flesh exhale the worms,\r\n And whence does such a mass of living things,\r\n Boneless and bloodless, o\u0027er the bloated frame\r\n Bubble and swarm? But if perchance thou thinkest\r\n That souls from outward into worms can wind,\r\n And each into a separate body come,\r\n And reckonest not why many thousand souls\r\n Collect where only one has gone away,\r\n Here is a point, in sooth, that seems to need\r\n Inquiry and a putting to the test:\r\n Whether the souls go on a hunt for seeds\r\n Of worms wherewith to build their dwelling places,\r\n Or enter bodies ready-made, as \u0027twere.\r\n But why themselves they thus should do and toil\r\n \u0027Tis hard to say, since, being free of body,\r\n They flit around, harassed by no disease,\r\n Nor cold nor famine; for the body labours\r\n By more of kinship to these flaws of life,\r\n And mind by contact with that body suffers\r\n So many ills. But grant it be for them\r\n However useful to construct a body\r\n To which to enter in, \u0027tis plain they can\u0027t.\r\n Then, souls for self no frames nor bodies make,\r\n Nor is there how they once might enter in\r\n To bodies ready-made\u0026mdash;for they cannot\r\n Be nicely interwoven with the same,\r\n And there\u0027ll be formed no interplay of sense\r\n Common to each.\r\n\r\n Again, why is\u0027t there goes\r\n Impetuous rage with lion\u0027s breed morose,\r\n And cunning with foxes, and to deer why given\r\n The ancestral fear and tendency to flee,\r\n And why in short do all the rest of traits\r\n Engender from the very start of life\r\n In the members and mentality, if not\r\n Because one certain power of mind that came\r\n From its own seed and breed waxes the same\r\n Along with all the body? But were mind\r\n Immortal, were it wont to change its bodies,\r\n How topsy-turvy would earth\u0027s creatures act!\r\n The Hyrcan hound would flee the onset oft\r\n Of antlered stag, the scurrying hawk would quake\r\n Along the winds of air at the coming dove,\r\n And men would dote, and savage beasts be wise;\r\n For false the reasoning of those that say\r\n Immortal mind is changed by change of body\u0026mdash;\r\n For what is changed dissolves, and therefore dies.\r\n For parts are re-disposed and leave their order;\r\n Wherefore they must be also capable\r\n Of dissolution through the frame at last,\r\n That they along with body perish all.\r\n But should some say that always souls of men\r\n Go into human bodies, I will ask:\r\n How can a wise become a dullard soul?\r\n And why is never a child\u0027s a prudent soul?\r\n And the mare\u0027s filly why not trained so well\r\n As sturdy strength of steed? We may be sure\r\n They\u0027ll take their refuge in the thought that mind\r\n Becomes a weakling in a weakling frame.\r\n Yet be this so, \u0027tis needful to confess\r\n The soul but mortal, since, so altered now\r\n Throughout the frame, it loses the life and sense\r\n It had before. Or how can mind wax strong\r\n Coequally with body and attain\r\n The craved flower of life, unless it be\r\n The body\u0027s colleague in its origins?\r\n Or what\u0027s the purport of its going forth\r\n From aged limbs?\u0026mdash;fears it, perhaps, to stay,\r\n Pent in a crumbled body? Or lest its house,\r\n Outworn by venerable length of days,\r\n May topple down upon it? But indeed\r\n For an immortal perils are there none.\r\n\r\n Again, at parturitions of the wild\r\n And at the rites of Love, that souls should stand\r\n Ready hard by seems ludicrous enough\u0026mdash;\r\n Immortals waiting for their mortal limbs\r\n In numbers innumerable, contending madly\r\n Which shall be first and chief to enter in!\u0026mdash;\r\n Unless perchance among the souls there be\r\n Such treaties stablished that the first to come\r\n Flying along, shall enter in the first,\r\n And that they make no rivalries of strength!\r\n\r\n Again, in ether can\u0027t exist a tree,\r\n Nor clouds in ocean deeps, nor in the fields\r\n Can fishes live, nor blood in timber be,\r\n Nor sap in boulders: fixed and arranged\r\n Where everything may grow and have its place.\r\n Thus nature of mind cannot arise alone\r\n Without the body, nor exist afar\r\n From thews and blood. But if \u0027twere possible,\r\n Much rather might this very power of mind\r\n Be in the head, the shoulders or the heels,\r\n And, born in any part soever, yet\r\n In the same man, in the same vessel abide.\r\n But since within this body even of ours\r\n Stands fixed and appears arranged sure\r\n Where soul and mind can each exist and grow,\r\n Deny we must the more that they can have\r\n Duration and birth, wholly outside the frame.\r\n For, verily, the mortal to conjoin\r\n With the eternal, and to feign they feel\r\n Together, and can function each with each,\r\n Is but to dote: for what can be conceived\r\n Of more unlike, discrepant, ill-assorted,\r\n Than something mortal in a union joined\r\n With an immortal and a secular\r\n To bear the outrageous tempests?\r\n\r\n Then, again,\r\n Whatever abides eternal must indeed\r\n Either repel all strokes, because \u0027tis made\r\n Of solid body, and permit no entrance\r\n Of aught with power to sunder from within\r\n The parts compact\u0026mdash;as are those seeds of stuff\r\n Whose nature we\u0027ve exhibited before;\r\n Or else be able to endure through time\r\n For this: because they are from blows exempt,\r\n As is the void, the which abides untouched,\r\n Unsmit by any stroke; or else because\r\n There is no room around, whereto things can,\r\n As \u0027twere, depart in dissolution all,\u0026mdash;\r\n Even as the sum of sums eternal is,\r\n Without or place beyond whereto things may\r\n Asunder fly, or bodies which can smite,\r\n And thus dissolve them by the blows of might.\r\n\r\n But if perchance the soul\u0027s to be adjudged\r\n Immortal, mainly on ground \u0027tis kept secure\r\n In vital forces\u0026mdash;either because there come\r\n Never at all things hostile to its weal,\r\n Or else because what come somehow retire,\r\n Repelled or ere we feel the harm they work,\r\n\r\n\u003c/pre\u003e\r\n \u003chr \u003e\r\n\u003cpre\u003e\r\n For, lo, besides that, when the frame\u0027s diseased,\r\n Soul sickens too, there cometh, many a time,\r\n That which torments it with the things to be,\r\n Keeps it in dread, and wearies it with cares;\r\n And even when evil acts are of the past,\r\n Still gnaw the old transgressions bitterly.\r\n Add, too, that frenzy, peculiar to the mind,\r\n And that oblivion of the things that were;\r\n Add its submergence in the murky waves\r\n Of drowse and torpor.\r\n\u003c/pre\u003e\r\n \u003cp\u003e\r\n \u003ca id=\"link2H_4_0017\"\u003e\r\n \u003c!– H2 anchor –\u003e \u003c/a\u003e\r\n \u003c/p\u003e\r\n \u003cdiv style=\"height: 4em;\"\u003e\r\n \u003cbr \u003e\u003cbr \u003e\u003cbr \u003e\u003cbr \u003e\r\n \u003c/div\u003e\r\n \u003ch2\u003e\r\n FOLLY OF THE FEAR OF DEATH\r\n \u003c/h2\u003e\r\n\u003cpre\u003e\r\n Therefore death to us\r\n Is nothing, nor concerns us in the least,\r\n Since nature of mind is mortal evermore.\r\n And just as in the ages gone before\r\n We felt no touch of ill, when all sides round\r\n To battle came the Carthaginian host,\r\n And the times, shaken by tumultuous war,\r\n Under the aery coasts of arching heaven\r\n Shuddered and trembled, and all humankind\r\n Doubted to which the empery should fall\r\n By land and sea, thus when we are no more,\r\n When comes that sundering of our body and soul\r\n Through which we\u0027re fashioned to a single state,\r\n Verily naught to us, us then no more,\r\n Can come to pass, naught move our senses then\u0026mdash;\r\n No, not if earth confounded were with sea,\r\n And sea with heaven. But if indeed do feel\r\n The nature of mind and energy of soul,\r\n After their severance from this body of ours,\r\n Yet nothing \u0027tis to us who in the bonds\r\n And wedlock of the soul and body live,\r\n Through which we\u0027re fashioned to a single state.\r\n And, even if time collected after death\r\n The matter of our frames and set it all\r\n Again in place as now, and if again\r\n To us the light of life were given, O yet\r\n That process too would not concern us aught,\r\n When once the self-succession of our sense\r\n Has been asunder broken. And now and here,\r\n Little enough we\u0027re busied with the selves\r\n We were aforetime, nor, concerning them,\r\n Suffer a sore distress. For shouldst thou gaze\r\n Backwards across all yesterdays of time\r\n The immeasurable, thinking how manifold\r\n The motions of matter are, then couldst thou well\r\n Credit this too: often these very seeds\r\n (From which we are to-day) of old were set\r\n In the same order as they are to-day\u0026mdash;\r\n Yet this we can\u0027t to consciousness recall\r\n Through the remembering mind. For there hath been\r\n An interposed pause of life, and wide\r\n Have all the motions wandered everywhere\r\n From these our senses. For if woe and ail\r\n Perchance are toward, then the man to whom\r\n The bane can happen must himself be there\r\n At that same time. But death precludeth this,\r\n Forbidding life to him on whom might crowd\r\n Such irk and care; and granted \u0027tis to know:\r\n Nothing for us there is to dread in death,\r\n No wretchedness for him who is no more,\r\n The same estate as if ne\u0027er born before,\r\n When death immortal hath ta\u0027en the mortal life.\r\n\r\n Hence, where thou seest a man to grieve because\r\n When dead he rots with body laid away,\r\n Or perishes in flames or jaws of beasts,\r\n Know well: he rings not true, and that beneath\r\n Still works an unseen sting upon his heart,\r\n However he deny that he believes.\r\n His shall be aught of feeling after death.\r\n For he, I fancy, grants not what he says,\r\n Nor what that presupposes, and he fails\r\n To pluck himself with all his roots from life\r\n And cast that self away, quite unawares\r\n Feigning that some remainder\u0027s left behind.\r\n For when in life one pictures to oneself\r\n His body dead by beasts and vultures torn,\r\n He pities his state, dividing not himself\r\n Therefrom, removing not the self enough\r\n From the body flung away, imagining\r\n Himself that body, and projecting there\r\n His own sense, as he stands beside it: hence\r\n He grieves that he is mortal born, nor marks\r\n That in true death there is no second self\r\n Alive and able to sorrow for self destroyed,\r\n Or stand lamenting that the self lies there\r\n Mangled or burning. For if it an evil is\r\n Dead to be jerked about by jaw and fang\r\n Of the wild brutes, I see not why \u0027twere not\r\n Bitter to lie on fires and roast in flames,\r\n Or suffocate in honey, and, reclined\r\n On the smooth oblong of an icy slab,\r\n Grow stiff in cold, or sink with load of earth\r\n Down-crushing from above.\r\n\r\n \"Thee now no more\r\n The joyful house and best of wives shall welcome,\r\n Nor little sons run up to snatch their kisses\r\n And touch with silent happiness thy heart.\r\n Thou shalt not speed in undertakings more,\r\n Nor be the warder of thine own no more.\r\n Poor wretch,\" they say, \"one hostile hour hath ta\u0027en\r\n Wretchedly from thee all life\u0027s many guerdons,\"\r\n But add not, \"yet no longer unto thee\r\n Remains a remnant of desire for them\"\r\n If this they only well perceived with mind\r\n And followed up with maxims, they would free\r\n Their state of man from anguish and from fear.\r\n \"O even as here thou art, aslumber in death,\r\n So shalt thou slumber down the rest of time,\r\n Released from every harrying pang. But we,\r\n We have bewept thee with insatiate woe,\r\n Standing beside whilst on the awful pyre\r\n Thou wert made ashes; and no day shall take\r\n For us the eternal sorrow from the breast.\"\r\n But ask the mourner what\u0027s the bitterness\r\n That man should waste in an eternal grief,\r\n If, after all, the thing\u0027s but sleep and rest?\r\n For when the soul and frame together are sunk\r\n In slumber, no one then demands his self\r\n Or being. Well, this sleep may be forever,\r\n Without desire of any selfhood more,\r\n For all it matters unto us asleep.\r\n Yet not at all do those primordial germs\r\n Roam round our members, at that time, afar\r\n From their own motions that produce our senses\u0026mdash;\r\n Since, when he\u0027s startled from his sleep, a man\r\n Collects his senses. Death is, then, to us\r\n Much less\u0026mdash;if there can be a less than that\r\n Which is itself a nothing: for there comes\r\n Hard upon death a scattering more great\r\n Of the throng of matter, and no man wakes up\r\n On whom once falls the icy pause of life.\r\n\r\n This too, O often from the soul men say,\r\n Along their couches holding of the cups,\r\n With faces shaded by fresh wreaths awry:\r\n \"Brief is this fruit of joy to paltry man,\r\n Soon, soon departed, and thereafter, no,\r\n It may not be recalled.\"\u0026mdash;As if, forsooth,\r\n It were their prime of evils in great death\r\n To parch, poor tongues, with thirst and arid drought,\r\n Or chafe for any lack.\r\n\r\n Once more, if Nature\r\n Should of a sudden send a voice abroad,\r\n And her own self inveigh against us so:\r\n \"Mortal, what hast thou of such grave concern\r\n That thou indulgest in too sickly plaints?\r\n Why this bemoaning and beweeping death?\r\n For if thy life aforetime and behind\r\n To thee was grateful, and not all thy good\r\n Was heaped as in sieve to flow away\r\n And perish unavailingly, why not,\r\n Even like a banqueter, depart the halls,\r\n Laden with life? why not with mind content\r\n Take now, thou fool, thy unafflicted rest?\r\n But if whatever thou enjoyed hath been\r\n Lavished and lost, and life is now offence,\r\n Why seekest more to add\u0026mdash;which in its turn\r\n Will perish foully and fall out in vain?\r\n O why not rather make an end of life,\r\n Of labour? For all I may devise or find\r\n To pleasure thee is nothing: all things are\r\n The same forever. Though not yet thy body\r\n Wrinkles with years, nor yet the frame exhausts\r\n Outworn, still things abide the same, even if\r\n Thou goest on to conquer all of time\r\n With length of days, yea, if thou never diest\"\u0026mdash;\r\n What were our answer, but that Nature here\r\n Urges just suit and in her words lays down\r\n True cause of action? Yet should one complain,\r\n Riper in years and elder, and lament,\r\n Poor devil, his death more sorely than is fit,\r\n Then would she not, with greater right, on him\r\n Cry out, inveighing with a voice more shrill:\r\n \"Off with thy tears, and choke thy whines, buffoon!\r\n Thou wrinklest\u0026mdash;after thou hast had the sum\r\n Of the guerdons of life; yet, since thou cravest ever\r\n What\u0027s not at hand, contemning present good,\r\n That life has slipped away, unperfected\r\n And unavailing unto thee. And now,\r\n Or ere thou guessed it, death beside thy head\r\n Stands\u0026mdash;and before thou canst be going home\r\n Sated and laden with the goodly feast.\r\n But now yield all that\u0027s alien to thine age,\u0026mdash;\r\n Up, with good grace! make room for sons: thou must.\"\r\n Justly, I fancy, would she reason thus,\r\n Justly inveigh and gird: since ever the old\r\n Outcrowded by the new gives way, and ever\r\n The one thing from the others is repaired.\r\n Nor no man is consigned to the abyss\r\n Of Tartarus, the black. For stuff must be,\r\n That thus the after-generations grow,\u0026mdash;\r\n Though these, their life completed, follow thee;\r\n And thus like thee are generations all\u0026mdash;\r\n Already fallen, or some time to fall.\r\n So one thing from another rises ever;\r\n And in fee-simple life is given to none,\r\n But unto all mere usufruct.\r\n\r\n Look back:\r\n Nothing to us was all fore-passed eld\r\n Of time the eternal, ere we had a birth.\r\n And Nature holds this like a mirror up\r\n Of time-to-be when we are dead and gone.\r\n And what is there so horrible appears?\r\n Now what is there so sad about it all?\r\n Is\u0027t not serener far than any sleep?\r\n\r\n And, verily, those tortures said to be\r\n In Acheron, the deep, they all are ours\r\n Here in this life. No Tantalus, benumbed\r\n With baseless terror, as the fables tell,\r\n Fears the huge boulder hanging in the air:\r\n But, rather, in life an empty dread of Gods\r\n Urges mortality, and each one fears\r\n Such fall of fortune as may chance to him.\r\n Nor eat the vultures into Tityus\r\n Prostrate in Acheron, nor can they find,\r\n Forsooth, throughout eternal ages, aught\r\n To pry around for in that mighty breast.\r\n However hugely he extend his bulk\u0026mdash;\r\n Who hath for outspread limbs not acres nine,\r\n But the whole earth\u0026mdash;he shall not able be\r\n To bear eternal pain nor furnish food\r\n From his own frame forever. But for us\r\n A Tityus is he whom vultures rend\r\n Prostrate in love, whom anxious anguish eats,\r\n Whom troubles of any unappeased desires\r\n Asunder rip. We have before our eyes\r\n Here in this life also a Sisyphus\r\n In him who seeketh of the populace\r\n The rods, the axes fell, and evermore\r\n Retires a beaten and a gloomy man.\r\n For to seek after power\u0026mdash;an empty name,\r\n Nor given at all\u0026mdash;and ever in the search\r\n To endure a world of toil, O this it is\r\n To shove with shoulder up the hill a stone\r\n Which yet comes rolling back from off the top,\r\n And headlong makes for levels of the plain.\r\n Then to be always feeding an ingrate mind,\r\n Filling with good things, satisfying never\u0026mdash;\r\n As do the seasons of the year for us,\r\n When they return and bring their progenies\r\n And varied charms, and we are never filled\r\n With the fruits of life\u0026mdash;O this, I fancy, \u0027tis\r\n To pour, like those young virgins in the tale,\r\n Waters into a sieve, unfilled forever.\r\n\r\n\u003c/pre\u003e\r\n \u003chr \u003e\r\n\u003cpre\u003e\r\n Cerberus and Furies, and that Lack of Light\r\n\r\n\u003c/pre\u003e\r\n \u003chr \u003e\r\n\u003cpre\u003e\r\n Tartarus, out-belching from his mouth the surge\r\n Of horrible heat\u0026mdash;the which are nowhere, nor\r\n Indeed can be: but in this life is fear\r\n Of retributions just and expiations\r\n For evil acts: the dungeon and the leap\r\n From that dread rock of infamy, the stripes,\r\n The executioners, the oaken rack,\r\n The iron plates, bitumen, and the torch.\r\n And even though these are absent, yet the mind,\r\n With a fore-fearing conscience, plies its goads\r\n And burns beneath the lash, nor sees meanwhile\r\n What terminus of ills, what end of pine\r\n Can ever be, and feareth lest the same\r\n But grow more heavy after death. Of truth,\r\n The life of fools is Acheron on earth.\r\n\r\n This also to thy very self sometimes\r\n Repeat thou mayst: \"Lo, even good Ancus left\r\n The sunshine with his eyes, in divers things\r\n A better man than thou, O worthless hind;\r\n And many other kings and lords of rule\r\n Thereafter have gone under, once who swayed\r\n O\u0027er mighty peoples. And he also, he\u0026mdash;\r\n Who whilom paved a highway down the sea,\r\n And gave his legionaries thoroughfare\r\n Along the deep, and taught them how to cross\r\n The pools of brine afoot, and did contemn,\r\n Trampling upon it with his cavalry,\r\n The bellowings of ocean\u0026mdash;poured his soul\r\n From dying body, as his light was ta\u0027en.\r\n And Scipio\u0027s son, the thunderbolt of war,\r\n Horror of Carthage, gave his bones to earth,\r\n Like to the lowliest villein in the house.\r\n Add finders-out of sciences and arts;\r\n Add comrades of the Heliconian dames,\r\n Among whom Homer, sceptered o\u0027er them all,\r\n Now lies in slumber sunken with the rest.\r\n Then, too, Democritus, when ripened eld\r\n Admonished him his memory waned away,\r\n Of own accord offered his head to death.\r\n Even Epicurus went, his light of life\r\n Run out, the man in genius who o\u0027er-topped\r\n The human race, extinguishing all others,\r\n As sun, in ether arisen, all the stars.\r\n Wilt thou, then, dally, thou complain to go?\u0026mdash;\r\n For whom already life\u0027s as good as dead,\r\n Whilst yet thou livest and lookest?\u0026mdash;who in sleep\r\n Wastest thy life\u0026mdash;time\u0027s major part, and snorest\r\n Even when awake, and ceasest not to see\r\n The stuff of dreams, and bearest a mind beset\r\n By baseless terror, nor discoverest oft\r\n What\u0027s wrong with thee, when, like a sotted wretch,\r\n Thou\u0027rt jostled along by many crowding cares,\r\n And wanderest reeling round, with mind aswim.\"\r\n\r\n If men, in that same way as on the mind\r\n They feel the load that wearies with its weight,\r\n Could also know the causes whence it comes,\r\n And why so great the heap of ill on heart,\r\n O not in this sort would they live their life,\r\n As now so much we see them, knowing not\r\n What \u0027tis they want, and seeking ever and ever\r\n A change of place, as if to drop the burden.\r\n The man who sickens of his home goes out,\r\n Forth from his splendid halls, and straight\u0026mdash;returns,\r\n Feeling i\u0027faith no better off abroad.\r\n He races, driving his Gallic ponies along,\r\n Down to his villa, madly,\u0026mdash;as in haste\r\n To hurry help to a house afire.\u0026mdash;At once\r\n He yawns, as soon as foot has touched the threshold,\r\n Or drowsily goes off in sleep and seeks\r\n Forgetfulness, or maybe bustles about\r\n And makes for town again. In such a way\r\n Each human flees himself\u0026mdash;a self in sooth,\r\n As happens, he by no means can escape;\r\n And willy-nilly he cleaves to it and loathes,\r\n Sick, sick, and guessing not the cause of ail.\r\n Yet should he see but that, O chiefly then,\r\n Leaving all else, he\u0027d study to divine\r\n The nature of things, since here is in debate\r\n Eternal time and not the single hour,\r\n Mortal\u0027s estate in whatsoever remains\r\n After great death.\r\n\r\n And too, when all is said,\r\n What evil lust of life is this so great\r\n Subdues us to live, so dreadfully distraught\r\n In perils and alarms? one fixed end\r\n Of life abideth for mortality;\r\n Death\u0027s not to shun, and we must go to meet.\r\n Besides we\u0027re busied with the same devices,\r\n Ever and ever, and we are at them ever,\r\n And there\u0027s no new delight that may be forged\r\n By living on. But whilst the thing we long for\r\n Is lacking, that seems good above all else;\r\n Thereafter, when we\u0027ve touched it, something else\r\n We long for; ever one equal thirst of life\r\n Grips us agape. And doubtful \u0027tis what fortune\r\n The future times may carry, or what be\r\n That chance may bring, or what the issue next\r\n Awaiting us. Nor by prolonging life\r\n Take we the least away from death\u0027s own time,\r\n Nor can we pluck one moment off, whereby\r\n To minish the aeons of our state of death.\r\n Therefore, O man, by living on, fulfil\r\n As many generations as thou may:\r\n Eternal death shall there be waiting still;\r\n And he who died with light of yesterday\r\n Shall be no briefer time in death\u0027s No-more\r\n Than he who perished months or years before.\r\n\u003c/pre\u003e\r\n \u003cp\u003e\r\n \u003ca id=\"link2H_4_0018\"\u003e\r\n \u003c!– H2 anchor –\u003e \u003c/a\u003e\r\n \u003c/p\u003e\r\n \u003cdiv style=\"height: 4em;\"\u003e\r\n \u003cbr \u003e\u003cbr \u003e\u003cbr \u003e\u003cbr \u003e\r\n \u003c/div\u003e\r\n \u003ch2\u003e\r\n BOOK IV\r\n \u003c/h2\u003e\r\n \u003cp\u003e\r\n \u003ca id=\"link2H_4_0019\"\u003e\r\n \u003c!– H2 anchor –\u003e \u003c/a\u003e\r\n \u003c/p\u003e\r\n \u003cdiv style=\"height: 4em;\"\u003e\r\n \u003cbr \u003e\u003cbr \u003e\u003cbr \u003e\u003cbr \u003e\r\n \u003c/div\u003e\r\n \u003ch2\u003e\r\n PROEM\r\n \u003c/h2\u003e\r\n\u003cpre\u003e\r\n I wander afield, thriving in sturdy thought,\r\n Through unpathed haunts of the Pierides,\r\n Trodden by step of none before. I joy\r\n To come on undefiled fountains there,\r\n To drain them deep; I joy to pluck new flowers,\r\n To seek for this my head a signal crown\r\n From regions where the Muses never yet\r\n Have garlanded the temples of a man:\r\n First, since I teach concerning mighty things,\r\n And go right on to loose from round the mind\r\n The tightened coils of dread religion;\r\n Next, since, concerning themes so dark, I frame\r\n Song so pellucid, touching all throughout\r\n Even with the Muses\u0027 charm\u0026mdash;which, as \u0027twould seem,\r\n Is not without a reasonable ground:\r\n For as physicians, when they seek to give\r\n Young boys the nauseous wormwood, first do touch\r\n The brim around the cup with the sweet juice\r\n And yellow of the honey, in order that\r\n The thoughtless age of boyhood be cajoled\r\n As far as the lips, and meanwhile swallow down\r\n The wormwood\u0027s bitter draught, and, though befooled,\r\n Be yet not merely duped, but rather thus\r\n Grow strong again with recreated health:\r\n So now I too (since this my doctrine seems\r\n In general somewhat woeful unto those\r\n Who\u0027ve had it not in hand, and since the crowd\r\n Starts back from it in horror) have desired\r\n To expound our doctrine unto thee in song\r\n Soft-speaking and Pierian, and, as \u0027twere,\r\n To touch it with sweet honey of the Muse\u0026mdash;\r\n If by such method haply I might hold\r\n The mind of thee upon these lines of ours,\r\n Till thou dost learn the nature of all things\r\n And understandest their utility.\r\n\u003c/pre\u003e\r\n \u003cp\u003e\r\n \u003ca id=\"link2H_4_0020\"\u003e\r\n \u003c!– H2 anchor –\u003e \u003c/a\u003e\r\n \u003c/p\u003e\r\n \u003cdiv style=\"height: 4em;\"\u003e\r\n \u003cbr \u003e\u003cbr \u003e\u003cbr \u003e\u003cbr \u003e\r\n \u003c/div\u003e\r\n \u003ch2\u003e\r\n EXISTENCE AND CHARACTER OF THE IMAGES\r\n \u003c/h2\u003e\r\n\u003cpre\u003e\r\n But since I\u0027ve taught already of what sort\r\n The seeds of all things are, and how distinct\r\n In divers forms they flit of own accord,\r\n Stirred with a motion everlasting on,\r\n And in what mode things be from them create,\r\n And since I\u0027ve taught what the mind\u0027s nature is,\r\n And of what things \u0027tis with the body knit\r\n And thrives in strength, and by what mode uptorn\r\n That mind returns to its primordials,\r\n Now will I undertake an argument\u0026mdash;\r\n One for these matters of supreme concern\u0026mdash;\r\n That there exist those somewhats which we call\r\n The images of things: these, like to films\r\n Scaled off the utmost outside of the things,\r\n Flit hither and thither through the atmosphere,\r\n And the same terrify our intellects,\r\n Coming upon us waking or in sleep,\r\n When oft we peer at wonderful strange shapes\r\n And images of people lorn of light,\r\n Which oft have horribly roused us when we lay\r\n In slumber\u0026mdash;that haply nevermore may we\r\n Suppose that souls get loose from Acheron,\r\n Or shades go floating in among the living,\r\n Or aught of us is left behind at death,\r\n When body and mind, destroyed together, each\r\n Back to its own primordials goes away.\r\n\r\n And thus I say that effigies of things,\r\n And tenuous shapes from off the things are sent,\r\n From off the utmost outside of the things,\r\n Which are like films or may be named a rind,\r\n Because the image bears like look and form\r\n With whatso body has shed it fluttering forth\u0026mdash;\r\n A fact thou mayst, however dull thy wits,\r\n Well learn from this: mainly, because we see\r\n Even \u0027mongst visible objects many be\r\n That send forth bodies, loosely some diffused\u0026mdash;\r\n Like smoke from oaken logs and heat from fires\u0026mdash;\r\n And some more interwoven and condensed\u0026mdash;\r\n As when the locusts in the summertime\r\n Put off their glossy tunics, or when calves\r\n At birth drop membranes from their body\u0027s surface,\r\n Or when, again, the slippery serpent doffs\r\n Its vestments \u0027mongst the thorns\u0026mdash;for oft we see\r\n The breres augmented with their flying spoils:\r\n Since such takes place, \u0027tis likewise certain too\r\n That tenuous images from things are sent,\r\n From off the utmost outside of the things.\r\n For why those kinds should drop and part from things,\r\n Rather than others tenuous and thin,\r\n No power has man to open mouth to tell;\r\n Especially, since on outsides of things\r\n Are bodies many and minute which could,\r\n In the same order which they had before,\r\n And with the figure of their form preserved,\r\n Be thrown abroad, and much more swiftly too,\r\n Being less subject to impediments,\r\n As few in number and placed along the front.\r\n For truly many things we see discharge\r\n Their stuff at large, not only from their cores\r\n Deep-set within, as we have said above,\r\n But from their surfaces at times no less\u0026mdash;\r\n Their very colours too. And commonly\r\n The awnings, saffron, red and dusky blue,\r\n Stretched overhead in mighty theatres,\r\n Upon their poles and cross-beams fluttering,\r\n Have such an action quite; for there they dye\r\n And make to undulate with their every hue\r\n The circled throng below, and all the stage,\r\n And rich attire in the patrician seats.\r\n And ever the more the theatre\u0027s dark walls\r\n Around them shut, the more all things within\r\n Laugh in the bright suffusion of strange glints,\r\n The daylight being withdrawn. And therefore, since\r\n The canvas hangings thus discharge their dye\r\n From off their surface, things in general must\r\n Likewise their tenuous effigies discharge,\r\n Because in either case they are off-thrown\r\n From off the surface. So there are indeed\r\n Such certain prints and vestiges of forms\r\n Which flit around, of subtlest texture made,\r\n Invisible, when separate, each and one.\r\n Again, all odour, smoke, and heat, and such\r\n Streams out of things diffusedly, because,\r\n Whilst coming from the deeps of body forth\r\n And rising out, along their bending path\r\n They\u0027re torn asunder, nor have gateways straight\r\n Wherethrough to mass themselves and struggle abroad.\r\n But contrariwise, when such a tenuous film\r\n Of outside colour is thrown off, there\u0027s naught\r\n Can rend it, since \u0027tis placed along the front\r\n Ready to hand. Lastly those images\r\n Which to our eyes in mirrors do appear,\r\n In water, or in any shining surface,\r\n Must be, since furnished with like look of things,\r\n Fashioned from images of things sent out.\r\n There are, then, tenuous effigies of forms,\r\n Like unto them, which no one can divine\r\n When taken singly, which do yet give back,\r\n When by continued and recurrent discharge\r\n Expelled, a picture from the mirrors\u0027 plane.\r\n Nor otherwise, it seems, can they be kept\r\n So well conserved that thus be given back\r\n Figures so like each object.\r\n\r\n Now then, learn\r\n How tenuous is the nature of an image.\r\n And in the first place, since primordials be\r\n So far beneath our senses, and much less\r\n E\u0027en than those objects which begin to grow\r\n Too small for eyes to note, learn now in few\r\n How nice are the beginnings of all things\u0026mdash;\r\n That this, too, I may yet confirm in proof:\r\n First, living creatures are sometimes so small\r\n That even their third part can nowise be seen;\r\n Judge, then, the size of any inward organ\u0026mdash;\r\n What of their sphered heart, their eyes, their limbs,\r\n The skeleton?\u0026mdash;How tiny thus they are!\r\n And what besides of those first particles\r\n Whence soul and mind must fashioned be?\u0026mdash;Seest not\r\n How nice and how minute? Besides, whatever\r\n Exhales from out its body a sharp smell\u0026mdash;\r\n The nauseous absinth, or the panacea,\r\n Strong southernwood, or bitter centaury\u0026mdash;\r\n If never so lightly with thy [fingers] twain\r\n Perchance [thou touch] a one of them\r\n\r\n\u003c/pre\u003e\r\n \u003chr \u003e\r\n\u003cpre\u003e\r\n Then why not rather know that images\r\n Flit hither and thither, many, in many modes,\r\n Bodiless and invisible?\r\n\r\n But lest\r\n Haply thou holdest that those images\r\n Which come from objects are the sole that flit,\r\n Others indeed there be of own accord\r\n Begot, self-formed in earth\u0027s aery skies,\r\n Which, moulded to innumerable shapes,\r\n Are borne aloft, and, fluid as they are,\r\n Cease not to change appearance and to turn\r\n Into new outlines of all sorts of forms;\r\n As we behold the clouds grow thick on high\r\n And smirch the serene vision of the world,\r\n Stroking the air with motions. For oft are seen\r\n The giants\u0027 faces flying far along\r\n And trailing a spread of shadow; and at times\r\n The mighty mountains and mountain-sundered rocks\r\n Going before and crossing on the sun,\r\n Whereafter a monstrous beast dragging amain\r\n And leading in the other thunderheads.\r\n Now [hear] how easy and how swift they be\r\n Engendered, and perpetually flow off\r\n From things and gliding pass away….\r\n\r\n\u003c/pre\u003e\r\n \u003chr \u003e\r\n\u003cpre\u003e\r\n For ever every outside streams away\r\n From off all objects, since discharge they may;\r\n And when this outside reaches other things,\r\n As chiefly glass, it passes through; but where\r\n It reaches the rough rocks or stuff of wood,\r\n There \u0027tis so rent that it cannot give back\r\n An image. But when gleaming objects dense,\r\n As chiefly mirrors, have been set before it,\r\n Nothing of this sort happens. For it can\u0027t\r\n Go, as through glass, nor yet be rent\u0026mdash;its safety,\r\n By virtue of that smoothness, being sure.\r\n \u0027Tis therefore that from them the images\r\n Stream back to us; and howso suddenly\r\n Thou place, at any instant, anything\r\n Before a mirror, there an image shows;\r\n Proving that ever from a body\u0027s surface\r\n Flow off thin textures and thin shapes of things.\r\n Thus many images in little time\r\n Are gendered; so their origin is named\r\n Rightly a speedy. And even as the sun\r\n Must send below, in little time, to earth\r\n So many beams to keep all things so full\r\n Of light incessant; thus, on grounds the same,\r\n From things there must be borne, in many modes,\r\n To every quarter round, upon the moment,\r\n The many images of things; because\r\n Unto whatever face of things we turn\r\n The mirror, things of form and hue the same\r\n Respond. Besides, though but a moment since\r\n Serenest was the weather of the sky,\r\n So fiercely sudden is it foully thick\r\n That ye might think that round about all murk\r\n Had parted forth from Acheron and filled\r\n The mighty vaults of sky\u0026mdash;so grievously,\r\n As gathers thus the storm-clouds\u0027 gruesome night,\r\n Do faces of black horror hang on high\u0026mdash;\r\n Of which how small a part an image is\r\n There\u0027s none to tell or reckon out in words.\r\n\r\n Now come; with what swift motion they are borne,\r\n These images, and what the speed assigned\r\n To them across the breezes swimming on\u0026mdash;\r\n So that o\u0027er lengths of space a little hour\r\n Alone is wasted, toward whatever region\r\n Each with its divers impulse tends\u0026mdash;I\u0027ll tell\r\n In verses sweeter than they many are;\r\n Even as the swan\u0027s slight note is better far\r\n Than that dispersed clamour of the cranes\r\n Among the southwind\u0027s aery clouds. And first,\r\n One oft may see that objects which are light\r\n And made of tiny bodies are the swift;\r\n In which class is the sun\u0027s light and his heat,\r\n Since made from small primordial elements\r\n Which, as it were, are forward knocked along\r\n And through the interspaces of the air\r\n To pass delay not, urged by blows behind;\r\n For light by light is instantly supplied\r\n And gleam by following gleam is spurred and driven.\r\n Thus likewise must the images have power\r\n Through unimaginable space to speed\r\n Within a point of time,\u0026mdash;first, since a cause\r\n Exceeding small there is, which at their back\r\n Far forward drives them and propels, where, too,\r\n They\u0027re carried with such winged lightness on;\r\n And, secondly, since furnished, when sent off,\r\n With texture of such rareness that they can\r\n Through objects whatsoever penetrate\r\n And ooze, as \u0027twere, through intervening air.\r\n Besides, if those fine particles of things\r\n Which from so deep within are sent abroad,\r\n As light and heat of sun, are seen to glide\r\n And spread themselves through all the space of heaven\r\n Upon one instant of the day, and fly\r\n O\u0027er sea and lands and flood the heaven, what then\r\n Of those which on the outside stand prepared,\r\n When they\u0027re hurled off with not a thing to check\r\n Their going out? Dost thou not see indeed\r\n How swifter and how farther must they go\r\n And speed through manifold the length of space\r\n In time the same that from the sun the rays\r\n O\u0027erspread the heaven? This also seems to be\r\n Example chief and true with what swift speed\r\n The images of things are borne about:\r\n That soon as ever under open skies\r\n Is spread the shining water, all at once,\r\n If stars be out in heaven, upgleam from earth,\r\n Serene and radiant in the water there,\r\n The constellations of the universe\u0026mdash;\r\n Now seest thou not in what a point of time\r\n An image from the shores of ether falls\r\n Unto the shores of earth? Wherefore, again,\r\n And yet again, \u0027tis needful to confess\r\n With wondrous…\r\n\r\n\u003c/pre\u003e\r\n \u003chr \u003e\r\n \u003cp\u003e\r\n \u003ca id=\"link2H_4_0021\"\u003e\r\n \u003c!– H2 anchor –\u003e \u003c/a\u003e\r\n \u003c/p\u003e\r\n \u003cdiv style=\"height: 4em;\"\u003e\r\n \u003cbr \u003e\u003cbr \u003e\u003cbr \u003e\u003cbr \u003e\r\n \u003c/div\u003e\r\n \u003ch2\u003e\r\n THE SENSES AND MENTAL PICTURES\r\n \u003c/h2\u003e\r\n\u003cpre\u003e\r\n Bodies that strike the eyes, awaking sight.\r\n From certain things flow odours evermore,\r\n As cold from rivers, heat from sun, and spray\r\n From waves of ocean, eater-out of walls\r\n Around the coasts. Nor ever cease to flit\r\n The varied voices, sounds athrough the air.\r\n Then too there comes into the mouth at times\r\n The wet of a salt taste, when by the sea\r\n We roam about; and so, whene\u0027er we watch\r\n The wormword being mixed, its bitter stings.\r\n To such degree from all things is each thing\r\n Borne streamingly along, and sent about\r\n To every region round; and nature grants\r\n Nor rest nor respite of the onward flow,\r\n Since \u0027tis incessantly we feeling have,\r\n And all the time are suffered to descry\r\n And smell all things at hand, and hear them sound.\r\n Besides, since shape examined by our hands\r\n Within the dark is known to be the same\r\n As that by eyes perceived within the light\r\n And lustrous day, both touch and sight must be\r\n By one like cause aroused. So, if we test\r\n A square and get its stimulus on us\r\n Within the dark, within the light what square\r\n Can fall upon our sight, except a square\r\n That images the things? Wherefore it seems\r\n The source of seeing is in images,\r\n Nor without these can anything be viewed.\r\n\r\n Now these same films I name are borne about\r\n And tossed and scattered into regions all.\r\n But since we do perceive alone through eyes,\r\n It follows hence that whitherso we turn\r\n Our sight, all things do strike against it there\r\n With form and hue. And just how far from us\r\n Each thing may be away, the image yields\r\n To us the power to see and chance to tell:\r\n For when \u0027tis sent, at once it shoves ahead\r\n And drives along the air that\u0027s in the space\r\n Betwixt it and our eyes. And thus this air\r\n All glides athrough our eyeballs, and, as \u0027twere,\r\n Brushes athrough our pupils and thuswise\r\n Passes across. Therefore it comes we see\r\n How far from us each thing may be away,\r\n And the more air there be that\u0027s driven before,\r\n And too the longer be the brushing breeze\r\n Against our eyes, the farther off removed\r\n Each thing is seen to be: forsooth, this work\r\n With mightily swift order all goes on,\r\n So that upon one instant we may see\r\n What kind the object and how far away.\r\n\r\n Nor over-marvellous must this be deemed\r\n In these affairs that, though the films which strike\r\n Upon the eyes cannot be singly seen,\r\n The things themselves may be perceived. For thus\r\n When the wind beats upon us stroke by stroke\r\n And when the sharp cold streams, \u0027tis not our wont\r\n To feel each private particle of wind\r\n Or of that cold, but rather all at once;\r\n And so we see how blows affect our body,\r\n As if one thing were beating on the same\r\n And giving us the feel of its own body\r\n Outside of us. Again, whene\u0027er we thump\r\n With finger-tip upon a stone, we touch\r\n But the rock\u0027s surface and the outer hue,\r\n Nor feel that hue by contact\u0026mdash;rather feel\r\n The very hardness deep within the rock.\r\n\r\n Now come, and why beyond a looking-glass\r\n An image may be seen, perceive. For seen\r\n It soothly is, removed far within.\r\n \u0027Tis the same sort as objects peered upon\r\n Outside in their true shape, whene\u0027er a door\r\n Yields through itself an open peering-place,\r\n And lets us see so many things outside\r\n Beyond the house. Also that sight is made\r\n By a twofold twin air: for first is seen\r\n The air inside the door-posts; next the doors,\r\n The twain to left and right; and afterwards\r\n A light beyond comes brushing through our eyes,\r\n Then other air, then objects peered upon\r\n Outside in their true shape. And thus, when first\r\n The image of the glass projects itself,\r\n As to our gaze it comes, it shoves ahead\r\n And drives along the air that\u0027s in the space\r\n Betwixt it and our eyes, and brings to pass\r\n That we perceive the air ere yet the glass.\r\n But when we\u0027ve also seen the glass itself,\r\n Forthwith that image which from us is borne\r\n Reaches the glass, and there thrown back again\r\n Comes back unto our eyes, and driving rolls\r\n Ahead of itself another air, that then\r\n \u0027Tis this we see before itself, and thus\r\n It looks so far removed behind the glass.\r\n Wherefore again, again, there\u0027s naught for wonder\r\n\r\n\u003c/pre\u003e\r\n \u003chr \u003e\r\n\u003cpre\u003e\r\n In those which render from the mirror\u0027s plane\r\n A vision back, since each thing comes to pass\r\n By means of the two airs. Now, in the glass\r\n The right part of our members is observed\r\n Upon the left, because, when comes the image\r\n Hitting against the level of the glass,\r\n \u0027Tis not returned unshifted; but forced off\r\n Backwards in line direct and not oblique,\u0026mdash;\r\n Exactly as whoso his plaster-mask\r\n Should dash, before \u0027twere dry, on post or beam,\r\n And it should straightway keep, at clinging there,\r\n Its shape, reversed, facing him who threw,\r\n And so remould the features it gives back:\r\n It comes that now the right eye is the left,\r\n The left the right. An image too may be\r\n From mirror into mirror handed on,\r\n Until of idol-films even five or six\r\n Have thus been gendered. For whatever things\r\n Shall hide back yonder in the house, the same,\r\n However far removed in twisting ways,\r\n May still be all brought forth through bending paths\r\n And by these several mirrors seen to be\r\n Within the house, since nature so compels\r\n All things to be borne backward and spring off\r\n At equal angles from all other things.\r\n To such degree the image gleams across\r\n From mirror unto mirror; where \u0027twas left\r\n It comes to be the right, and then again\r\n Returns and changes round unto the left.\r\n Again, those little sides of mirrors curved\r\n Proportionate to the bulge of our own flank\r\n Send back to us their idols with the right\r\n Upon the right; and this is so because\r\n Either the image is passed on along\r\n From mirror unto mirror, and thereafter,\r\n When twice dashed off, flies back unto ourselves;\r\n Or else the image wheels itself around,\r\n When once unto the mirror it has come,\r\n Since the curved surface teaches it to turn\r\n To usward. Further, thou might\u0027st well believe\r\n That these film-idols step along with us\r\n And set their feet in unison with ours\r\n And imitate our carriage, since from that\r\n Part of a mirror whence thou hast withdrawn\r\n Straightway no images can be returned.\r\n\r\n Further, our eye-balls tend to flee the bright\r\n And shun to gaze thereon; the sun even blinds,\r\n If thou goest on to strain them unto him,\r\n Because his strength is mighty, and the films\r\n Heavily downward from on high are borne\r\n Through the pure ether and the viewless winds,\r\n And strike the eyes, disordering their joints.\r\n So piecing lustre often burns the eyes,\r\n Because it holdeth many seeds of fire\r\n Which, working into eyes, engender pain.\r\n Again, whatever jaundiced people view\r\n Becomes wan-yellow, since from out their bodies\r\n Flow many seeds wan-yellow forth to meet\r\n The films of things, and many too are mixed\r\n Within their eye, which by contagion paint\r\n All things with sallowness. Again, we view\r\n From dark recesses things that stand in light,\r\n Because, when first has entered and possessed\r\n The open eyes this nearer darkling air,\r\n Swiftly the shining air and luminous\r\n Followeth in, which purges then the eyes\r\n And scatters asunder of that other air\r\n The sable shadows, for in large degrees\r\n This air is nimbler, nicer, and more strong.\r\n And soon as ever \u0027thas filled and oped with light\r\n The pathways of the eyeballs, which before\r\n Black air had blocked, there follow straightaway\r\n Those films of things out-standing in the light,\r\n Provoking vision\u0026mdash;what we cannot do\r\n From out the light with objects in the dark,\r\n Because that denser darkling air behind\r\n Followeth in, and fills each aperture\r\n And thus blockades the pathways of the eyes\r\n That there no images of any things\r\n Can be thrown in and agitate the eyes.\r\n\r\n And when from far away we do behold\r\n The squared towers of a city, oft\r\n Rounded they seem,\u0026mdash;on this account because\r\n Each distant angle is perceived obtuse,\r\n Or rather it is not perceived at all;\r\n And perishes its blow nor to our gaze\r\n Arrives its stroke, since through such length of air\r\n Are borne along the idols that the air\r\n Makes blunt the idol of the angle\u0027s point\r\n By numerous collidings. When thuswise\r\n The angles of the tower each and all\r\n Have quite escaped the sense, the stones appear\r\n As rubbed and rounded on a turner\u0027s wheel\u0026mdash;\r\n Yet not like objects near and truly round,\r\n But with a semblance to them, shadowily.\r\n Likewise, our shadow in the sun appears\r\n To move along and follow our own steps\r\n And imitate our carriage\u0026mdash;if thou thinkest\r\n Air that is thus bereft of light can walk,\r\n Following the gait and motion of mankind.\r\n For what we use to name a shadow, sure\r\n Is naught but air deprived of light. No marvel:\r\n Because the earth from spot to spot is reft\r\n Progressively of light of sun, whenever\r\n In moving round we get within its way,\r\n While any spot of earth by us abandoned\r\n Is filled with light again, on this account\r\n It comes to pass that what was body\u0027s shadow\r\n Seems still the same to follow after us\r\n In one straight course. Since, evermore pour in\r\n New lights of rays, and perish then the old,\r\n Just like the wool that\u0027s drawn into the flame.\r\n Therefore the earth is easily spoiled of light\r\n And easily refilled and from herself\r\n Washeth the black shadows quite away.\r\n\r\n And yet in this we don\u0027t at all concede\r\n That eyes be cheated. For their task it is\r\n To note in whatsoever place be light,\r\n In what be shadow: whether or no the gleams\r\n Be still the same, and whether the shadow which\r\n Just now was here is that one passing thither,\r\n Or whether the facts be what we said above,\r\n \u0027Tis after all the reasoning of mind\r\n That must decide; nor can our eyeballs know\r\n The nature of reality. And so\r\n Attach thou not this fault of mind to eyes,\r\n Nor lightly think our senses everywhere\r\n Are tottering. The ship in which we sail\r\n Is borne along, although it seems to stand;\r\n The ship that bides in roadstead is supposed\r\n There to be passing by. And hills and fields\r\n Seem fleeing fast astern, past which we urge\r\n The ship and fly under the bellying sails.\r\n The stars, each one, do seem to pause, affixed\r\n To the ethereal caverns, though they all\r\n Forever are in motion, rising out\r\n And thence revisiting their far descents\r\n When they have measured with their bodies bright\r\n The span of heaven. And likewise sun and moon\r\n Seem biding in a roadstead,\u0026mdash;objects which,\r\n As plain fact proves, are really borne along.\r\n Between two mountains far away aloft\r\n From midst the whirl of waters open lies\r\n A gaping exit for the fleet, and yet\r\n They seem conjoined in a single isle.\r\n When boys themselves have stopped their spinning round,\r\n The halls still seem to whirl and posts to reel,\r\n Until they now must almost think the roofs\r\n Threaten to ruin down upon their heads.\r\n And now, when nature begins to lift on high\r\n The sun\u0027s red splendour and the tremulous fires,\r\n And raise him o\u0027er the mountain-tops, those mountains\u0026mdash;\r\n O\u0027er which he seemeth then to thee to be,\r\n His glowing self hard by atingeing them\r\n With his own fire\u0026mdash;are yet away from us\r\n Scarcely two thousand arrow-shots, indeed\r\n Oft scarce five hundred courses of a dart;\r\n Although between those mountains and the sun\r\n Lie the huge plains of ocean spread beneath\r\n The vasty shores of ether, and intervene\r\n A thousand lands, possessed by many a folk\r\n And generations of wild beasts. Again,\r\n A pool of water of but a finger\u0027s depth,\r\n Which lies between the stones along the pave,\r\n Offers a vision downward into earth\r\n As far, as from the earth o\u0027erspread on high\r\n The gulfs of heaven; that thus thou seemest to view\r\n Clouds down below and heavenly bodies plunged\r\n Wondrously in heaven under earth.\r\n Then too, when in the middle of the stream\r\n Sticks fast our dashing horse, and down we gaze\r\n Into the river\u0027s rapid waves, some force\r\n Seems then to bear the body of the horse,\r\n Though standing still, reversely from his course,\r\n And swiftly push up-stream. And wheresoe\u0027er\r\n We cast our eyes across, all objects seem\r\n Thus to be onward borne and flow along\r\n In the same way as we. A portico,\r\n Albeit it stands well propped from end to end\r\n On equal columns, parallel and big,\r\n Contracts by stages in a narrow cone,\r\n When from one end the long, long whole is seen,\u0026mdash;\r\n Until, conjoining ceiling with the floor,\r\n And the whole right side with the left, it draws\r\n Together to a cone\u0027s nigh-viewless point.\r\n To sailors on the main the sun he seems\r\n From out the waves to rise, and in the waves\r\n To set and bury his light\u0026mdash;because indeed\r\n They gaze on naught but water and the sky.\r\n Again, to gazers ignorant of the sea,\r\n Vessels in port seem, as with broken poops,\r\n To lean upon the water, quite agog;\r\n For any portion of the oars that\u0027s raised\r\n Above the briny spray is straight, and straight\r\n The rudders from above. But other parts,\r\n Those sunk, immersed below the water-line,\r\n Seem broken all and bended and inclined\r\n Sloping to upwards, and turned back to float\r\n Almost atop the water. And when the winds\r\n Carry the scattered drifts along the sky\r\n In the night-time, then seem to glide along\r\n The radiant constellations \u0027gainst the clouds\r\n And there on high to take far other course\r\n From that whereon in truth they\u0027re borne. And then,\r\n If haply our hand be set beneath one eye\r\n And press below thereon, then to our gaze\r\n Each object which we gaze on seems to be,\r\n By some sensation twain\u0026mdash;then twain the lights\r\n Of lampions burgeoning in flowers of flame,\r\n And twain the furniture in all the house,\r\n Two-fold the visages of fellow-men,\r\n And twain their bodies. And again, when sleep\r\n Has bound our members down in slumber soft\r\n And all the body lies in deep repose,\r\n Yet then we seem to self to be awake\r\n And move our members; and in night\u0027s blind gloom\r\n We think to mark the daylight and the sun;\r\n And, shut within a room, yet still we seem\r\n To change our skies, our oceans, rivers, hills,\r\n To cross the plains afoot, and hear new sounds,\r\n Though still the austere silence of the night\r\n Abides around us, and to speak replies,\r\n Though voiceless. Other cases of the sort\r\n Wondrously many do we see, which all\r\n Seek, so to say, to injure faith in sense\u0026mdash;\r\n In vain, because the largest part of these\r\n Deceives through mere opinions of the mind,\r\n Which we do add ourselves, feigning to see\r\n What by the senses are not seen at all.\r\n For naught is harder than to separate\r\n Plain facts from dubious, which the mind forthwith\r\n Adds by itself.\r\n\r\n Again, if one suppose\r\n That naught is known, he knows not whether this\r\n Itself is able to be known, since he\r\n Confesses naught to know. Therefore with him\r\n I waive discussion\u0026mdash;who has set his head\r\n Even where his feet should be. But let me grant\r\n That this he knows,\u0026mdash;I question: whence he knows\r\n What \u0027tis to know and not-to-know in turn,\r\n And what created concept of the truth,\r\n And what device has proved the dubious\r\n To differ from the certain?\u0026mdash;since in things\r\n He\u0027s heretofore seen naught of true. Thou\u0027lt find\r\n That from the senses first hath been create\r\n Concept of truth, nor can the senses be\r\n Rebutted. For criterion must be found\r\n Worthy of greater trust, which shall defeat\r\n Through own authority the false by true;\r\n What, then, than these our senses must there be\r\n Worthy a greater trust? Shall reason, sprung\r\n From some false sense, prevail to contradict\r\n Those senses, sprung as reason wholly is\r\n From out the senses?\u0026mdash;For lest these be true,\r\n All reason also then is falsified.\r\n Or shall the ears have power to blame the eyes,\r\n Or yet the touch the ears? Again, shall taste\r\n Accuse this touch or shall the nose confute\r\n Or eyes defeat it? Methinks not so it is:\r\n For unto each has been divided off\r\n Its function quite apart, its power to each;\r\n And thus we\u0027re still constrained to perceive\r\n The soft, the cold, the hot apart, apart\r\n All divers hues and whatso things there be\r\n Conjoined with hues. Likewise the tasting tongue\r\n Has its own power apart, and smells apart\r\n And sounds apart are known. And thus it is\r\n That no one sense can e\u0027er convict another.\r\n Nor shall one sense have power to blame itself,\r\n Because it always must be deemed the same,\r\n Worthy of equal trust. And therefore what\r\n At any time unto these senses showed,\r\n The same is true. And if the reason be\r\n Unable to unravel us the cause\r\n Why objects, which at hand were square, afar\r\n Seemed rounded, yet it more availeth us,\r\n Lacking the reason, to pretend a cause\r\n For each configuration, than to let\r\n From out our hands escape the obvious things\r\n And injure primal faith in sense, and wreck\r\n All those foundations upon which do rest\r\n Our life and safety. For not only reason\r\n Would topple down; but even our very life\r\n Would straightaway collapse, unless we dared\r\n To trust our senses and to keep away\r\n From headlong heights and places to be shunned\r\n Of a like peril, and to seek with speed\r\n Their opposites! Again, as in a building,\r\n If the first plumb-line be askew, and if\r\n The square deceiving swerve from lines exact,\r\n And if the level waver but the least\r\n In any part, the whole construction then\r\n Must turn out faulty\u0026mdash;shelving and askew,\r\n Leaning to back and front, incongruous,\r\n That now some portions seem about to fall,\r\n And falls the whole ere long\u0026mdash;betrayed indeed\r\n By first deceiving estimates: so too\r\n Thy calculations in affairs of life\r\n Must be askew and false, if sprung for thee\r\n From senses false. So all that troop of words\r\n Marshalled against the senses is quite vain.\r\n\r\n And now remains to demonstrate with ease\r\n How other senses each their things perceive.\r\n\r\n Firstly, a sound and every voice is heard,\r\n When, getting into ears, they strike the sense\r\n With their own body. For confess we must\r\n Even voice and sound to be corporeal,\r\n Because they\u0027re able on the sense to strike.\r\n Besides voice often scrapes against the throat,\r\n And screams in going out do make more rough\r\n The wind-pipe\u0026mdash;naturally enough, methinks,\r\n When, through the narrow exit rising up\r\n In larger throng, these primal germs of voice\r\n Have thus begun to issue forth. In sooth,\r\n Also the door of the mouth is scraped against\r\n [By air blown outward] from distended [cheeks].\r\n\r\n\u003c/pre\u003e\r\n \u003chr \u003e\r\n\u003cpre\u003e\r\n And thus no doubt there is, that voice and words\r\n Consist of elements corporeal,\r\n With power to pain. Nor art thou unaware\r\n Likewise how much of body\u0027s ta\u0027en away,\r\n How much from very thews and powers of men\r\n May be withdrawn by steady talk, prolonged\r\n Even from the rising splendour of the morn\r\n To shadows of black evening,\u0026mdash;above all\r\n If \u0027t be outpoured with most exceeding shouts.\r\n Therefore the voice must be corporeal,\r\n Since the long talker loses from his frame\r\n A part.\r\n\r\n Moreover, roughness in the sound\r\n Comes from the roughness in the primal germs,\r\n As a smooth sound from smooth ones is create;\r\n Nor have these elements a form the same\r\n When the trump rumbles with a hollow roar,\r\n As when barbaric Berecynthian pipe\r\n Buzzes with raucous boomings, or when swans\r\n By night from icy shores of Helicon\r\n With wailing voices raise their liquid dirge.\r\n\r\n Thus, when from deep within our frame we force\r\n These voices, and at mouth expel them forth,\r\n The mobile tongue, artificer of words,\r\n Makes them articulate, and too the lips\r\n By their formations share in shaping them.\r\n Hence when the space is short from starting-point\r\n To where that voice arrives, the very words\r\n Must too be plainly heard, distinctly marked.\r\n For then the voice conserves its own formation,\r\n Conserves its shape. But if the space between\r\n Be longer than is fit, the words must be\r\n Through the much air confounded, and the voice\r\n Disordered in its flight across the winds\u0026mdash;\r\n And so it haps, that thou canst sound perceive,\r\n Yet not determine what the words may mean;\r\n To such degree confounded and encumbered\r\n The voice approaches us. Again, one word,\r\n Sent from the crier\u0027s mouth, may rouse all ears\r\n Among the populace. And thus one voice\r\n Scatters asunder into many voices,\r\n Since it divides itself for separate ears,\r\n Imprinting form of word and a clear tone.\r\n But whatso part of voices fails to hit\r\n The ears themselves perishes, borne beyond,\r\n Idly diffused among the winds. A part,\r\n Beating on solid porticoes, tossed back\r\n Returns a sound; and sometimes mocks the ear\r\n With a mere phantom of a word. When this\r\n Thou well hast noted, thou canst render count\r\n Unto thyself and others why it is\r\n Along the lonely places that the rocks\r\n Give back like shapes of words in order like,\r\n When search we after comrades wandering\r\n Among the shady mountains, and aloud\r\n Call unto them, the scattered. I have seen\r\n Spots that gave back even voices six or seven\r\n For one thrown forth\u0026mdash;for so the very hills,\r\n Dashing them back against the hills, kept on\r\n With their reverberations. And these spots\r\n The neighbouring country-side doth feign to be\r\n Haunts of the goat-foot satyrs and the nymphs;\r\n And tells ye there be fauns, by whose night noise\r\n And antic revels yonder they declare\r\n The voiceless silences are broken oft,\r\n And tones of strings are made and wailings sweet\r\n Which the pipe, beat by players\u0027 finger-tips,\r\n Pours out; and far and wide the farmer-race\r\n Begins to hear, when, shaking the garmentings\r\n Of pine upon his half-beast head, god-Pan\r\n With puckered lip oft runneth o\u0027er and o\u0027er\r\n The open reeds,\u0026mdash;lest flute should cease to pour\r\n The woodland music! Other prodigies\r\n And wonders of this ilk they love to tell,\r\n Lest they be thought to dwell in lonely spots\r\n And even by gods deserted. This is why\r\n They boast of marvels in their story-tellings;\r\n Or by some other reason are led on\u0026mdash;\r\n Greedy, as all mankind hath ever been,\r\n To prattle fables into ears.\r\n\r\n Again,\r\n One need not wonder how it comes about\r\n That through those places (through which eyes cannot\r\n View objects manifest) sounds yet may pass\r\n And assail the ears. For often we observe\r\n People conversing, though the doors be closed;\r\n No marvel either, since all voice unharmed\r\n Can wind through bended apertures of things,\r\n While idol-films decline to\u0026mdash;for they\u0027re rent,\r\n Unless along straight apertures they swim,\r\n Like those in glass, through which all images\r\n Do fly across. And yet this voice itself,\r\n In passing through shut chambers of a house,\r\n Is dulled, and in a jumble enters ears,\r\n And sound we seem to hear far more than words.\r\n Moreover, a voice is into all directions\r\n Divided up, since off from one another\r\n New voices are engendered, when one voice\r\n Hath once leapt forth, outstarting into many\u0026mdash;\r\n As oft a spark of fire is wont to sprinkle\r\n Itself into its several fires. And so,\r\n Voices do fill those places hid behind,\r\n Which all are in a hubbub round about,\r\n Astir with sound. But idol-films do tend,\r\n As once sent forth, in straight directions all;\r\n Wherefore one can inside a wall see naught,\r\n Yet catch the voices from beyond the same.\r\n\r\n Nor tongue and palate, whereby we flavour feel,\r\n Present more problems for more work of thought.\r\n Firstly, we feel a flavour in the mouth,\r\n When forth we squeeze it, in chewing up our food,\u0026mdash;\r\n As any one perchance begins to squeeze\r\n With hand and dry a sponge with water soaked.\r\n Next, all which forth we squeeze is spread about\r\n Along the pores and intertwined paths\r\n Of the loose-textured tongue. And so, when smooth\r\n The bodies of the oozy flavour, then\r\n Delightfully they touch, delightfully\r\n They treat all spots, around the wet and trickling\r\n Enclosures of the tongue. And contrariwise,\r\n They sting and pain the sense with their assault,\r\n According as with roughness they\u0027re supplied.\r\n Next, only up to palate is the pleasure\r\n Coming from flavour; for in truth when down\r\n \u0027Thas plunged along the throat, no pleasure is,\r\n Whilst into all the frame it spreads around;\r\n Nor aught it matters with what food is fed\r\n The body, if only what thou take thou canst\r\n Distribute well digested to the frame\r\n And keep the stomach in a moist career.\r\n\r\n Now, how it is we see some food for some,\r\n Others for others….\r\n\r\n\u003c/pre\u003e\r\n \u003chr \u003e\r\n\u003cpre\u003e\r\n I will unfold, or wherefore what to some\r\n Is foul and bitter, yet the same to others\r\n Can seem delectable to eat,\u0026mdash;why here\r\n So great the distance and the difference is\r\n That what is food to one to some becomes\r\n Fierce poison, as a certain snake there is\r\n Which, touched by spittle of a man, will waste\r\n And end itself by gnawing up its coil.\r\n Again, fierce poison is the hellebore\r\n To us, but puts the fat on goats and quails.\r\n That thou mayst know by what devices this\r\n Is brought about, in chief thou must recall\r\n What we have said before, that seeds are kept\r\n Commixed in things in divers modes. Again,\r\n As all the breathing creatures which take food\r\n Are outwardly unlike, and outer cut\r\n And contour of their members bounds them round,\r\n Each differing kind by kind, they thus consist\r\n Of seeds of varying shape. And furthermore,\r\n Since seeds do differ, divers too must be\r\n The interstices and paths (which we do call\r\n The apertures) in all the members, even\r\n In mouth and palate too. Thus some must be\r\n More small or yet more large, three-cornered some\r\n And others squared, and many others round,\r\n And certain of them many-angled too\r\n In many modes. For, as the combination\r\n And motion of their divers shapes demand,\r\n The shapes of apertures must be diverse\r\n And paths must vary according to their walls\r\n That bound them. Hence when what is sweet to some,\r\n Becomes to others bitter, for him to whom\r\n \u0027Tis sweet, the smoothest particles must needs\r\n Have entered caressingly the palate\u0027s pores.\r\n And, contrariwise, with those to whom that sweet\r\n Is sour within the mouth, beyond a doubt\r\n The rough and barbed particles have got\r\n Into the narrows of the apertures.\r\n Now easy it is from these affairs to know\r\n Whatever…\r\n\r\n\u003c/pre\u003e\r\n \u003chr \u003e\r\n\u003cpre\u003e\r\n Indeed, where one from o\u0027er-abundant bile\r\n Is stricken with fever, or in other wise\r\n Feels the roused violence of some malady,\r\n There the whole frame is now upset, and there\r\n All the positions of the seeds are changed,\u0026mdash;\r\n So that the bodies which before were fit\r\n To cause the savour, now are fit no more,\r\n And now more apt are others which be able\r\n To get within the pores and gender sour.\r\n Both sorts, in sooth, are intermixed in honey\u0026mdash;\r\n What oft we\u0027ve proved above to thee before.\r\n Now come, and I will indicate what wise\r\n Impact of odour on the nostrils touches.\r\n And first, \u0027tis needful there be many things\r\n From whence the streaming flow of varied odours\r\n May roll along, and we\u0027re constrained to think\r\n They stream and dart and sprinkle themselves about\r\n Impartially. But for some breathing creatures\r\n One odour is more apt, to others another\u0026mdash;\r\n Because of differing forms of seeds and pores.\r\n Thus on and on along the zephyrs bees\r\n Are led by odour of honey, vultures too\r\n By carcasses. Again, the forward power\r\n Of scent in dogs doth lead the hunter on\r\n Whithersoever the splay-foot of wild beast\r\n Hath hastened its career; and the white goose,\r\n The saviour of the Roman citadel,\r\n Forescents afar the odour of mankind.\r\n Thus, diversly to divers ones is given\r\n Peculiar smell that leadeth each along\r\n To his own food or makes him start aback\r\n From loathsome poison, and in this wise are\r\n The generations of the wild preserved.\r\n\r\n Yet is this pungence not alone in odours\r\n Or in the class of flavours; but, likewise,\r\n The look of things and hues agree not all\r\n So well with senses unto all, but that\r\n Some unto some will be, to gaze upon,\r\n More keen and painful. Lo, the raving lions,\r\n They dare not face and gaze upon the cock\r\n Who\u0027s wont with wings to flap away the night\r\n From off the stage, and call the beaming morn\r\n With clarion voice\u0026mdash;and lions straightway thus\r\n Bethink themselves of flight, because, ye see,\r\n Within the body of the cocks there be\r\n Some certain seeds, which, into lions\u0027 eyes\r\n Injected, bore into the pupils deep\r\n And yield such piercing pain they can\u0027t hold out\r\n Against the cocks, however fierce they be\u0026mdash;\r\n Whilst yet these seeds can\u0027t hurt our gaze the least,\r\n Either because they do not penetrate,\r\n Or since they have free exit from the eyes\r\n As soon as penetrating, so that thus\r\n They cannot hurt our eyes in any part\r\n By there remaining.\r\n\r\n To speak once more of odour;\r\n Whatever assail the nostrils, some can travel\r\n A longer way than others. None of them,\r\n However, \u0027s borne so far as sound or voice\u0026mdash;\r\n While I omit all mention of such things\r\n As hit the eyesight and assail the vision.\r\n For slowly on a wandering course it comes\r\n And perishes sooner, by degrees absorbed\r\n Easily into all the winds of air;\u0026mdash;\r\n And first, because from deep inside the thing\r\n It is discharged with labour (for the fact\r\n That every object, when \u0027tis shivered, ground,\r\n Or crumbled by the fire, will smell the stronger\r\n Is sign that odours flow and part away\r\n From inner regions of the things). And next,\r\n Thou mayest see that odour is create\r\n Of larger primal germs than voice, because\r\n It enters not through stony walls, wherethrough\r\n Unfailingly the voice and sound are borne;\r\n Wherefore, besides, thou wilt observe \u0027tis not\r\n So easy to trace out in whatso place\r\n The smelling object is. For, dallying on\r\n Along the winds, the particles cool off,\r\n And then the scurrying messengers of things\r\n Arrive our senses, when no longer hot.\r\n So dogs oft wander astray, and hunt the scent.\r\n\r\n Now mark, and hear what objects move the mind,\r\n And learn, in few, whence unto intellect\r\n Do come what come. And first I tell thee this:\r\n That many images of objects rove\r\n In many modes to every region round\u0026mdash;\r\n So thin that easily the one with other,\r\n When once they meet, uniteth in mid-air,\r\n Like gossamer or gold-leaf. For, indeed,\r\n Far thinner are they in their fabric than\r\n Those images which take a hold on eyes\r\n And smite the vision, since through body\u0027s pores\r\n They penetrate, and inwardly stir up\r\n The subtle nature of mind and smite the sense.\r\n Thus, Centaurs and the limbs of Scyllas, thus\r\n The Cerberus-visages of dogs we see,\r\n And images of people gone before\u0026mdash;\r\n Dead men whose bones earth bosomed long ago;\r\n Because the images of every kind\r\n Are everywhere about us borne\u0026mdash;in part\r\n Those which are gendered in the very air\r\n Of own accord, in part those others which\r\n From divers things do part away, and those\r\n Which are compounded, made from out their shapes.\r\n For soothly from no living Centaur is\r\n That phantom gendered, since no breed of beast\r\n Like him was ever; but, when images\r\n Of horse and man by chance have come together,\r\n They easily cohere, as aforesaid,\r\n At once, through subtle nature and fabric thin.\r\n In the same fashion others of this ilk\r\n Created are. And when they\u0027re quickly borne\r\n In their exceeding lightness, easily\r\n (As earlier I showed) one subtle image,\r\n Compounded, moves by its one blow the mind,\r\n Itself so subtle and so strangely quick.\r\n\r\n That these things come to pass as I record,\r\n From this thou easily canst understand:\r\n So far as one is unto other like,\r\n Seeing with mind as well as with the eyes\r\n Must come to pass in fashion not unlike.\r\n Well, now, since I have shown that I perceive\r\n Haply a lion through those idol-films\r\n Such as assail my eyes, \u0027tis thine to know\r\n Also the mind is in like manner moved,\r\n And sees, nor more nor less than eyes do see\r\n (Except that it perceives more subtle films)\r\n The lion and aught else through idol-films.\r\n And when the sleep has overset our frame,\r\n The mind\u0027s intelligence is now awake,\r\n Still for no other reason, save that these\u0026mdash;\r\n The self-same films as when we are awake\u0026mdash;\r\n Assail our minds, to such degree indeed\r\n That we do seem to see for sure the man\r\n Whom, void of life, now death and earth have gained\r\n Dominion over. And nature forces this\r\n To come to pass because the body\u0027s senses\r\n Are resting, thwarted through the members all,\r\n Unable now to conquer false with true;\r\n And memory lies prone and languishes\r\n In slumber, nor protests that he, the man\r\n Whom the mind feigns to see alive, long since\r\n Hath been the gain of death and dissolution.\r\n\r\n And further, \u0027tis no marvel idols move\r\n And toss their arms and other members round\r\n In rhythmic time\u0026mdash;and often in men\u0027s sleeps\r\n It haps an image this is seen to do;\r\n In sooth, when perishes the former image,\r\n And other is gendered of another pose,\r\n That former seemeth to have changed its gestures.\r\n Of course the change must be conceived as speedy;\r\n So great the swiftness and so great the store\r\n Of idol-things, and (in an instant brief\r\n As mind can mark) so great, again, the store\r\n Of separate idol-parts to bring supplies.\r\n\r\n It happens also that there is supplied\r\n Sometimes an image not of kind the same;\r\n But what before was woman, now at hand\r\n Is seen to stand there, altered into male;\r\n Or other visage, other age succeeds;\r\n But slumber and oblivion take care\r\n That we shall feel no wonder at the thing.\r\n\r\n And much in these affairs demands inquiry,\r\n And much, illumination\u0026mdash;if we crave\r\n With plainness to exhibit facts. And first,\r\n Why doth the mind of one to whom the whim\r\n To think has come behold forthwith that thing?\r\n Or do the idols watch upon our will,\r\n And doth an image unto us occur,\r\n Directly we desire\u0026mdash;if heart prefer\r\n The sea, the land, or after all the sky?\r\n Assemblies of the citizens, parades,\r\n Banquets, and battles, these and all doth she,\r\n Nature, create and furnish at our word?\u0026mdash;\r\n Maugre the fact that in same place and spot\r\n Another\u0027s mind is meditating things\r\n All far unlike. And what, again, of this:\r\n When we in sleep behold the idols step,\r\n In measure, forward, moving supple limbs,\r\n Whilst forth they put each supple arm in turn\r\n With speedy motion, and with eyeing heads\r\n Repeat the movement, as the foot keeps time?\r\n Forsooth, the idols they are steeped in art,\r\n And wander to and fro well taught indeed,\u0026mdash;\r\n Thus to be able in the time of night\r\n To make such games! Or will the truth be this:\r\n Because in one least moment that we mark\u0026mdash;\r\n That is, the uttering of a single sound\u0026mdash;\r\n There lurk yet many moments, which the reason\r\n Discovers to exist, therefore it comes\r\n That, in a moment how so brief ye will,\r\n The divers idols are hard by, and ready\r\n Each in its place diverse? So great the swiftness,\r\n So great, again, the store of idol-things,\r\n And so, when perishes the former image,\r\n And other is gendered of another pose,\r\n The former seemeth to have changed its gestures.\r\n And since they be so tenuous, mind can mark\r\n Sharply alone the ones it strains to see;\r\n And thus the rest do perish one and all,\r\n Save those for which the mind prepares itself.\r\n Further, it doth prepare itself indeed,\r\n And hopes to see what follows after each\u0026mdash;\r\n Hence this result. For hast thou not observed\r\n How eyes, essaying to perceive the fine,\r\n Will strain in preparation, otherwise\r\n Unable sharply to perceive at all?\r\n Yet know thou canst that, even in objects plain,\r\n If thou attendest not, \u0027tis just the same\r\n As if \u0027twere all the time removed and far.\r\n What marvel, then, that mind doth lose the rest,\r\n Save those to which \u0027thas given up itself?\r\n So \u0027tis that we conjecture from small signs\r\n Things wide and weighty, and involve ourselves\r\n In snarls of self-deceit.\r\n\u003c/pre\u003e\r\n \u003cp\u003e\r\n \u003ca id=\"link2H_4_0022\"\u003e\r\n \u003c!– H2 anchor –\u003e \u003c/a\u003e\r\n \u003c/p\u003e\r\n \u003cdiv style=\"height: 4em;\"\u003e\r\n \u003cbr \u003e\u003cbr \u003e\u003cbr \u003e\u003cbr \u003e\r\n \u003c/div\u003e\r\n \u003ch2\u003e\r\n SOME VITAL FUNCTIONS\r\n \u003c/h2\u003e\r\n\u003cpre\u003e\r\n In these affairs\r\n We crave that thou wilt passionately flee\r\n The one offence, and anxiously wilt shun\r\n The error of presuming the clear lights\r\n Of eyes created were that we might see;\r\n Or thighs and knees, aprop upon the feet,\r\n Thuswise can bended be, that we might step\r\n With goodly strides ahead; or forearms joined\r\n Unto the sturdy uppers, or serving hands\r\n On either side were given, that we might do\r\n Life\u0027s own demands. All such interpretation\r\n Is aft-for-fore with inverse reasoning,\r\n Since naught is born in body so that we\r\n May use the same, but birth engenders use:\r\n No seeing ere the lights of eyes were born,\r\n No speaking ere the tongue created was;\r\n But origin of tongue came long before\r\n Discourse of words, and ears created were\r\n Much earlier than any sound was heard;\r\n And all the members, so meseems, were there\r\n Before they got their use: and therefore, they\r\n Could not be gendered for the sake of use.\r\n But contrariwise, contending in the fight\r\n With hand to hand, and rending of the joints,\r\n And fouling of the limbs with gore, was there,\r\n O long before the gleaming spears ere flew;\r\n And nature prompted man to shun a wound,\r\n Before the left arm by the aid of art\r\n Opposed the shielding targe. And, verily,\r\n Yielding the weary body to repose,\r\n Far ancienter than cushions of soft beds,\r\n And quenching thirst is earlier than cups.\r\n These objects, therefore, which for use and life\r\n Have been devised, can be conceived as found\r\n For sake of using. But apart from such\r\n Are all which first were born and afterwards\r\n Gave knowledge of their own utility\u0026mdash;\r\n Chief in which sort we note the senses, limbs:\r\n Wherefore, again, \u0027tis quite beyond thy power\r\n To hold that these could thus have been create\r\n For office of utility.\r\n\r\n Likewise,\r\n \u0027Tis nothing strange that all the breathing creatures\r\n Seek, even by nature of their frame, their food.\r\n Yes, since I\u0027ve taught thee that from off the things\r\n Stream and depart innumerable bodies\r\n In modes innumerable too; but most\r\n Must be the bodies streaming from the living\u0026mdash;\r\n Which bodies, vexed by motion evermore,\r\n Are through the mouth exhaled innumerable,\r\n When weary creatures pant, or through the sweat\r\n Squeezed forth innumerable from deep within.\r\n Thus body rarefies, so undermined\r\n In all its nature, and pain attends its state.\r\n And so the food is taken to underprop\r\n The tottering joints, and by its interfusion\r\n To re-create their powers, and there stop up\r\n The longing, open-mouthed through limbs and veins,\r\n For eating. And the moist no less departs\r\n Into all regions that demand the moist;\r\n And many heaped-up particles of hot,\r\n Which cause such burnings in these bellies of ours,\r\n The liquid on arriving dissipates\r\n And quenches like a fire, that parching heat\r\n No longer now can scorch the frame. And so,\r\n Thou seest how panting thirst is washed away\r\n From off our body, how the hunger-pang\r\n It, too, appeased.\r\n\r\n Now, how it comes that we,\r\n Whene\u0027er we wish, can step with strides ahead,\r\n And how \u0027tis given to move our limbs about,\r\n And what device is wont to push ahead\r\n This the big load of our corporeal frame,\r\n I\u0027ll say to thee\u0026mdash;do thou attend what\u0027s said.\r\n I say that first some idol-films of walking\r\n Into our mind do fall and smite the mind,\r\n As said before. Thereafter will arises;\r\n For no one starts to do a thing, before\r\n The intellect previsions what it wills;\r\n And what it there pre-visioneth depends\r\n On what that image is. When, therefore, mind\r\n Doth so bestir itself that it doth will\r\n To go and step along, it strikes at once\r\n That energy of soul that\u0027s sown about\r\n In all the body through the limbs and frame\u0026mdash;\r\n And this is easy of performance, since\r\n The soul is close conjoined with the mind.\r\n Next, soul in turn strikes body, and by degrees\r\n Thus the whole mass is pushed along and moved.\r\n Then too the body rarefies, and air,\r\n Forsooth as ever of such nimbleness,\r\n Comes on and penetrates aboundingly\r\n Through opened pores, and thus is sprinkled round\r\n Unto all smallest places in our frame.\r\n Thus then by these twain factors, severally,\r\n Body is borne like ship with oars and wind.\r\n Nor yet in these affairs is aught for wonder\r\n That particles so fine can whirl around\r\n So great a body and turn this weight of ours;\r\n For wind, so tenuous with its subtle body,\r\n Yet pushes, driving on the mighty ship\r\n Of mighty bulk; one hand directs the same,\r\n Whatever its momentum, and one helm\r\n Whirls it around, whither ye please; and loads,\r\n Many and huge, are moved and hoisted high\r\n By enginery of pulley-blocks and wheels,\r\n With but light strain.\r\n\r\n Now, by what modes this sleep\r\n Pours through our members waters of repose\r\n And frees the breast from cares of mind, I\u0027ll tell\r\n In verses sweeter than they many are;\r\n Even as the swan\u0027s slight note is better far\r\n Than that dispersed clamour of the cranes\r\n Among the southwind\u0027s aery clouds. Do thou\r\n Give me sharp ears and a sagacious mind,\u0026mdash;\r\n That thou mayst not deny the things to be\r\n Whereof I\u0027m speaking, nor depart away\r\n With bosom scorning these the spoken truths,\r\n Thyself at fault unable to perceive.\r\n Sleep chiefly comes when energy of soul\r\n Hath now been scattered through the frame, and part\r\n Expelled abroad and gone away, and part\r\n Crammed back and settling deep within the frame\u0026mdash;\r\n Whereafter then our loosened members droop.\r\n For doubt is none that by the work of soul\r\n Exist in us this sense, and when by slumber\r\n That sense is thwarted, we are bound to think\r\n The soul confounded and expelled abroad\u0026mdash;\r\n Yet not entirely, else the frame would lie\r\n Drenched in the everlasting cold of death.\r\n In sooth, where no one part of soul remained\r\n Lurking among the members, even as fire\r\n Lurks buried under many ashes, whence\r\n Could sense amain rekindled be in members,\r\n As flame can rise anew from unseen fire?\r\n\r\n By what devices this strange state and new\r\n May be occasioned, and by what the soul\r\n Can be confounded and the frame grow faint,\r\n I will untangle: see to it, thou, that I\r\n Pour forth my words not unto empty winds.\r\n In first place, body on its outer parts\u0026mdash;\r\n Since these are touched by neighbouring aery gusts\u0026mdash;\r\n Must there be thumped and strook by blows of air\r\n Repeatedly. And therefore almost all\r\n Are covered either with hides, or else with shells,\r\n Or with the horny callus, or with bark.\r\n Yet this same air lashes their inner parts,\r\n When creatures draw a breath or blow it out.\r\n Wherefore, since body thus is flogged alike\r\n Upon the inside and the out, and blows\r\n Come in upon us through the little pores\r\n Even inward to our body\u0027s primal parts\r\n And primal elements, there comes to pass\r\n By slow degrees, along our members then,\r\n A kind of overthrow; for then confounded\r\n Are those arrangements of the primal germs\r\n Of body and of mind. It comes to pass\r\n That next a part of soul\u0027s expelled abroad,\r\n A part retreateth in recesses hid,\r\n A part, too, scattered all about the frame,\r\n Cannot become united nor engage\r\n In interchange of motion. Nature now\r\n So hedges off approaches and the paths;\r\n And thus the sense, its motions all deranged,\r\n Retires down deep within; and since there\u0027s naught,\r\n As \u0027twere, to prop the frame, the body weakens,\r\n And all the members languish, and the arms\r\n And eyelids fall, and, as ye lie abed,\r\n Even there the houghs will sag and loose their powers.\r\n Again, sleep follows after food, because\r\n The food produces same result as air,\r\n Whilst being scattered round through all the veins;\r\n And much the heaviest is that slumber which,\r\n Full or fatigued, thou takest; since \u0027tis then\r\n That the most bodies disarrange themselves,\r\n Bruised by labours hard. And in same wise,\r\n This three-fold change: a forcing of the soul\r\n Down deeper, more a casting-forth of it,\r\n A moving more divided in its parts\r\n And scattered more.\r\n\r\n And to whate\u0027er pursuit\r\n A man most clings absorbed, or what the affairs\r\n On which we theretofore have tarried much,\r\n And mind hath strained upon the more, we seem\r\n In sleep not rarely to go at the same.\r\n The lawyers seem to plead and cite decrees,\r\n Commanders they to fight and go at frays,\r\n Sailors to live in combat with the winds,\r\n And we ourselves indeed to make this book,\r\n And still to seek the nature of the world\r\n And set it down, when once discovered, here\r\n In these my country\u0027s leaves. Thus all pursuits,\r\n All arts in general seem in sleeps to mock\r\n And master the minds of men. And whosoever\r\n Day after day for long to games have given\r\n Attention undivided, still they keep\r\n (As oft we note), even when they\u0027ve ceased to grasp\r\n Those games with their own senses, open paths\r\n Within the mind wherethrough the idol-films\r\n Of just those games can come. And thus it is\r\n For many a day thereafter those appear\r\n Floating before the eyes, that even awake\r\n They think they view the dancers moving round\r\n Their supple limbs, and catch with both the ears\r\n The liquid song of harp and speaking chords,\r\n And view the same assembly on the seats,\r\n And manifold bright glories of the stage\u0026mdash;\r\n So great the influence of pursuit and zest,\r\n And of the affairs wherein \u0027thas been the wont\r\n Of men to be engaged-nor only men,\r\n But soothly all the animals. Behold,\r\n Thou\u0027lt see the sturdy horses, though outstretched,\r\n Yet sweating in their sleep, and panting ever,\r\n And straining utmost strength, as if for prize,\r\n As if, with barriers opened now…\r\n And hounds of huntsmen oft in soft repose\r\n Yet toss asudden all their legs about,\r\n And growl and bark, and with their nostrils sniff\r\n The winds again, again, as though indeed\r\n They\u0027d caught the scented foot-prints of wild beasts,\r\n And, even when wakened, often they pursue\r\n The phantom images of stags, as though\r\n They did perceive them fleeing on before,\r\n Until the illusion\u0027s shaken off and dogs\r\n Come to themselves again. And fawning breed\r\n Of house-bred whelps do feel the sudden urge\r\n To shake their bodies and start from off the ground,\r\n As if beholding stranger-visages.\r\n And ever the fiercer be the stock, the more\r\n In sleep the same is ever bound to rage.\r\n But flee the divers tribes of birds and vex\r\n With sudden wings by night the groves of gods,\r\n When in their gentle slumbers they have dreamed\r\n Of hawks in chase, aswooping on for fight.\r\n Again, the minds of mortals which perform\r\n With mighty motions mighty enterprises,\r\n Often in sleep will do and dare the same\r\n In manner like. Kings take the towns by storm,\r\n Succumb to capture, battle on the field,\r\n Raise a wild cry as if their throats were cut\r\n Even then and there. And many wrestle on\r\n And groan with pains, and fill all regions round\r\n With mighty cries and wild, as if then gnawed\r\n By fangs of panther or of lion fierce.\r\n Many amid their slumbers talk about\r\n Their mighty enterprises, and have often\r\n Enough become the proof of their own crimes.\r\n Many meet death; many, as if headlong\r\n From lofty mountains tumbling down to earth\r\n With all their frame, are frenzied in their fright;\r\n And after sleep, as if still mad in mind,\r\n They scarce come to, confounded as they are\r\n By ferment of their frame. The thirsty man,\r\n Likewise, he sits beside delightful spring\r\n Or river and gulpeth down with gaping throat\r\n Nigh the whole stream. And oft the innocent young,\r\n By sleep o\u0027ermastered, think they lift their dress\r\n By pail or public jordan and then void\r\n The water filtered down their frame entire\r\n And drench the Babylonian coverlets,\r\n Magnificently bright. Again, those males\r\n Into the surging channels of whose years\r\n Now first has passed the seed (engendered\r\n Within their members by the ripened days)\r\n Are in their sleep confronted from without\r\n By idol-images of some fair form\u0026mdash;\r\n Tidings of glorious face and lovely bloom,\r\n Which stir and goad the regions turgid now\r\n With seed abundant; so that, as it were\r\n With all the matter acted duly out,\r\n They pour the billows of a potent stream\r\n And stain their garment.\r\n\r\n And as said before,\r\n That seed is roused in us when once ripe age\r\n Has made our body strong…\r\n As divers causes give to divers things\r\n Impulse and irritation, so one force\r\n In human kind rouses the human seed\r\n To spurt from man. As soon as ever it issues,\r\n Forced from its first abodes, it passes down\r\n In the whole body through the limbs and frame,\r\n Meeting in certain regions of our thews,\r\n And stirs amain the genitals of man.\r\n The goaded regions swell with seed, and then\r\n Comes the delight to dart the same at what\r\n The mad desire so yearns, and body seeks\r\n That object, whence the mind by love is pierced.\r\n For well-nigh each man falleth toward his wound,\r\n And our blood spurts even toward the spot from whence\r\n The stroke wherewith we are strook, and if indeed\r\n The foe be close, the red jet reaches him.\r\n Thus, one who gets a stroke from Venus\u0027 shafts\u0026mdash;\r\n Whether a boy with limbs effeminate\r\n Assault him, or a woman darting love\r\n From all her body\u0026mdash;that one strains to get\r\n Even to the thing whereby he\u0027s hit, and longs\r\n To join with it and cast into its frame\r\n The fluid drawn even from within its own.\r\n For the mute craving doth presage delight.\r\n\u003c/pre\u003e\r\n \u003cp\u003e\r\n \u003ca id=\"link2H_4_0023\"\u003e\r\n \u003c!– H2 anchor –\u003e \u003c/a\u003e\r\n \u003c/p\u003e\r\n \u003cdiv style=\"height: 4em;\"\u003e\r\n \u003cbr \u003e\u003cbr \u003e\u003cbr \u003e\u003cbr \u003e\r\n \u003c/div\u003e\r\n \u003ch2\u003e\r\n THE PASSION OF LOVE\r\n \u003c/h2\u003e\r\n\u003cpre\u003e\r\n This craving \u0027tis that\u0027s Venus unto us:\r\n From this, engender all the lures of love,\r\n From this, O first hath into human hearts\r\n Trickled that drop of joyance which ere long\r\n Is by chill care succeeded. Since, indeed,\r\n Though she thou lovest now be far away,\r\n Yet idol-images of her are near\r\n And the sweet name is floating in thy ear.\r\n But it behooves to flee those images;\r\n And scare afar whatever feeds thy love;\r\n And turn elsewhere thy mind; and vent the sperm,\r\n Within thee gathered, into sundry bodies,\r\n Nor, with thy thoughts still busied with one love,\r\n Keep it for one delight, and so store up\r\n Care for thyself and pain inevitable.\r\n For, lo, the ulcer just by nourishing\r\n Grows to more life with deep inveteracy,\r\n And day by day the fury swells aflame,\r\n And the woe waxes heavier day by day\u0026mdash;\r\n Unless thou dost destroy even by new blows\r\n The former wounds of love, and curest them\r\n While yet they\u0027re fresh, by wandering freely round\r\n After the freely-wandering Venus, or\r\n Canst lead elsewhere the tumults of thy mind.\r\n\r\n Nor doth that man who keeps away from love\r\n Yet lack the fruits of Venus; rather takes\r\n Those pleasures which are free of penalties.\r\n For the delights of Venus, verily,\r\n Are more unmixed for mortals sane-of-soul\r\n Than for those sick-at-heart with love-pining.\r\n Yea, in the very moment of possessing,\r\n Surges the heat of lovers to and fro,\r\n Restive, uncertain; and they cannot fix\r\n On what to first enjoy with eyes and hands.\r\n The parts they sought for, those they squeeze so tight,\r\n And pain the creature\u0027s body, close their teeth\r\n Often against her lips, and smite with kiss\r\n Mouth into mouth,\u0026mdash;because this same delight\r\n Is not unmixed; and underneath are stings\r\n Which goad a man to hurt the very thing,\r\n Whate\u0027er it be, from whence arise for him\r\n Those germs of madness. But with gentle touch\r\n Venus subdues the pangs in midst of love,\r\n And the admixture of a fondling joy\r\n Doth curb the bites of passion. For they hope\r\n That by the very body whence they caught\r\n The heats of love their flames can be put out.\r\n But nature protests \u0027tis all quite otherwise;\r\n For this same love it is the one sole thing\r\n Of which, the more we have, the fiercer burns\r\n The breast with fell desire. For food and drink\r\n Are taken within our members; and, since they\r\n Can stop up certain parts, thus, easily\r\n Desire of water is glutted and of bread.\r\n But, lo, from human face and lovely bloom\r\n Naught penetrates our frame to be enjoyed\r\n Save flimsy idol-images and vain\u0026mdash;\r\n A sorry hope which oft the winds disperse.\r\n As when the thirsty man in slumber seeks\r\n To drink, and water ne\u0027er is granted him\r\n Wherewith to quench the heat within his members,\r\n But after idols of the liquids strives\r\n And toils in vain, and thirsts even whilst he gulps\r\n In middle of the torrent, thus in love\r\n Venus deludes with idol-images\r\n The lovers. Nor they cannot sate their lust\r\n By merely gazing on the bodies, nor\r\n They cannot with their palms and fingers rub\r\n Aught from each tender limb, the while they stray\r\n Uncertain over all the body. Then,\r\n At last, with members intertwined, when they\r\n Enjoy the flower of their age, when now\r\n Their bodies have sweet presage of keen joys,\r\n And Venus is about to sow the fields\r\n Of woman, greedily their frames they lock,\r\n And mingle the slaver of their mouths, and breathe\r\n Into each other, pressing teeth on mouths\u0026mdash;\r\n Yet to no purpose, since they\u0027re powerless\r\n To rub off aught, or penetrate and pass\r\n With body entire into body\u0026mdash;for oft\r\n They seem to strive and struggle thus to do;\r\n So eagerly they cling in Venus\u0027 bonds,\r\n Whilst melt away their members, overcome\r\n By violence of delight. But when at last\r\n Lust, gathered in the thews, hath spent itself,\r\n There come a brief pause in the raging heat\u0026mdash;\r\n But then a madness just the same returns\r\n And that old fury visits them again,\r\n When once again they seek and crave to reach\r\n They know not what, all powerless to find\r\n The artifice to subjugate the bane.\r\n In such uncertain state they waste away\r\n With unseen wound.\r\n\r\n To which be added too,\r\n They squander powers and with the travail wane;\r\n Be added too, they spend their futile years\r\n Under another\u0027s beck and call; their duties\r\n Neglected languish and their honest name\r\n Reeleth sick, sick; and meantime their estates\r\n Are lost in Babylonian tapestries;\r\n And unguents and dainty Sicyonian shoes\r\n Laugh on her feet; and (as ye may be sure)\r\n Big emeralds of green light are set in gold;\r\n And rich sea-purple dress by constant wear\r\n Grows shabby and all soaked with Venus\u0027 sweat;\r\n And the well-earned ancestral property\r\n Becometh head-bands, coifs, and many a time\r\n The cloaks, or garments Alidensian\r\n Or of the Cean isle. And banquets, set\r\n With rarest cloth and viands, are prepared\u0026mdash;\r\n And games of chance, and many a drinking cup,\r\n And unguents, crowns and garlands. All in vain,\r\n Since from amid the well-spring of delights\r\n Bubbles some drop of bitter to torment\r\n Among the very flowers\u0026mdash;when haply mind\r\n Gnaws into self, now stricken with remorse\r\n For slothful years and ruin in baudels,\r\n Or else because she\u0027s left him all in doubt\r\n By launching some sly word, which still like fire\r\n Lives wildly, cleaving to his eager heart;\r\n Or else because he thinks she darts her eyes\r\n Too much about and gazes at another,\u0026mdash;\r\n And in her face sees traces of a laugh.\r\n\r\n These ills are found in prospering love and true;\r\n But in crossed love and helpless there be such\r\n As through shut eyelids thou canst still take in\u0026mdash;\r\n Uncounted ills; so that \u0027tis better far\r\n To watch beforehand, in the way I\u0027ve shown,\r\n And guard against enticements. For to shun\r\n A fall into the hunting-snares of love\r\n Is not so hard, as to get out again,\r\n When tangled in the very nets, and burst\r\n The stoutly-knotted cords of Aphrodite.\r\n Yet even when there enmeshed with tangled feet,\r\n Still canst thou scape the danger-lest indeed\r\n Thou standest in the way of thine own good,\r\n And overlookest first all blemishes\r\n Of mind and body of thy much preferred,\r\n Desirable dame. For so men do,\r\n Eyeless with passion, and assign to them\r\n Graces not theirs in fact. And thus we see\r\n Creatures in many a wise crooked and ugly\r\n The prosperous sweethearts in a high esteem;\r\n And lovers gird each other and advise\r\n To placate Venus, since their friends are smit\r\n With a base passion\u0026mdash;miserable dupes\r\n Who seldom mark their own worst bane of all.\r\n The black-skinned girl is \"tawny like the honey\";\r\n The filthy and the fetid\u0027s \"negligee\";\r\n The cat-eyed she\u0027s \"a little Pallas,\" she;\r\n The sinewy and wizened\u0027s \"a gazelle\";\r\n The pudgy and the pigmy is \"piquant,\r\n One of the Graces sure\"; the big and bulky\r\n O she\u0027s \"an Admiration, imposante\";\r\n The stuttering and tongue-tied \"sweetly lisps\";\r\n The mute girl\u0027s \"modest\"; and the garrulous,\r\n The spiteful spit-fire, is \"a sparkling wit\";\r\n And she who scarcely lives for scrawniness\r\n Becomes \"a slender darling\"; \"delicate\"\r\n Is she who\u0027s nearly dead of coughing-fit;\r\n The pursy female with protuberant breasts\r\n She is \"like Ceres when the goddess gave\r\n Young Bacchus suck\"; the pug-nosed lady-love\r\n \"A Satyress, a feminine Silenus\";\r\n The blubber-lipped is \"all one luscious kiss\"\u0026mdash;\r\n A weary while it were to tell the whole.\r\n But let her face possess what charm ye will,\r\n Let Venus\u0027 glory rise from all her limbs,\u0026mdash;\r\n Forsooth there still are others; and forsooth\r\n We lived before without her; and forsooth\r\n She does the same things\u0026mdash;and we know she does\u0026mdash;\r\n All, as the ugly creature, and she scents,\r\n Yes she, her wretched self with vile perfumes;\r\n Whom even her handmaids flee and giggle at\r\n Behind her back. But he, the lover, in tears\r\n Because shut out, covers her threshold o\u0027er\r\n Often with flowers and garlands, and anoints\r\n Her haughty door-posts with the marjoram,\r\n And prints, poor fellow, kisses on the doors\u0026mdash;\r\n Admitted at last, if haply but one whiff\r\n Got to him on approaching, he would seek\r\n Decent excuses to go out forthwith;\r\n And his lament, long pondered, then would fall\r\n Down at his heels; and there he\u0027d damn himself\r\n For his fatuity, observing how\r\n He had assigned to that same lady more\u0026mdash;\r\n Than it is proper to concede to mortals.\r\n And these our Venuses are \u0027ware of this.\r\n Wherefore the more are they at pains to hide\r\n All the-behind-the-scenes of life from those\r\n Whom they desire to keep in bonds of love\u0026mdash;\r\n In vain, since ne\u0027ertheless thou canst by thought\r\n Drag all the matter forth into the light\r\n And well search out the cause of all these smiles;\r\n And if of graceful mind she be and kind,\r\n Do thou, in thy turn, overlook the same,\r\n And thus allow for poor mortality.\r\n Nor sighs the woman always with feigned love,\r\n Who links her body round man\u0027s body locked\r\n And holds him fast, making his kisses wet\r\n With lips sucked into lips; for oft she acts\r\n Even from desire, and, seeking mutual joys,\r\n Incites him there to run love\u0027s race-course through.\r\n Nor otherwise can cattle, birds, wild beasts,\r\n And sheep and mares submit unto the males,\r\n Except that their own nature is in heat,\r\n And burns abounding and with gladness takes\r\n Once more the Venus of the mounting males.\r\n And seest thou not how those whom mutual pleasure\r\n Hath bound are tortured in their common bonds?\r\n How often in the cross-roads dogs that pant\r\n To get apart strain eagerly asunder\r\n With utmost might?\u0026mdash;When all the while they\u0027re fast\r\n In the stout links of Venus. But they\u0027d ne\u0027er\r\n So pull, except they knew those mutual joys\u0026mdash;\r\n So powerful to cast them unto snares\r\n And hold them bound. Wherefore again, again,\r\n Even as I say, there is a joint delight.\r\n\r\n And when perchance, in mingling seed with his,\r\n The female hath o\u0027erpowered the force of male\r\n And by a sudden fling hath seized it fast,\r\n Then are the offspring, more from mothers\u0027 seed,\r\n More like their mothers; as, from fathers\u0027 seed,\r\n They\u0027re like to fathers. But whom seest to be\r\n Partakers of each shape, one equal blend\r\n Of parents\u0027 features, these are generate\r\n From fathers\u0027 body and from mothers\u0027 blood,\r\n When mutual and harmonious heat hath dashed\r\n Together seeds, aroused along their frames\r\n By Venus\u0027 goads, and neither of the twain\r\n Mastereth or is mastered. Happens too\r\n That sometimes offspring can to being come\r\n In likeness of their grandsires, and bring back\r\n Often the shapes of grandsires\u0027 sires, because\r\n Their parents in their bodies oft retain\r\n Concealed many primal germs, commixed\r\n In many modes, which, starting with the stock,\r\n Sire handeth down to son, himself a sire;\r\n Whence Venus by a variable chance\r\n Engenders shapes, and diversely brings back\r\n Ancestral features, voices too, and hair.\r\n A female generation rises forth\r\n From seed paternal, and from mother\u0027s body\r\n Exist created males: since sex proceeds\r\n No more from singleness of seed than faces\r\n Or bodies or limbs of ours: for every birth\r\n Is from a twofold seed; and what\u0027s created\r\n Hath, of that parent which it is more like,\r\n More than its equal share; as thou canst mark,\u0026mdash;\r\n Whether the breed be male or female stock.\r\n\r\n Nor do the powers divine grudge any man\r\n The fruits of his seed-sowing, so that never\r\n He be called \"father\" by sweet children his,\r\n And end his days in sterile love forever.\r\n What many men suppose; and gloomily\r\n They sprinkle the altars with abundant blood,\r\n And make the high platforms odorous with burnt gifts,\r\n To render big by plenteous seed their wives\u0026mdash;\r\n And plague in vain godheads and sacred lots.\r\n For sterile are these men by seed too thick,\r\n Or else by far too watery and thin.\r\n Because the thin is powerless to cleave\r\n Fast to the proper places, straightaway\r\n It trickles from them, and, returned again,\r\n Retires abortively. And then since seed\r\n More gross and solid than will suit is spent\r\n By some men, either it flies not forth amain\r\n With spurt prolonged enough, or else it fails\r\n To enter suitably the proper places,\r\n Or, having entered, the seed is weakly mixed\r\n With seed of the woman: harmonies of Venus\r\n Are seen to matter vastly here; and some\r\n Impregnate some more readily, and from some\r\n Some women conceive more readily and become\r\n Pregnant. And many women, sterile before\r\n In several marriage-beds, have yet thereafter\r\n Obtained the mates from whom they could conceive\r\n The baby-boys, and with sweet progeny\r\n Grow rich. And even for husbands (whose own wives,\r\n Although of fertile wombs, have borne for them\r\n No babies in the house) are also found\r\n Concordant natures so that they at last\r\n Can bulwark their old age with goodly sons.\r\n A matter of great moment \u0027tis in truth,\r\n That seeds may mingle readily with seeds\r\n Suited for procreation, and that thick\r\n Should mix with fluid seeds, with thick the fluid.\r\n And in this business \u0027tis of some import\r\n Upon what diet life is nourished:\r\n For some foods thicken seeds within our members,\r\n And others thin them out and waste away.\r\n And in what modes the fond delight itself\r\n Is carried on\u0026mdash;this too importeth vastly.\r\n For commonly \u0027tis thought that wives conceive\r\n More readily in manner of wild-beasts,\r\n After the custom of the four-foot breeds,\r\n Because so postured, with the breasts beneath\r\n And buttocks then upreared, the seeds can take\r\n Their proper places. Nor is need the least\r\n For wives to use the motions of blandishment;\r\n For thus the woman hinders and resists\r\n Her own conception, if too joyously\r\n Herself she treats the Venus of the man\r\n With haunches heaving, and with all her bosom\r\n Now yielding like the billows of the sea\u0026mdash;\r\n Aye, from the ploughshare\u0027s even course and track\r\n She throws the furrow, and from proper places\r\n Deflects the spurt of seed. And courtesans\r\n Are thuswise wont to move for their own ends,\r\n To keep from pregnancy and lying in,\r\n And all the while to render Venus more\r\n A pleasure for the men\u0026mdash;the which meseems\r\n Our wives have never need of.\r\n\r\n Sometimes too\r\n It happens\u0026mdash;and through no divinity\r\n Nor arrows of Venus\u0026mdash;that a sorry chit\r\n Of scanty grace will be beloved by man;\r\n For sometimes she herself by very deeds,\r\n By her complying ways, and tidy habits,\r\n Will easily accustom thee to pass\r\n With her thy life-time\u0026mdash;and, moreover, lo,\r\n Long habitude can gender human love,\r\n Even as an object smitten o\u0027er and o\u0027er\r\n By blows, however lightly, yet at last\r\n Is overcome and wavers. Seest thou not,\r\n Besides, how drops of water falling down\r\n Against the stones at last bore through the stones?\r\n\u003c/pre\u003e\r\n \u003cp\u003e\r\n \u003ca id=\"link2H_4_0024\"\u003e\r\n \u003c!– H2 anchor –\u003e \u003c/a\u003e\r\n \u003c/p\u003e\r\n \u003cdiv style=\"height: 4em;\"\u003e\r\n \u003cbr \u003e\u003cbr \u003e\u003cbr \u003e\u003cbr \u003e\r\n \u003c/div\u003e\r\n \u003ch2\u003e\r\n BOOK V\r\n \u003c/h2\u003e\r\n \u003cp\u003e\r\n \u003ca id=\"link2H_4_0025\"\u003e\r\n \u003c!– H2 anchor –\u003e \u003c/a\u003e\r\n \u003c/p\u003e\r\n \u003cdiv style=\"height: 4em;\"\u003e\r\n \u003cbr \u003e\u003cbr \u003e\u003cbr \u003e\u003cbr \u003e\r\n \u003c/div\u003e\r\n \u003ch2\u003e\r\n PROEM\r\n \u003c/h2\u003e\r\n\u003cpre\u003e\r\n O WHO can build with puissant breast a song\r\n Worthy the majesty of these great finds?\r\n Or who in words so strong that he can frame\r\n The fit laudations for deserts of him\r\n Who left us heritors of such vast prizes,\r\n By his own breast discovered and sought out?\u0026mdash;\r\n There shall be none, methinks, of mortal stock.\r\n For if must needs be named for him the name\r\n Demanded by the now known majesty\r\n Of these high matters, then a god was he,\u0026mdash;\r\n Hear me, illustrious Memmius\u0026mdash;a god;\r\n Who first and chief found out that plan of life\r\n Which now is called philosophy, and who\r\n By cunning craft, out of such mighty waves,\r\n Out of such mighty darkness, moored life\r\n In havens so serene, in light so clear.\r\n Compare those old discoveries divine\r\n Of others: lo, according to the tale,\r\n Ceres established for mortality\r\n The grain, and Bacchus juice of vine-born grape,\r\n Though life might yet without these things abide,\r\n Even as report saith now some peoples live.\r\n But man\u0027s well-being was impossible\r\n Without a breast all free. Wherefore the more\r\n That man doth justly seem to us a god,\r\n From whom sweet solaces of life, afar\r\n Distributed o\u0027er populous domains,\r\n Now soothe the minds of men. But if thou thinkest\r\n Labours of Hercules excel the same,\r\n Much farther from true reasoning thou farest.\r\n For what could hurt us now that mighty maw\r\n Of Nemeaean Lion, or what the Boar\r\n Who bristled in Arcadia? Or, again,\r\n O what could Cretan Bull, or Hydra, pest\r\n Of Lerna, fenced with vipers venomous?\r\n Or what the triple-breasted power of her\r\n The three-fold Geryon…\r\n The sojourners in the Stymphalian fens\r\n So dreadfully offend us, or the Steeds\r\n Of Thracian Diomedes breathing fire\r\n From out their nostrils off along the zones\r\n Bistonian and Ismarian? And the Snake,\r\n The dread fierce gazer, guardian of the golden\r\n And gleaming apples of the Hesperides,\r\n Coiled round the tree-trunk with tremendous bulk,\r\n O what, again, could he inflict on us\r\n Along the Atlantic shore and wastes of sea?\u0026mdash;\r\n Where neither one of us approacheth nigh\r\n Nor no barbarian ventures. And the rest\r\n Of all those monsters slain, even if alive,\r\n Unconquered still, what injury could they do?\r\n None, as I guess. For so the glutted earth\r\n Swarms even now with savage beasts, even now\r\n Is filled with anxious terrors through the woods\r\n And mighty mountains and the forest deeps\u0026mdash;\r\n Quarters \u0027tis ours in general to avoid.\r\n But lest the breast be purged, what conflicts then,\r\n What perils, must bosom, in our own despite!\r\n O then how great and keen the cares of lust\r\n That split the man distraught! How great the fears!\r\n And lo, the pride, grim greed, and wantonness\u0026mdash;\r\n How great the slaughters in their train! and lo,\r\n Debaucheries and every breed of sloth!\r\n Therefore that man who subjugated these,\r\n And from the mind expelled, by words indeed,\r\n Not arms, O shall it not be seemly him\r\n To dignify by ranking with the gods?\u0026mdash;\r\n And all the more since he was wont to give,\r\n Concerning the immortal gods themselves,\r\n Many pronouncements with a tongue divine,\r\n And to unfold by his pronouncements all\r\n The nature of the world.\r\n\u003c/pre\u003e\r\n\u003cpre\u003e\r\nARGUMENT OF THE BOOK AND NEW PROEM\r\n AGAINST A TELEOLOGICAL CONCEPT\r\n\u003c/pre\u003e\r\n\u003cpre\u003e\r\n And walking now\r\n In his own footprints, I do follow through\r\n His reasonings, and with pronouncements teach\r\n The covenant whereby all things are framed,\r\n How under that covenant they must abide\r\n Nor ever prevail to abrogate the aeons\u0027\r\n Inexorable decrees,\u0026mdash;how (as we\u0027ve found),\r\n In class of mortal objects, o\u0027er all else,\r\n The mind exists of earth-born frame create\r\n And impotent unscathed to abide\r\n Across the mighty aeons, and how come\r\n In sleep those idol-apparitions,\r\n That so befool intelligence when we\r\n Do seem to view a man whom life has left.\r\n Thus far we\u0027ve gone; the order of my plan\r\n Hath brought me now unto the point where I\r\n Must make report how, too, the universe\r\n Consists of mortal body, born in time,\r\n And in what modes that congregated stuff\r\n Established itself as earth and sky,\r\n Ocean, and stars, and sun, and ball of moon;\r\n And then what living creatures rose from out\r\n The old telluric places, and what ones\r\n Were never born at all; and in what mode\r\n The human race began to name its things\r\n And use the varied speech from man to man;\r\n And in what modes hath bosomed in their breasts\r\n That awe of gods, which halloweth in all lands\r\n Fanes, altars, groves, lakes, idols of the gods.\r\n Also I shall untangle by what power\r\n The steersman nature guides the sun\u0027s courses,\r\n And the meanderings of the moon, lest we,\r\n Percase, should fancy that of own free will\r\n They circle their perennial courses round,\r\n Timing their motions for increase of crops\r\n And living creatures, or lest we should think\r\n They roll along by any plan of gods.\r\n For even those men who have learned full well\r\n That godheads lead a long life free of care,\r\n If yet meanwhile they wonder by what plan\r\n Things can go on (and chiefly yon high things\r\n Observed o\u0027erhead on the ethereal coasts),\r\n Again are hurried back unto the fears\r\n Of old religion and adopt again\r\n Harsh masters, deemed almighty,\u0026mdash;wretched men,\r\n Unwitting what can be and what cannot,\r\n And by what law to each its scope prescribed,\r\n Its boundary stone that clings so deep in Time.\r\n\r\n But for the rest,\u0026mdash;lest we delay thee here\r\n Longer by empty promises\u0026mdash;behold,\r\n Before all else, the seas, the lands, the sky:\r\n O Memmius, their threefold nature, lo,\r\n Their bodies three, three aspects so unlike,\r\n Three frames so vast, a single day shall give\r\n Unto annihilation! Then shall crash\r\n That massive form and fabric of the world\r\n Sustained so many aeons! Nor do I\r\n Fail to perceive how strange and marvellous\r\n This fact must strike the intellect of man,\u0026mdash;\r\n Annihilation of the sky and earth\r\n That is to be,\u0026mdash;and with what toil of words\r\n \u0027Tis mine to prove the same; as happens oft\r\n When once ye offer to man\u0027s listening ears\r\n Something before unheard of, but may not\r\n Subject it to the view of eyes for him\r\n Nor put it into hand\u0026mdash;the sight and touch,\r\n Whereby the opened highways of belief\r\n Lead most directly into human breast\r\n And regions of intelligence. But yet\r\n I will speak out. The fact itself, perchance,\r\n Will force belief in these my words, and thou\r\n Mayst see, in little time, tremendously\r\n With risen commotions of the lands all things\r\n Quaking to pieces\u0026mdash;which afar from us\r\n May she, the steersman Nature, guide: and may\r\n Reason, O rather than the fact itself,\r\n Persuade us that all things can be o\u0027erthrown\r\n And sink with awful-sounding breakage down!\r\n\r\n But ere on this I take a step to utter\r\n Oracles holier and soundlier based\r\n Than ever the Pythian pronounced for men\r\n From out the tripod and the Delphian laurel,\r\n I will unfold for thee with learned words\r\n Many a consolation, lest perchance,\r\n Still bridled by religion, thou suppose\r\n Lands, sun, and sky, sea, constellations, moon,\r\n Must dure forever, as of frame divine\u0026mdash;\r\n And so conclude that it is just that those,\r\n (After the manner of the Giants), should all\r\n Pay the huge penalties for monstrous crime,\r\n Who by their reasonings do overshake\r\n The ramparts of the universe and wish\r\n There to put out the splendid sun of heaven,\r\n Branding with mortal talk immortal things\u0026mdash;\r\n Though these same things are even so far removed\r\n From any touch of deity and seem\r\n So far unworthy of numbering with the gods,\r\n That well they may be thought to furnish rather\r\n A goodly instance of the sort of things\r\n That lack the living motion, living sense.\r\n For sure \u0027tis quite beside the mark to think\r\n That judgment and the nature of the mind\r\n In any kind of body can exist\u0026mdash;\r\n Just as in ether can\u0027t exist a tree,\r\n Nor clouds in the salt sea, nor in the fields\r\n Can fishes live, nor blood in timber be,\r\n Nor sap in boulders: fixed and arranged\r\n Where everything may grow and have its place.\r\n Thus nature of mind cannot arise alone\r\n Without the body, nor have its being far\r\n From thews and blood. Yet if \u0027twere possible?\u0026mdash;\r\n Much rather might this very power of mind\r\n Be in the head, the shoulders, or the heels,\r\n And, born in any part soever, yet\r\n In the same man, in the same vessel abide\r\n But since within this body even of ours\r\n Stands fixed and appears arranged sure\r\n Where soul and mind can each exist and grow,\r\n Deny we must the more that they can dure\r\n Outside the body and the breathing form\r\n In rotting clods of earth, in the sun\u0027s fire,\r\n In water, or in ether\u0027s skiey coasts.\r\n Therefore these things no whit are furnished\r\n With sense divine, since never can they be\r\n With life-force quickened.\r\n\r\n Likewise, thou canst ne\u0027er\r\n Believe the sacred seats of gods are here\r\n In any regions of this mundane world;\r\n Indeed, the nature of the gods, so subtle,\r\n So far removed from these our senses, scarce\r\n Is seen even by intelligence of mind.\r\n And since they\u0027ve ever eluded touch and thrust\r\n Of human hands, they cannot reach to grasp\r\n Aught tangible to us. For what may not\r\n Itself be touched in turn can never touch.\r\n Wherefore, besides, also their seats must be\r\n Unlike these seats of ours,\u0026mdash;even subtle too,\r\n As meet for subtle essence\u0026mdash;as I\u0027ll prove\r\n Hereafter unto thee with large discourse.\r\n Further, to say that for the sake of men\r\n They willed to prepare this world\u0027s magnificence,\r\n And that \u0027tis therefore duty and behoof\r\n To praise the work of gods as worthy praise,\r\n And that \u0027tis sacrilege for men to shake\r\n Ever by any force from out their seats\r\n What hath been stablished by the Forethought old\r\n To everlasting for races of mankind,\r\n And that \u0027tis sacrilege to assault by words\r\n And overtopple all from base to beam,\u0026mdash;\r\n Memmius, such notions to concoct and pile,\r\n Is verily\u0026mdash;to dote. Our gratefulness,\r\n O what emoluments could it confer\r\n Upon Immortals and upon the Blessed\r\n That they should take a step to manage aught\r\n For sake of us? Or what new factor could,\r\n After so long a time, inveigle them\u0026mdash;\r\n The hitherto reposeful\u0026mdash;to desire\r\n To change their former life? For rather he\r\n Whom old things chafe seems likely to rejoice\r\n At new; but one that in fore-passed time\r\n Hath chanced upon no ill, through goodly years,\r\n O what could ever enkindle in such an one\r\n Passion for strange experiment? Or what\r\n The evil for us, if we had ne\u0027er been born?\u0026mdash;\r\n As though, forsooth, in darkling realms and woe\r\n Our life were lying till should dawn at last\r\n The day-spring of creation! Whosoever\r\n Hath been begotten wills perforce to stay\r\n In life, so long as fond delight detains;\r\n But whoso ne\u0027er hath tasted love of life,\r\n And ne\u0027er was in the count of living things,\r\n What hurts it him that he was never born?\r\n Whence, further, first was planted in the gods\r\n The archetype for gendering the world\r\n And the fore-notion of what man is like,\r\n So that they knew and pre-conceived with mind\r\n Just what they wished to make? Or how were known\r\n Ever the energies of primal germs,\r\n And what those germs, by interchange of place,\r\n Could thus produce, if nature\u0027s self had not\r\n Given example for creating all?\r\n For in such wise primordials of things,\r\n Many in many modes, astir by blows\r\n From immemorial aeons, in motion too\r\n By their own weights, have evermore been wont\r\n To be so borne along and in all modes\r\n To meet together and to try all sorts\r\n Which, by combining one with other, they\r\n Are powerful to create, that thus it is\r\n No marvel now, if they have also fallen\r\n Into arrangements such, and if they\u0027ve passed\r\n Into vibrations such, as those whereby\r\n This sum of things is carried on to-day\r\n By fixed renewal. But knew I never what\r\n The seeds primordial were, yet would I dare\r\n This to affirm, even from deep judgments based\r\n Upon the ways and conduct of the skies\u0026mdash;\r\n This to maintain by many a fact besides\u0026mdash;\r\n That in no wise the nature of all things\r\n For us was fashioned by a power divine\u0026mdash;\r\n So great the faults it stands encumbered with.\r\n First, mark all regions which are overarched\r\n By the prodigious reaches of the sky:\r\n One yawning part thereof the mountain-chains\r\n And forests of the beasts do have and hold;\r\n And cliffs, and desert fens, and wastes of sea\r\n (Which sunder afar the beaches of the lands)\r\n Possess it merely; and, again, thereof\r\n Well-nigh two-thirds intolerable heat\r\n And a perpetual fall of frost doth rob\r\n From mortal kind. And what is left to till,\r\n Even that the force of nature would o\u0027errun\r\n With brambles, did not human force oppose,\u0026mdash;\r\n Long wont for livelihood to groan and sweat\r\n Over the two-pronged mattock and to cleave\r\n The soil in twain by pressing on the plough.\r\n\r\n\u003c/pre\u003e\r\n \u003chr \u003e\r\n\u003cpre\u003e\r\n Unless, by the ploughshare turning the fruitful clods\r\n And kneading the mould, we quicken into birth,\r\n [The crops] spontaneously could not come up\r\n Into the free bright air. Even then sometimes,\r\n When things acquired by the sternest toil\r\n Are now in leaf, are now in blossom all,\r\n Either the skiey sun with baneful heats\r\n Parches, or sudden rains or chilling rime\r\n Destroys, or flaws of winds with furious whirl\r\n Torment and twist. Beside these matters, why\r\n Doth nature feed and foster on land and sea\r\n The dreadful breed of savage beasts, the foes\r\n Of the human clan? Why do the seasons bring\r\n Distempers with them? Wherefore stalks at large\r\n Death, so untimely? Then, again, the babe,\r\n Like to the castaway of the raging surf,\r\n Lies naked on the ground, speechless, in want\r\n Of every help for life, when nature first\r\n Hath poured him forth upon the shores of light\r\n With birth-pangs from within the mother\u0027s womb,\r\n And with a plaintive wail he fills the place,\u0026mdash;\r\n As well befitting one for whom remains\r\n In life a journey through so many ills.\r\n But all the flocks and herds and all wild beasts\r\n Come forth and grow, nor need the little rattles,\r\n Nor must be treated to the humouring nurse\u0027s\r\n Dear, broken chatter; nor seek they divers clothes\r\n To suit the changing skies; nor need, in fine,\r\n Nor arms, nor lofty ramparts, wherewithal\r\n Their own to guard\u0026mdash;because the earth herself\r\n And nature, artificer of the world, bring forth\r\n Aboundingly all things for all.\r\n\u003c/pre\u003e\r\n \u003cp\u003e\r\n \u003ca id=\"link2H_4_0026\"\u003e\r\n \u003c!– H2 anchor –\u003e \u003c/a\u003e\r\n \u003c/p\u003e\r\n \u003cdiv style=\"height: 4em;\"\u003e\r\n \u003cbr \u003e\u003cbr \u003e\u003cbr \u003e\u003cbr \u003e\r\n \u003c/div\u003e\r\n \u003ch2\u003e\r\n THE WORLD IS NOT ETERNAL\r\n \u003c/h2\u003e\r\n\u003cpre\u003e\r\n And first,\r\n Since body of earth and water, air\u0027s light breath,\r\n And fiery exhalations (of which four\r\n This sum of things is seen to be compact)\r\n So all have birth and perishable frame,\r\n Thus the whole nature of the world itself\r\n Must be conceived as perishable too.\r\n For, verily, those things of which we see\r\n The parts and members to have birth in time\r\n And perishable shapes, those same we mark\r\n To be invariably born in time\r\n And born to die. And therefore when I see\r\n The mightiest members and the parts of this\r\n Our world consumed and begot again,\r\n \u0027Tis mine to know that also sky above\r\n And earth beneath began of old in time\r\n And shall in time go under to disaster.\r\n\r\n And lest in these affairs thou deemest me\r\n To have seized upon this point by sleight to serve\r\n My own caprice\u0026mdash;because I have assumed\r\n That earth and fire are mortal things indeed,\r\n And have not doubted water and the air\r\n Both perish too and have affirmed the same\r\n To be again begotten and wax big\u0026mdash;\r\n Mark well the argument: in first place, lo,\r\n Some certain parts of earth, grievously parched\r\n By unremitting suns, and trampled on\r\n By a vast throng of feet, exhale abroad\r\n A powdery haze and flying clouds of dust,\r\n Which the stout winds disperse in the whole air.\r\n A part, moreover, of her sod and soil\r\n Is summoned to inundation by the rains;\r\n And rivers graze and gouge the banks away.\r\n Besides, whatever takes a part its own\r\n In fostering and increasing [aught]…\r\n\r\n\u003c/pre\u003e\r\n \u003chr \u003e\r\n\u003cpre\u003e\r\n Is rendered back; and since, beyond a doubt,\r\n Earth, the all-mother, is beheld to be\r\n Likewise the common sepulchre of things,\r\n Therefore thou seest her minished of her plenty,\r\n And then again augmented with new growth.\r\n\r\n And for the rest, that sea, and streams, and springs\r\n Forever with new waters overflow,\r\n And that perennially the fluids well,\r\n Needeth no words\u0026mdash;the mighty flux itself\r\n Of multitudinous waters round about\r\n Declareth this. But whatso water first\r\n Streams up is ever straightway carried off,\r\n And thus it comes to pass that all in all\r\n There is no overflow; in part because\r\n The burly winds (that over-sweep amain)\r\n And skiey sun (that with his rays dissolves)\r\n Do minish the level seas; in part because\r\n The water is diffused underground\r\n Through all the lands. The brine is filtered off,\r\n And then the liquid stuff seeps back again\r\n And all regathers at the river-heads,\r\n Whence in fresh-water currents on it flows\r\n Over the lands, adown the channels which\r\n Were cleft erstwhile and erstwhile bore along\r\n The liquid-footed floods.\r\n\r\n Now, then, of air\r\n I\u0027ll speak, which hour by hour in all its body\r\n Is changed innumerably. For whatso\u0027er\r\n Streams up in dust or vapour off of things,\r\n The same is all and always borne along\r\n Into the mighty ocean of the air;\r\n And did not air in turn restore to things\r\n Bodies, and thus recruit them as they stream,\r\n All things by this time had resolved been\r\n And changed into air. Therefore it never\r\n Ceases to be engendered off of things\r\n And to return to things, since verily\r\n In constant flux do all things stream.\r\n\r\n Likewise,\r\n The abounding well-spring of the liquid light,\r\n The ethereal sun, doth flood the heaven o\u0027er\r\n With constant flux of radiance ever new,\r\n And with fresh light supplies the place of light,\r\n Upon the instant. For whatever effulgence\r\n Hath first streamed off, no matter where it falls,\r\n Is lost unto the sun. And this \u0027tis thine\r\n To know from these examples: soon as clouds\r\n Have first begun to under-pass the sun,\r\n And, as it were, to rend the rays of light\r\n In twain, at once the lower part of them\r\n Is lost entire, and earth is overcast\r\n Where\u0027er the thunderheads are rolled along\u0026mdash;\r\n So know thou mayst that things forever need\r\n A fresh replenishment of gleam and glow,\r\n And each effulgence, foremost flashed forth,\r\n Perisheth one by one. Nor otherwise\r\n Can things be seen in sunlight, lest alway\r\n The fountain-head of light supply new light.\r\n Indeed your earthly beacons of the night,\r\n The hanging lampions and the torches, bright\r\n With darting gleams and dense with livid soot,\r\n Do hurry in like manner to supply\r\n With ministering heat new light amain;\r\n Are all alive to quiver with their fires,\u0026mdash;\r\n Are so alive, that thus the light ne\u0027er leaves\r\n The spots it shines on, as if rent in twain:\r\n So speedily is its destruction veiled\r\n By the swift birth of flame from all the fires.\r\n Thus, then, we must suppose that sun and moon\r\n And stars dart forth their light from under-births\r\n Ever and ever new, and whatso flames\r\n First rise do perish always one by one\u0026mdash;\r\n Lest, haply, thou shouldst think they each endure\r\n Inviolable.\r\n\r\n Again, perceivest not\r\n How stones are also conquered by Time?\u0026mdash;\r\n Not how the lofty towers ruin down,\r\n And boulders crumble?\u0026mdash;Not how shrines of gods\r\n And idols crack outworn?\u0026mdash;Nor how indeed\r\n The holy Influence hath yet no power\r\n There to postpone the Terminals of Fate,\r\n Or headway make \u0027gainst Nature\u0027s fixed decrees?\r\n Again, behold we not the monuments\r\n Of heroes, now in ruins, asking us,\r\n In their turn likewise, if we don\u0027t believe\r\n They also age with eld? Behold we not\r\n The rended basalt ruining amain\r\n Down from the lofty mountains, powerless\r\n To dure and dree the mighty forces there\r\n Of finite time?\u0026mdash;for they would never fall\r\n Rended asudden, if from infinite Past\r\n They had prevailed against all engin\u0027ries\r\n Of the assaulting aeons, with no crash.\r\n\r\n Again, now look at This, which round, above,\r\n Contains the whole earth in its one embrace:\r\n If from itself it procreates all things\u0026mdash;\r\n As some men tell\u0026mdash;and takes them to itself\r\n When once destroyed, entirely must it be\r\n Of mortal birth and body; for whate\u0027er\r\n From out itself giveth to other things\r\n Increase and food, the same perforce must be\r\n Minished, and then recruited when it takes\r\n Things back into itself.\r\n\r\n Besides all this,\r\n If there had been no origin-in-birth\r\n Of lands and sky, and they had ever been\r\n The everlasting, why, ere Theban war\r\n And obsequies of Troy, have other bards\r\n Not also chanted other high affairs?\r\n Whither have sunk so oft so many deeds\r\n Of heroes? Why do those deeds live no more,\r\n Ingrafted in eternal monuments\r\n Of glory? Verily, I guess, because\r\n The Sum is new, and of a recent date\r\n The nature of our universe, and had\r\n Not long ago its own exordium.\r\n Wherefore, even now some arts are being still\r\n Refined, still increased: now unto ships\r\n Is being added many a new device;\r\n And but the other day musician-folk\r\n Gave birth to melic sounds of organing;\r\n And, then, this nature, this account of things\r\n Hath been discovered latterly, and I\r\n Myself have been discovered only now,\r\n As first among the first, able to turn\r\n The same into ancestral Roman speech.\r\n Yet if, percase, thou deemest that ere this\r\n Existed all things even the same, but that\r\n Perished the cycles of the human race\r\n In fiery exhalations, or cities fell\r\n By some tremendous quaking of the world,\r\n Or rivers in fury, after constant rains,\r\n Had plunged forth across the lands of earth\r\n And whelmed the towns\u0026mdash;then, all the more must thou\r\n Confess, defeated by the argument,\r\n That there shall be annihilation too\r\n Of lands and sky. For at a time when things\r\n Were being taxed by maladies so great,\r\n And so great perils, if some cause more fell\r\n Had then assailed them, far and wide they would\r\n Have gone to disaster and supreme collapse.\r\n And by no other reasoning are we\r\n Seen to be mortal, save that all of us\r\n Sicken in turn with those same maladies\r\n With which have sickened in the past those men\r\n Whom nature hath removed from life.\r\n\r\n\u003c/pre\u003e\r\n\u003cpre\u003e\r\n gain,\r\n Whatever abides eternal must indeed\r\n Either repel all strokes, because \u0027tis made\r\n Of solid body, and permit no entrance\r\n Of aught with power to sunder from within\r\n The parts compact\u0026mdash;as are those seeds of stuff\r\n Whose nature we\u0027ve exhibited before;\r\n Or else be able to endure through time\r\n For this: because they are from blows exempt,\r\n As is the void, the which abides untouched,\r\n Unsmit by any stroke; or else because\r\n There is no room around, whereto things can,\r\n As \u0027twere, depart in dissolution all,\u0026mdash;\r\n Even as the sum of sums eternal is,\r\n Without or place beyond whereto things may\r\n Asunder fly, or bodies which can smite,\r\n And thus dissolve them by the blows of might.\r\n But not of solid body, as I\u0027ve shown,\r\n Exists the nature of the world, because\r\n In things is intermingled there a void;\r\n Nor is the world yet as the void, nor are,\r\n Moreover, bodies lacking which, percase,\r\n Rising from out the infinite, can fell\r\n With fury-whirlwinds all this sum of things,\r\n Or bring upon them other cataclysm\r\n Of peril strange; and yonder, too, abides\r\n The infinite space and the profound abyss\u0026mdash;\r\n Whereinto, lo, the ramparts of the world\r\n Can yet be shivered. Or some other power\r\n Can pound upon them till they perish all.\r\n Thus is the door of doom, O nowise barred\r\n Against the sky, against the sun and earth\r\n And deep-sea waters, but wide open stands\r\n And gloats upon them, monstrous and agape.\r\n Wherefore, again, \u0027tis needful to confess\r\n That these same things are born in time; for things\r\n Which are of mortal body could indeed\r\n Never from infinite past until to-day\r\n Have spurned the multitudinous assaults\r\n Of the immeasurable aeons old.\r\n\r\n Again, since battle so fiercely one with other\r\n The four most mighty members the world,\r\n Aroused in an all unholy war,\r\n Seest not that there may be for them an end\r\n Of the long strife?\u0026mdash;Or when the skiey sun\r\n And all the heat have won dominion o\u0027er\r\n The sucked-up waters all?\u0026mdash;And this they try\r\n Still to accomplish, though as yet they fail,\u0026mdash;\r\n For so aboundingly the streams supply\r\n New store of waters that \u0027tis rather they\r\n Who menace the world with inundations vast\r\n From forth the unplumbed chasms of the sea.\r\n But vain\u0026mdash;since winds (that over-sweep amain)\r\n And skiey sun (that with his rays dissolves)\r\n Do minish the level seas and trust their power\r\n To dry up all, before the waters can\r\n Arrive at the end of their endeavouring.\r\n Breathing such vasty warfare, they contend\r\n In balanced strife the one with other still\r\n Concerning mighty issues,\u0026mdash;though indeed\r\n The fire was once the more victorious,\r\n And once\u0026mdash;as goes the tale\u0026mdash;the water won\r\n A kingdom in the fields. For fire o\u0027ermastered\r\n And licked up many things and burnt away,\r\n What time the impetuous horses of the Sun\r\n Snatched Phaethon headlong from his skiey road\r\n Down the whole ether and over all the lands.\r\n But the omnipotent Father in keen wrath\r\n Then with the sudden smite of thunderbolt\r\n Did hurl the mighty-minded hero off\r\n Those horses to the earth. And Sol, his sire,\r\n Meeting him as he fell, caught up in hand\r\n The ever-blazing lampion of the world,\r\n And drave together the pell-mell horses there\r\n And yoked them all a-tremble, and amain,\r\n Steering them over along their own old road,\r\n Restored the cosmos,\u0026mdash;as forsooth we hear\r\n From songs of ancient poets of the Greeks\u0026mdash;\r\n A tale too far away from truth, meseems.\r\n For fire can win when from the infinite\r\n Has risen a larger throng of particles\r\n Of fiery stuff; and then its powers succumb,\r\n Somehow subdued again, or else at last\r\n It shrivels in torrid atmospheres the world.\r\n And whilom water too began to win\u0026mdash;\r\n As goes the story\u0026mdash;when it overwhelmed\r\n The lives of men with billows; and thereafter,\r\n When all that force of water-stuff which forth\r\n From out the infinite had risen up\r\n Did now retire, as somehow turned aside,\r\n The rain-storms stopped, and streams their fury checked.\r\n\u003c/pre\u003e\r\n\u003cpre\u003e\r\nFORMATION OF THE WORLD AND\r\n ASTRONOMICAL QUESTIONS\r\n\u003c/pre\u003e\r\n\u003cpre\u003e\r\n But in what modes that conflux of first-stuff\r\n Did found the multitudinous universe\r\n Of earth, and sky, and the unfathomed deeps\r\n Of ocean, and courses of the sun and moon,\r\n I\u0027ll now in order tell. For of a truth\r\n Neither by counsel did the primal germs\r\n \u0027Stablish themselves, as by keen act of mind,\r\n Each in its proper place; nor did they make,\r\n Forsooth, a compact how each germ should move;\r\n But, lo, because primordials of things,\r\n Many in many modes, astir by blows\r\n From immemorial aeons, in motion too\r\n By their own weights, have evermore been wont\r\n To be so borne along and in all modes\r\n To meet together and to try all sorts\r\n Which, by combining one with other, they\r\n Are powerful to create: because of this\r\n It comes to pass that those primordials,\r\n Diffused far and wide through mighty aeons,\r\n The while they unions try, and motions too,\r\n Of every kind, meet at the last amain,\r\n And so become oft the commencements fit\r\n Of mighty things\u0026mdash;earth, sea, and sky, and race\r\n Of living creatures.\r\n\r\n In that long-ago\r\n The wheel of the sun could nowhere be discerned\r\n Flying far up with its abounding blaze,\r\n Nor constellations of the mighty world,\r\n Nor ocean, nor heaven, nor even earth nor air.\r\n Nor aught of things like unto things of ours\r\n Could then be seen\u0026mdash;but only some strange storm\r\n And a prodigious hurly-burly mass\r\n Compounded of all kinds of primal germs,\r\n Whose battling discords in disorder kept\r\n Interstices, and paths, coherencies,\r\n And weights, and blows, encounterings, and motions,\r\n Because, by reason of their forms unlike\r\n And varied shapes, they could not all thuswise\r\n Remain conjoined nor harmoniously\r\n Have interplay of movements. But from there\r\n Portions began to fly asunder, and like\r\n With like to join, and to block out a world,\r\n And to divide its members and dispose\r\n Its mightier parts\u0026mdash;that is, to set secure\r\n The lofty heavens from the lands, and cause\r\n The sea to spread with waters separate,\r\n And fires of ether separate and pure\r\n Likewise to congregate apart.\r\n\r\n For, lo,\r\n First came together the earthy particles\r\n (As being heavy and intertangled) there\r\n In the mid-region, and all began to take\r\n The lowest abodes; and ever the more they got\r\n One with another intertangled, the more\r\n They pressed from out their mass those particles\r\n Which were to form the sea, the stars, the sun,\r\n And moon, and ramparts of the mighty world\u0026mdash;\r\n For these consist of seeds more smooth and round\r\n And of much smaller elements than earth.\r\n And thus it was that ether, fraught with fire,\r\n First broke away from out the earthen parts,\r\n Athrough the innumerable pores of earth,\r\n And raised itself aloft, and with itself\r\n Bore lightly off the many starry fires;\r\n And not far otherwise we often see\r\n\r\n\u003c/pre\u003e\r\n \u003chr \u003e\r\n\u003cpre\u003e\r\n And the still lakes and the perennial streams\r\n Exhale a mist, and even as earth herself\r\n Is seen at times to smoke, when first at dawn\r\n The light of the sun, the many-rayed, begins\r\n To redden into gold, over the grass\r\n Begemmed with dew. When all of these are brought\r\n Together overhead, the clouds on high\r\n With now concreted body weave a cover\r\n Beneath the heavens. And thuswise ether too,\r\n Light and diffusive, with concreted body\r\n On all sides spread, on all sides bent itself\r\n Into a dome, and, far and wide diffused\r\n On unto every region on all sides,\r\n Thus hedged all else within its greedy clasp.\r\n Hard upon ether came the origins\r\n Of sun and moon, whose globes revolve in air\r\n Midway between the earth and mightiest ether,\u0026mdash;\r\n For neither took them, since they weighed too little\r\n To sink and settle, but too much to glide\r\n Along the upmost shores; and yet they are\r\n In such a wise midway between the twain\r\n As ever to whirl their living bodies round,\r\n And ever to dure as parts of the wide Whole;\r\n In the same fashion as certain members may\r\n In us remain at rest, whilst others move.\r\n When, then, these substances had been withdrawn,\r\n Amain the earth, where now extend the vast\r\n Cerulean zones of all the level seas,\r\n Caved in, and down along the hollows poured\r\n The whirlpools of her brine; and day by day\r\n The more the tides of ether and rays of sun\r\n On every side constrained into one mass\r\n The earth by lashing it again, again,\r\n Upon its outer edges (so that then,\r\n Being thus beat upon, \u0027twas all condensed\r\n About its proper centre), ever the more\r\n The salty sweat, from out its body squeezed,\r\n Augmented ocean and the fields of foam\r\n By seeping through its frame, and all the more\r\n Those many particles of heat and air\r\n Escaping, began to fly aloft, and form,\r\n By condensation there afar from earth,\r\n The high refulgent circuits of the heavens.\r\n The plains began to sink, and windy slopes\r\n Of the high mountains to increase; for rocks\r\n Could not subside, nor all the parts of ground\r\n Settle alike to one same level there.\r\n\r\n Thus, then, the massy weight of earth stood firm\r\n With now concreted body, when (as \u0027twere)\r\n All of the slime of the world, heavy and gross,\r\n Had run together and settled at the bottom,\r\n Like lees or bilge. Then ocean, then the air,\r\n Then ether herself, the fraught-with-fire, were all\r\n Left with their liquid bodies pure and free,\r\n And each more lighter than the next below;\r\n And ether, most light and liquid of the three,\r\n Floats on above the long aerial winds,\r\n Nor with the brawling of the winds of air\r\n Mingles its liquid body. It doth leave\r\n All there\u0026mdash;those under-realms below her heights\u0026mdash;\r\n There to be overset in whirlwinds wild,\u0026mdash;\r\n Doth leave all there to brawl in wayward gusts,\r\n Whilst, gliding with a fixed impulse still,\r\n Itself it bears its fires along. For, lo,\r\n That ether can flow thus steadily on, on,\r\n With one unaltered urge, the Pontus proves\u0026mdash;\r\n That sea which floweth forth with fixed tides,\r\n Keeping one onward tenor as it glides.\r\n\r\n And that the earth may there abide at rest\r\n In the mid-region of the world, it needs\r\n Must vanish bit by bit in weight and lessen,\r\n And have another substance underneath,\r\n Conjoined to it from its earliest age\r\n In linked unison with the vasty world\u0027s\r\n Realms of the air in which it roots and lives.\r\n On this account, the earth is not a load,\r\n Nor presses down on winds of air beneath;\r\n Even as unto a man his members be\r\n Without all weight\u0026mdash;the head is not a load\r\n Unto the neck; nor do we feel the whole\r\n Weight of the body to centre in the feet.\r\n But whatso weights come on us from without,\r\n Weights laid upon us, these harass and chafe,\r\n Though often far lighter. For to such degree\r\n It matters always what the innate powers\r\n Of any given thing may be. The earth\r\n Was, then, no alien substance fetched amain,\r\n And from no alien firmament cast down\r\n On alien air; but was conceived, like air,\r\n In the first origin of this the world,\r\n As a fixed portion of the same, as now\r\n Our members are seen to be a part of us.\r\n\r\n Besides, the earth, when of a sudden shook\r\n By the big thunder, doth with her motion shake\r\n All that\u0027s above her\u0026mdash;which she ne\u0027er could do\r\n By any means, were earth not bounden fast\r\n Unto the great world\u0027s realms of air and sky:\r\n For they cohere together with common roots,\r\n Conjoined both, even from their earliest age,\r\n In linked unison. Aye, seest thou not\r\n That this most subtle energy of soul\r\n Supports our body, though so heavy a weight,\u0026mdash;\r\n Because, indeed, \u0027tis with it so conjoined\r\n In linked unison? What power, in sum,\r\n Can raise with agile leap our body aloft,\r\n Save energy of mind which steers the limbs?\r\n Now seest thou not how powerful may be\r\n A subtle nature, when conjoined it is\r\n With heavy body, as air is with the earth\r\n Conjoined, and energy of mind with us?\r\n\r\n Now let us sing what makes the stars to move.\r\n In first place, if the mighty sphere of heaven\r\n Revolveth round, then needs we must aver\r\n That on the upper and the under pole\r\n Presses a certain air, and from without\r\n Confines them and encloseth at each end;\r\n And that, moreover, another air above\r\n Streams on athwart the top of the sphere and tends\r\n In same direction as are rolled along\r\n The glittering stars of the eternal world;\r\n Or that another still streams on below\r\n To whirl the sphere from under up and on\r\n In opposite direction\u0026mdash;as we see\r\n The rivers turn the wheels and water-scoops.\r\n It may be also that the heavens do all\r\n Remain at rest, whilst yet are borne along\r\n The lucid constellations; either because\r\n Swift tides of ether are by sky enclosed,\r\n And whirl around, seeking a passage out,\r\n And everywhere make roll the starry fires\r\n Through the Summanian regions of the sky;\r\n Or else because some air, streaming along\r\n From an eternal quarter off beyond,\r\n Whileth the driven fires, or, then, because\r\n The fires themselves have power to creep along,\r\n Going wherever their food invites and calls,\r\n And feeding their flaming bodies everywhere\r\n Throughout the sky. Yet which of these is cause\r\n In this our world \u0027tis hard to say for sure;\r\n But what can be throughout the universe,\r\n In divers worlds on divers plan create,\r\n This only do I show, and follow on\r\n To assign unto the motions of the stars\r\n Even several causes which \u0027tis possible\r\n Exist throughout the universal All;\r\n Of which yet one must be the cause even here\r\n Which maketh motion for our constellations.\r\n Yet to decide which one of them it be\r\n Is not the least the business of a man\r\n Advancing step by cautious step, as I.\r\n\r\n Nor can the sun\u0027s wheel larger be by much\r\n Nor its own blaze much less than either seems\r\n Unto our senses. For from whatso spaces\r\n Fires have the power on us to cast their beams\r\n And blow their scorching exhalations forth\r\n Against our members, those same distances\r\n Take nothing by those intervals away\r\n From bulk of flames; and to the sight the fire\r\n Is nothing shrunken. Therefore, since the heat\r\n And the outpoured light of skiey sun\r\n Arrive our senses and caress our limbs,\r\n Form too and bigness of the sun must look\r\n Even here from earth just as they really be,\r\n So that thou canst scarce nothing take or add.\r\n And whether the journeying moon illuminate\r\n The regions round with bastard beams, or throw\r\n From off her proper body her own light,\u0026mdash;\r\n Whichever it be, she journeys with a form\r\n Naught larger than the form doth seem to be\r\n Which we with eyes of ours perceive. For all\r\n The far removed objects of our gaze\r\n Seem through much air confused in their look\r\n Ere minished in their bigness. Wherefore, moon,\r\n Since she presents bright look and clear-cut form,\r\n May there on high by us on earth be seen\r\n Just as she is with extreme bounds defined,\r\n And just of the size. And lastly, whatso fires\r\n Of ether thou from earth beholdest, these\r\n Thou mayst consider as possibly of size\r\n The least bit less, or larger by a hair\r\n Than they appear\u0026mdash;since whatso fires we view\r\n Here in the lands of earth are seen to change\r\n From time to time their size to less or more\r\n Only the least, when more or less away,\r\n So long as still they bicker clear, and still\r\n Their glow\u0027s perceived.\r\n\r\n Nor need there be for men\r\n Astonishment that yonder sun so small\r\n Can yet send forth so great a light as fills\r\n Oceans and all the lands and sky aflood,\r\n And with its fiery exhalations steeps\r\n The world at large. For it may be, indeed,\r\n That one vast-flowing well-spring of the whole\r\n Wide world from here hath opened and out-gushed,\r\n And shot its light abroad; because thuswise\r\n The elements of fiery exhalations\r\n From all the world around together come,\r\n And thuswise flow into a bulk so big\r\n That from one single fountain-head may stream\r\n This heat and light. And seest thou not, indeed,\r\n How widely one small water-spring may wet\r\n The meadow-lands at times and flood the fields?\r\n \u0027Tis even possible, besides, that heat\r\n From forth the sun\u0027s own fire, albeit that fire\r\n Be not a great, may permeate the air\r\n With the fierce hot\u0026mdash;if but, perchance, the air\r\n Be of condition and so tempered then\r\n As to be kindled, even when beat upon\r\n Only by little particles of heat\u0026mdash;\r\n Just as we sometimes see the standing grain\r\n Or stubble straw in conflagration all\r\n From one lone spark. And possibly the sun,\r\n Agleam on high with rosy lampion,\r\n Possesses about him with invisible heats\r\n A plenteous fire, by no effulgence marked,\r\n So that he maketh, he, the Fraught-with-fire,\r\n Increase to such degree the force of rays.\r\n\r\n Nor is there one sure cause revealed to men\r\n How the sun journeys from his summer haunts\r\n On to the mid-most winter turning-points\r\n In Capricorn, the thence reverting veers\r\n Back to solstitial goals of Cancer; nor\r\n How \u0027tis the moon is seen each month to cross\r\n That very distance which in traversing\r\n The sun consumes the measure of a year.\r\n I say, no one clear reason hath been given\r\n For these affairs. Yet chief in likelihood\r\n Seemeth the doctrine which the holy thought\r\n Of great Democritus lays down: that ever\r\n The nearer the constellations be to earth\r\n The less can they by whirling of the sky\r\n Be borne along, because those skiey powers\r\n Of speed aloft do vanish and decrease\r\n In under-regions, and the sun is thus\r\n Left by degrees behind amongst those signs\r\n That follow after, since the sun he lies\r\n Far down below the starry signs that blaze;\r\n And the moon lags even tardier than the sun:\r\n In just so far as is her course removed\r\n From upper heaven and nigh unto the lands,\r\n In just so far she fails to keep the pace\r\n With starry signs above; for just so far\r\n As feebler is the whirl that bears her on,\r\n (Being, indeed, still lower than the sun),\r\n In just so far do all the starry signs,\r\n Circling around, o\u0027ertake her and o\u0027erpass.\r\n Therefore it happens that the moon appears\r\n More swiftly to return to any sign\r\n Along the Zodiac, than doth the sun,\r\n Because those signs do visit her again\r\n More swiftly than they visit the great sun.\r\n It can be also that two streams of air\r\n Alternately at fixed periods\r\n Blow out from transverse regions of the world,\r\n Of which the one may thrust the sun away\r\n From summer-signs to mid-most winter goals\r\n And rigors of the cold, and the other then\r\n May cast him back from icy shades of chill\r\n Even to the heat-fraught regions and the signs\r\n That blaze along the Zodiac. So, too,\r\n We must suppose the moon and all the stars,\r\n Which through the mighty and sidereal years\r\n Roll round in mighty orbits, may be sped\r\n By streams of air from regions alternate.\r\n Seest thou not also how the clouds be sped\r\n By contrary winds to regions contrary,\r\n The lower clouds diversely from the upper?\r\n Then, why may yonder stars in ether there\r\n Along their mighty orbits not be borne\r\n By currents opposite the one to other?\r\n\r\n But night o\u0027erwhelms the lands with vasty murk\r\n Either when sun, after his diurnal course,\r\n Hath walked the ultimate regions of the sky\r\n And wearily hath panted forth his fires,\r\n Shivered by their long journeying and wasted\r\n By traversing the multitudinous air,\r\n Or else because the self-same force that drave\r\n His orb along above the lands compels\r\n Him then to turn his course beneath the lands.\r\n Matuta also at a fixed hour\r\n Spreadeth the roseate morning out along\r\n The coasts of heaven and deploys the light,\r\n Either because the self-same sun, returning\r\n Under the lands, aspires to seize the sky,\r\n Striving to set it blazing with his rays\r\n Ere he himself appear, or else because\r\n Fires then will congregate and many seeds\r\n Of heat are wont, even at a fixed time,\r\n To stream together\u0026mdash;gendering evermore\r\n New suns and light. Just so the story goes\r\n That from the Idaean mountain-tops are seen\r\n Dispersed fires upon the break of day\r\n Which thence combine, as \u0027twere, into one ball\r\n And form an orb. Nor yet in these affairs\r\n Is aught for wonder that these seeds of fire\r\n Can thus together stream at time so fixed\r\n And shape anew the splendour of the sun.\r\n For many facts we see which come to pass\r\n At fixed time in all things: burgeon shrubs\r\n At fixed time, and at a fixed time\r\n They cast their flowers; and Eld commands the teeth,\r\n At time as surely fixed, to drop away,\r\n And Youth commands the growing boy to bloom\r\n With the soft down and let from both his cheeks\r\n The soft beard fall. And lastly, thunder-bolts,\r\n Snow, rains, clouds, winds, at seasons of the year\r\n Nowise unfixed, all do come to pass.\r\n For where, even from their old primordial start\r\n Causes have ever worked in such a way,\r\n And where, even from the world\u0027s first origin,\r\n Thuswise have things befallen, so even now\r\n After a fixed order they come round\r\n In sequence also.\r\n\r\n Likewise, days may wax\r\n Whilst the nights wane, and daylight minished be\r\n Whilst nights do take their augmentations,\r\n Either because the self-same sun, coursing\r\n Under the lands and over in two arcs,\r\n A longer and a briefer, doth dispart\r\n The coasts of ether and divides in twain\r\n His orbit all unequally, and adds,\r\n As round he\u0027s borne, unto the one half there\r\n As much as from the other half he\u0027s ta\u0027en,\r\n Until he then arrives that sign of heaven\r\n Where the year\u0027s node renders the shades of night\r\n Equal unto the periods of light.\r\n For when the sun is midway on his course\r\n Between the blasts of northwind and of south,\r\n Heaven keeps his two goals parted equally,\r\n By virtue of the fixed position old\r\n Of the whole starry Zodiac, through which\r\n That sun, in winding onward, takes a year,\r\n Illumining the sky and all the lands\r\n With oblique light\u0026mdash;as men declare to us\r\n Who by their diagrams have charted well\r\n Those regions of the sky which be adorned\r\n With the arranged signs of Zodiac.\r\n Or else, because in certain parts the air\r\n Under the lands is denser, the tremulous\r\n Bright beams of fire do waver tardily,\r\n Nor easily can penetrate that air\r\n Nor yet emerge unto their rising-place:\r\n For this it is that nights in winter time\r\n Do linger long, ere comes the many-rayed\r\n Round Badge of the day. Or else because, as said,\r\n In alternating seasons of the year\r\n Fires, now more quick, and now more slow, are wont\r\n To stream together,\u0026mdash;the fires which make the sun\r\n To rise in some one spot\u0026mdash;therefore it is\r\n That those men seem to speak the truth [who hold\r\n A new sun is with each new daybreak born].\r\n\r\n The moon she possibly doth shine because\r\n Strook by the rays of sun, and day by day\r\n May turn unto our gaze her light, the more\r\n She doth recede from orb of sun, until,\r\n Facing him opposite across the world,\r\n She hath with full effulgence gleamed abroad,\r\n And, at her rising as she soars above,\r\n Hath there observed his setting; thence likewise\r\n She needs must hide, as \u0027twere, her light behind\r\n By slow degrees, the nearer now she glides,\r\n Along the circle of the Zodiac,\r\n From her far place toward fires of yonder sun,\u0026mdash;\r\n As those men hold who feign the moon to be\r\n Just like a ball and to pursue a course\r\n Betwixt the sun and earth. There is, again,\r\n Some reason to suppose that moon may roll\r\n With light her very own, and thus display\r\n The varied shapes of her resplendence there.\r\n For near her is, percase, another body,\r\n Invisible, because devoid of light,\r\n Borne on and gliding all along with her,\r\n Which in three modes may block and blot her disk.\r\n Again, she may revolve upon herself,\r\n Like to a ball\u0027s sphere\u0026mdash;if perchance that be\u0026mdash;\r\n One half of her dyed o\u0027er with glowing light,\r\n And by the revolution of that sphere\r\n She may beget for us her varying shapes,\r\n Until she turns that fiery part of her\r\n Full to the sight and open eyes of men;\r\n Thence by slow stages round and back she whirls,\r\n Withdrawing thus the luminiferous part\r\n Of her sphered mass and ball, as, verily,\r\n The Babylonian doctrine of Chaldees,\r\n Refuting the art of Greek astrologers,\r\n Labours, in opposition, to prove sure\u0026mdash;\r\n As if, forsooth, the thing for which each fights,\r\n Might not alike be true,\u0026mdash;or aught there were\r\n Wherefore thou mightest risk embracing one\r\n More than the other notion. Then, again,\r\n Why a new moon might not forevermore\r\n Created be with fixed successions there\r\n Of shapes and with configurations fixed,\r\n And why each day that bright created moon\r\n Might not miscarry and another be,\r\n In its stead and place, engendered anew,\r\n \u0027Tis hard to show by reason, or by words\r\n To prove absurd\u0026mdash;since, lo, so many things\r\n Can be create with fixed successions:\r\n Spring-time and Venus come, and Venus\u0027 boy,\r\n The winged harbinger, steps on before,\r\n And hard on Zephyr\u0027s foot-prints Mother Flora,\r\n Sprinkling the ways before them, filleth all\r\n With colours and with odours excellent;\r\n Whereafter follows arid Heat, and he\r\n Companioned is by Ceres, dusty one,\r\n And by the Etesian Breezes of the north;\r\n Then cometh Autumn on, and with him steps\r\n Lord Bacchus, and then other Seasons too\r\n And other Winds do follow\u0026mdash;the high roar\r\n Of great Volturnus, and the Southwind strong\r\n With thunder-bolts. At last earth\u0027s Shortest-Day\r\n Bears on to men the snows and brings again\r\n The numbing cold. And Winter follows her,\r\n His teeth with chills a-chatter. Therefore, \u0027tis\r\n The less a marvel, if at fixed time\r\n A moon is thus begotten and again\r\n At fixed time destroyed, since things so many\r\n Can come to being thus at fixed time.\r\n Likewise, the sun\u0027s eclipses and the moon\u0027s\r\n Far occultations rightly thou mayst deem\r\n\r\n As due to several causes. For, indeed,\r\n Why should the moon be able to shut out\r\n Earth from the light of sun, and on the side\r\n To earthward thrust her high head under sun,\r\n Opposing dark orb to his glowing beams\u0026mdash;\r\n And yet, at same time, one suppose the effect\r\n Could not result from some one other body\r\n Which glides devoid of light forevermore?\r\n Again, why could not sun, in weakened state,\r\n At fixed time for-lose his fires, and then,\r\n When he has passed on along the air\r\n Beyond the regions, hostile to his flames,\r\n That quench and kill his fires, why could not he\r\n Renew his light? And why should earth in turn\r\n Have power to rob the moon of light, and there,\r\n Herself on high, keep the sun hid beneath,\r\n Whilst the moon glideth in her monthly course\r\n Athrough the rigid shadows of the cone?\u0026mdash;\r\n And yet, at same time, some one other body\r\n Not have the power to under-pass the moon,\r\n Or glide along above the orb of sun,\r\n Breaking his rays and outspread light asunder?\r\n And still, if moon herself refulgent be\r\n With her own sheen, why could she not at times\r\n In some one quarter of the mighty world\r\n Grow weak and weary, whilst she passeth through\r\n Regions unfriendly to the beams her own?\r\n\u003c/pre\u003e\r\n \u003cp\u003e\r\n \u003ca id=\"link2H_4_0027\"\u003e\r\n \u003c!– H2 anchor –\u003e \u003c/a\u003e\r\n \u003c/p\u003e\r\n \u003cdiv style=\"height: 4em;\"\u003e\r\n \u003cbr \u003e\u003cbr \u003e\u003cbr \u003e\u003cbr \u003e\r\n \u003c/div\u003e\r\n \u003ch2\u003e\r\n ORIGINS OF VEGETABLE AND ANIMAL LIFE\r\n \u003c/h2\u003e\r\n\u003cpre\u003e\r\n And now to what remains!\u0026mdash;Since I\u0027ve resolved\r\n By what arrangements all things come to pass\r\n Through the blue regions of the mighty world,\u0026mdash;\r\n How we can know what energy and cause\r\n Started the various courses of the sun\r\n And the moon\u0027s goings, and by what far means\r\n They can succumb, the while with thwarted light,\r\n And veil with shade the unsuspecting lands,\r\n When, as it were, they blink, and then again\r\n With open eye survey all regions wide,\r\n Resplendent with white radiance\u0026mdash;I do now\r\n Return unto the world\u0027s primeval age\r\n And tell what first the soft young fields of earth\r\n With earliest parturition had decreed\r\n To raise in air unto the shores of light\r\n And to entrust unto the wayward winds.\r\n In the beginning, earth gave forth, around\r\n The hills and over all the length of plains,\r\n The race of grasses and the shining green;\r\n The flowery meadows sparkled all aglow\r\n With greening colour, and thereafter, lo,\r\n Unto the divers kinds of trees was given\r\n An emulous impulse mightily to shoot,\r\n With a free rein, aloft into the air.\r\n As feathers and hairs and bristles are begot\r\n The first on members of the four-foot breeds\r\n And on the bodies of the strong-y-winged,\r\n Thus then the new Earth first of all put forth\r\n Grasses and shrubs, and afterward begat\r\n The mortal generations, there upsprung\u0026mdash;\r\n Innumerable in modes innumerable\u0026mdash;\r\n After diverging fashions. For from sky\r\n These breathing-creatures never can have dropped,\r\n Nor the land-dwellers ever have come up\r\n Out of sea-pools of salt. How true remains,\r\n How merited is that adopted name\r\n Of earth\u0026mdash;\"The Mother!\"\u0026mdash;since from out the earth\r\n Are all begotten. And even now arise\r\n From out the loams how many living things\u0026mdash;\r\n Concreted by the rains and heat of the sun.\r\n Wherefore \u0027tis less a marvel, if they sprang\r\n In Long Ago more many, and more big,\r\n Matured of those days in the fresh young years\r\n Of earth and ether. First of all, the race\r\n Of the winged ones and parti-coloured birds,\r\n Hatched out in spring-time, left their eggs behind;\r\n As now-a-days in summer tree-crickets\r\n Do leave their shiny husks of own accord,\r\n Seeking their food and living. Then it was\r\n This earth of thine first gave unto the day\r\n The mortal generations; for prevailed\r\n Among the fields abounding hot and wet.\r\n And hence, where any fitting spot was given,\r\n There \u0027gan to grow womb-cavities, by roots\r\n Affixed to earth. And when in ripened time\r\n The age of the young within (that sought the air\r\n And fled earth\u0027s damps) had burst these wombs, O then\r\n Would Nature thither turn the pores of earth\r\n And make her spurt from open veins a juice\r\n Like unto milk; even as a woman now\r\n Is filled, at child-bearing, with the sweet milk,\r\n Because all that swift stream of aliment\r\n Is thither turned unto the mother-breasts.\r\n There earth would furnish to the children food;\r\n Warmth was their swaddling cloth, the grass their bed\r\n Abounding in soft down. Earth\u0027s newness then\r\n Would rouse no dour spells of the bitter cold,\r\n Nor extreme heats nor winds of mighty powers\u0026mdash;\r\n For all things grow and gather strength through time\r\n In like proportions; and then earth was young.\r\n\r\n Wherefore, again, again, how merited\r\n Is that adopted name of Earth\u0026mdash;The Mother!\u0026mdash;\r\n Since she herself begat the human race,\r\n And at one well-nigh fixed time brought forth\r\n Each breast that ranges raving round about\r\n Upon the mighty mountains and all birds\r\n Aerial with many a varied shape.\r\n But, lo, because her bearing years must end,\r\n She ceased, like to a woman worn by eld.\r\n For lapsing aeons change the nature of\r\n The whole wide world, and all things needs must take\r\n One status after other, nor aught persists\r\n Forever like itself. All things depart;\r\n Nature she changeth all, compelleth all\r\n To transformation. Lo, this moulders down,\r\n A-slack with weary eld, and that, again,\r\n Prospers in glory, issuing from contempt.\r\n In suchwise, then, the lapsing aeons change\r\n The nature of the whole wide world, and earth\r\n Taketh one status after other. And what\r\n She bore of old, she now can bear no longer,\r\n And what she never bore, she can to-day.\r\n\r\n In those days also the telluric world\r\n Strove to beget the monsters that upsprung\r\n With their astounding visages and limbs\u0026mdash;\r\n The Man-woman\u0026mdash;a thing betwixt the twain,\r\n Yet neither, and from either sex remote\u0026mdash;\r\n Some gruesome Boggles orphaned of the feet,\r\n Some widowed of the hands, dumb Horrors too\r\n Without a mouth, or blind Ones of no eye,\r\n Or Bulks all shackled by their legs and arms\r\n Cleaving unto the body fore and aft,\r\n Thuswise, that never could they do or go,\r\n Nor shun disaster, nor take the good they would.\r\n And other prodigies and monsters earth\r\n Was then begetting of this sort\u0026mdash;in vain,\r\n Since Nature banned with horror their increase,\r\n And powerless were they to reach unto\r\n The coveted flower of fair maturity,\r\n Or to find aliment, or to intertwine\r\n In works of Venus. For we see there must\r\n Concur in life conditions manifold,\r\n If life is ever by begetting life\r\n To forge the generations one by one:\r\n First, foods must be; and, next, a path whereby\r\n The seeds of impregnation in the frame\r\n May ooze, released from the members all;\r\n Last, the possession of those instruments\r\n Whereby the male with female can unite,\r\n The one with other in mutual ravishments.\r\n\r\n And in the ages after monsters died,\r\n Perforce there perished many a stock, unable\r\n By propagation to forge a progeny.\r\n For whatsoever creatures thou beholdest\r\n Breathing the breath of life, the same have been\r\n Even from their earliest age preserved alive\r\n By cunning, or by valour, or at least\r\n By speed of foot or wing. And many a stock\r\n Remaineth yet, because of use to man,\r\n And so committed to man\u0027s guardianship.\r\n Valour hath saved alive fierce lion-breeds\r\n And many another terrorizing race,\r\n Cunning the foxes, flight the antlered stags.\r\n Light-sleeping dogs with faithful heart in breast,\r\n However, and every kind begot from seed\r\n Of beasts of draft, as, too, the woolly flocks\r\n And horned cattle, all, my Memmius,\r\n Have been committed to guardianship of men.\r\n For anxiously they fled the savage beasts,\r\n And peace they sought and their abundant foods,\r\n Obtained with never labours of their own,\r\n Which we secure to them as fit rewards\r\n For their good service. But those beasts to whom\r\n Nature has granted naught of these same things\u0026mdash;\r\n Beasts quite unfit by own free will to thrive\r\n And vain for any service unto us\r\n In thanks for which we should permit their kind\r\n To feed and be in our protection safe\u0026mdash;\r\n Those, of a truth, were wont to be exposed,\r\n Enshackled in the gruesome bonds of doom,\r\n As prey and booty for the rest, until\r\n Nature reduced that stock to utter death.\r\n\r\n But Centaurs ne\u0027er have been, nor can there be\r\n Creatures of twofold stock and double frame,\r\n Compact of members alien in kind,\r\n Yet formed with equal function, equal force\r\n In every bodily part\u0026mdash;a fact thou mayst,\r\n However dull thy wits, well learn from this:\r\n The horse, when his three years have rolled away,\r\n Flowers in his prime of vigour; but the boy\r\n Not so, for oft even then he gropes in sleep\r\n After the milky nipples of the breasts,\r\n An infant still. And later, when at last\r\n The lusty powers of horses and stout limbs,\r\n Now weak through lapsing life, do fail with age,\r\n Lo, only then doth youth with flowering years\r\n Begin for boys, and clothe their ruddy cheeks\r\n With the soft down. So never deem, percase,\r\n That from a man and from the seed of horse,\r\n The beast of draft, can Centaurs be composed\r\n Or e\u0027er exist alive, nor Scyllas be\u0026mdash;\r\n The half-fish bodies girdled with mad dogs\u0026mdash;\r\n Nor others of this sort, in whom we mark\r\n Members discordant each with each; for ne\u0027er\r\n At one same time they reach their flower of age\r\n Or gain and lose full vigour of their frame,\r\n And never burn with one same lust of love,\r\n And never in their habits they agree,\r\n Nor find the same foods equally delightsome\u0026mdash;\r\n Sooth, as one oft may see the bearded goats\r\n Batten upon the hemlock which to man\r\n Is violent poison. Once again, since flame\r\n Is wont to scorch and burn the tawny bulks\r\n Of the great lions as much as other kinds\r\n Of flesh and blood existing in the lands,\r\n How could it be that she, Chimaera lone,\r\n With triple body\u0026mdash;fore, a lion she;\r\n And aft, a dragon; and betwixt, a goat\u0026mdash;\r\n Might at the mouth from out the body belch\r\n Infuriate flame? Wherefore, the man who feigns\r\n Such beings could have been engendered\r\n When earth was new and the young sky was fresh\r\n (Basing his empty argument on new)\r\n May babble with like reason many whims\r\n Into our ears: he\u0027ll say, perhaps, that then\r\n Rivers of gold through every landscape flowed,\r\n That trees were wont with precious stones to flower,\r\n Or that in those far aeons man was born\r\n With such gigantic length and lift of limbs\r\n As to be able, based upon his feet,\r\n Deep oceans to bestride or with his hands\r\n To whirl the firmament around his head.\r\n For though in earth were many seeds of things\r\n In the old time when this telluric world\r\n First poured the breeds of animals abroad,\r\n Still that is nothing of a sign that then\r\n Such hybrid creatures could have been begot\r\n And limbs of all beasts heterogeneous\r\n Have been together knit; because, indeed,\r\n The divers kinds of grasses and the grains\r\n And the delightsome trees\u0026mdash;which even now\r\n Spring up abounding from within the earth\u0026mdash;\r\n Can still ne\u0027er be begotten with their stems\r\n Begrafted into one; but each sole thing\r\n Proceeds according to its proper wont\r\n And all conserve their own distinctions based\r\n In nature\u0027s fixed decree.\r\n\u003c/pre\u003e\r\n \u003cp\u003e\r\n \u003ca id=\"link2H_4_0028\"\u003e\r\n \u003c!– H2 anchor –\u003e \u003c/a\u003e\r\n \u003c/p\u003e\r\n \u003cdiv style=\"height: 4em;\"\u003e\r\n \u003cbr \u003e\u003cbr \u003e\u003cbr \u003e\u003cbr \u003e\r\n \u003c/div\u003e\r\n \u003ch2\u003e\r\n ORIGINS AND SAVAGE PERIOD OF MANKIND\r\n \u003c/h2\u003e\r\n\u003cpre\u003e\r\n But mortal man\r\n Was then far hardier in the old champaign,\r\n As well he should be, since a hardier earth\r\n Had him begotten; builded too was he\r\n Of bigger and more solid bones within,\r\n And knit with stalwart sinews through the flesh,\r\n Nor easily seized by either heat or cold,\r\n Or alien food or any ail or irk.\r\n And whilst so many lustrums of the sun\r\n Rolled on across the sky, men led a life\r\n After the roving habit of wild beasts.\r\n Not then were sturdy guiders of curved ploughs,\r\n And none knew then to work the fields with iron,\r\n Or plant young shoots in holes of delved loam,\r\n Or lop with hooked knives from off high trees\r\n The boughs of yester-year. What sun and rains\r\n To them had given, what earth of own accord\r\n Created then, was boon enough to glad\r\n Their simple hearts. Mid acorn-laden oaks\r\n Would they refresh their bodies for the nonce;\r\n And the wild berries of the arbute-tree,\r\n Which now thou seest to ripen purple-red\r\n In winter time, the old telluric soil\r\n Would bear then more abundant and more big.\r\n And many coarse foods, too, in long ago\r\n The blooming freshness of the rank young world\r\n Produced, enough for those poor wretches there.\r\n And rivers and springs would summon them of old\r\n To slake the thirst, as now from the great hills\r\n The water\u0027s down-rush calls aloud and far\r\n The thirsty generations of the wild.\r\n So, too, they sought the grottos of the Nymphs\u0026mdash;\r\n The woodland haunts discovered as they ranged\u0026mdash;\r\n From forth of which they knew that gliding rills\r\n With gush and splash abounding laved the rocks,\r\n The dripping rocks, and trickled from above\r\n Over the verdant moss; and here and there\r\n Welled up and burst across the open flats.\r\n As yet they knew not to enkindle fire\r\n Against the cold, nor hairy pelts to use\r\n And clothe their bodies with the spoils of beasts;\r\n But huddled in groves, and mountain-caves, and woods,\r\n And \u0027mongst the thickets hid their squalid backs,\r\n When driven to flee the lashings of the winds\r\n And the big rains. Nor could they then regard\r\n The general good, nor did they know to use\r\n In common any customs, any laws:\r\n Whatever of booty fortune unto each\r\n Had proffered, each alone would bear away,\r\n By instinct trained for self to thrive and live.\r\n And Venus in the forests then would link\r\n The lovers\u0027 bodies; for the woman yielded\r\n Either from mutual flame, or from the man\u0027s\r\n Impetuous fury and insatiate lust,\r\n Or from a bribe\u0026mdash;as acorn-nuts, choice pears,\r\n Or the wild berries of the arbute-tree.\r\n And trusting wondrous strength of hands and legs,\r\n They\u0027d chase the forest-wanderers, the beasts;\r\n And many they\u0027d conquer, but some few they fled,\r\n A-skulk into their hiding-places…\r\n\r\n\u003c/pre\u003e\r\n \u003chr \u003e\r\n\u003cpre\u003e\r\n With the flung stones and with the ponderous heft\r\n Of gnarled branch. And by the time of night\r\n O\u0027ertaken, they would throw, like bristly boars,\r\n Their wildman\u0027s limbs naked upon the earth,\r\n Rolling themselves in leaves and fronded boughs.\r\n Nor would they call with lamentations loud\r\n Around the fields for daylight and the sun,\r\n Quaking and wand\u0027ring in shadows of the night;\r\n But, silent and buried in a sleep, they\u0027d wait\r\n Until the sun with rosy flambeau brought\r\n The glory to the sky. From childhood wont\r\n Ever to see the dark and day begot\r\n In times alternate, never might they be\r\n Wildered by wild misgiving, lest a night\r\n Eternal should possess the lands, with light\r\n Of sun withdrawn forever. But their care\r\n Was rather that the clans of savage beasts\r\n Would often make their sleep-time horrible\r\n For those poor wretches; and, from home y-driven,\r\n They\u0027d flee their rocky shelters at approach\r\n Of boar, the spumy-lipped, or lion strong,\r\n And in the midnight yield with terror up\r\n To those fierce guests their beds of out-spread leaves.\r\n\r\n And yet in those days not much more than now\r\n Would generations of mortality\r\n Leave the sweet light of fading life behind.\r\n Indeed, in those days here and there a man,\r\n More oftener snatched upon, and gulped by fangs,\r\n Afforded the beasts a food that roared alive,\r\n Echoing through groves and hills and forest-trees,\r\n Even as he viewed his living flesh entombed\r\n Within a living grave; whilst those whom flight\r\n Had saved, with bone and body bitten, shrieked,\r\n Pressing their quivering palms to loathsome sores,\r\n With horrible voices for eternal death\u0026mdash;\r\n Until, forlorn of help, and witless what\r\n Might medicine their wounds, the writhing pangs\r\n Took them from life. But not in those far times\r\n Would one lone day give over unto doom\r\n A soldiery in thousands marching on\r\n Beneath the battle-banners, nor would then\r\n The ramping breakers of the main seas dash\r\n Whole argosies and crews upon the rocks.\r\n But ocean uprisen would often rave in vain,\r\n Without all end or outcome, and give up\r\n Its empty menacings as lightly too;\r\n Nor soft seductions of a serene sea\r\n Could lure by laughing billows any man\r\n Out to disaster: for the science bold\r\n Of ship-sailing lay dark in those far times.\r\n Again, \u0027twas then that lack of food gave o\u0027er\r\n Men\u0027s fainting limbs to dissolution: now\r\n \u0027Tis plenty overwhelms. Unwary, they\r\n Oft for themselves themselves would then outpour\r\n The poison; now, with nicer art, themselves\r\n They give the drafts to others.\r\n\u003c/pre\u003e\r\n \u003cp\u003e\r\n \u003ca id=\"link2H_4_0029\"\u003e\r\n \u003c!– H2 anchor –\u003e \u003c/a\u003e\r\n \u003c/p\u003e\r\n \u003cdiv style=\"height: 4em;\"\u003e\r\n \u003cbr \u003e\u003cbr \u003e\u003cbr \u003e\u003cbr \u003e\r\n \u003c/div\u003e\r\n \u003ch2\u003e\r\n BEGINNINGS OF CIVILIZATION\r\n \u003c/h2\u003e\r\n\u003cpre\u003e\r\n Afterwards,\r\n When huts they had procured and pelts and fire,\r\n And when the woman, joined unto the man,\r\n Withdrew with him into one dwelling place,\r\n\r\n\u003c/pre\u003e\r\n \u003chr \u003e\r\n\u003cpre\u003e\r\n Were known; and when they saw an offspring born\r\n From out themselves, then first the human race\r\n Began to soften. For \u0027twas now that fire\r\n Rendered their shivering frames less staunch to bear,\r\n Under the canopy of the sky, the cold;\r\n And Love reduced their shaggy hardiness;\r\n And children, with the prattle and the kiss,\r\n Soon broke the parents\u0027 haughty temper down.\r\n Then, too, did neighbours \u0027gin to league as friends,\r\n Eager to wrong no more or suffer wrong,\r\n And urged for children and the womankind\r\n Mercy, of fathers, whilst with cries and gestures\r\n They stammered hints how meet it was that all\r\n Should have compassion on the weak. And still,\r\n Though concord not in every wise could then\r\n Begotten be, a good, a goodly part\r\n Kept faith inviolate\u0026mdash;or else mankind\r\n Long since had been unutterably cut off,\r\n And propagation never could have brought\r\n The species down the ages.\r\n\r\n Lest, perchance,\r\n Concerning these affairs thou ponderest\r\n In silent meditation, let me say\r\n \u0027Twas lightning brought primevally to earth\r\n The fire for mortals, and from thence hath spread\r\n O\u0027er all the lands the flames of heat. For thus\r\n Even now we see so many objects, touched\r\n By the celestial flames, to flash aglow,\r\n When thunderbolt has dowered them with heat.\r\n Yet also when a many-branched tree,\r\n Beaten by winds, writhes swaying to and fro,\r\n Pressing \u0027gainst branches of a neighbour tree,\r\n There by the power of mighty rub and rub\r\n Is fire engendered; and at times out-flares\r\n The scorching heat of flame, when boughs do chafe\r\n Against the trunks. And of these causes, either\r\n May well have given to mortal men the fire.\r\n Next, food to cook and soften in the flame\r\n The sun instructed, since so oft they saw\r\n How objects mellowed, when subdued by warmth\r\n And by the raining blows of fiery beams,\r\n Through all the fields.\r\n\r\n And more and more each day\r\n Would men more strong in sense, more wise in heart,\r\n Teach them to change their earlier mode and life\r\n By fire and new devices. Kings began\r\n Cities to found and citadels to set,\r\n As strongholds and asylums for themselves,\r\n And flocks and fields to portion for each man\r\n After the beauty, strength, and sense of each\u0026mdash;\r\n For beauty then imported much, and strength\r\n Had its own rights supreme. Thereafter, wealth\r\n Discovered was, and gold was brought to light,\r\n Which soon of honour stripped both strong and fair;\r\n For men, however beautiful in form\r\n Or valorous, will follow in the main\r\n The rich man\u0027s party. Yet were man to steer\r\n His life by sounder reasoning, he\u0027d own\r\n Abounding riches, if with mind content\r\n He lived by thrift; for never, as I guess,\r\n Is there a lack of little in the world.\r\n But men wished glory for themselves and power\r\n Even that their fortunes on foundations firm\r\n Might rest forever, and that they themselves,\r\n The opulent, might pass a quiet life\u0026mdash;\r\n In vain, in vain; since, in the strife to climb\r\n On to the heights of honour, men do make\r\n Their pathway terrible; and even when once\r\n They reach them, envy like the thunderbolt\r\n At times will smite, O hurling headlong down\r\n To murkiest Tartarus, in scorn; for, lo,\r\n All summits, all regions loftier than the rest,\r\n Smoke, blasted as by envy\u0027s thunderbolts;\r\n So better far in quiet to obey,\r\n Than to desire chief mastery of affairs\r\n And ownership of empires. Be it so;\r\n And let the weary sweat their life-blood out\r\n All to no end, battling in hate along\r\n The narrow path of man\u0027s ambition;\r\n Since all their wisdom is from others\u0027 lips,\r\n And all they seek is known from what they\u0027ve heard\r\n And less from what they\u0027ve thought. Nor is this folly\r\n Greater to-day, nor greater soon to be,\r\n Than\u0027 twas of old.\r\n\r\n And therefore kings were slain,\r\n And pristine majesty of golden thrones\r\n And haughty sceptres lay o\u0027erturned in dust;\r\n And crowns, so splendid on the sovereign heads,\r\n Soon bloody under the proletarian feet,\r\n Groaned for their glories gone\u0026mdash;for erst o\u0027er-much\r\n Dreaded, thereafter with more greedy zest\r\n Trampled beneath the rabble heel. Thus things\r\n Down to the vilest lees of brawling mobs\r\n Succumbed, whilst each man sought unto himself\r\n Dominion and supremacy. So next\r\n Some wiser heads instructed men to found\r\n The magisterial office, and did frame\r\n Codes that they might consent to follow laws.\r\n For humankind, o\u0027er wearied with a life\r\n Fostered by force, was ailing from its feuds;\r\n And so the sooner of its own free will\r\n Yielded to laws and strictest codes. For since\r\n Each hand made ready in its wrath to take\r\n A vengeance fiercer than by man\u0027s fair laws\r\n Is now conceded, men on this account\r\n Loathed the old life fostered by force. \u0027Tis thence\r\n That fear of punishments defiles each prize\r\n Of wicked days; for force and fraud ensnare\r\n Each man around, and in the main recoil\r\n On him from whence they sprung. Not easy \u0027tis\r\n For one who violates by ugly deeds\r\n The bonds of common peace to pass a life\r\n Composed and tranquil. For albeit he \u0027scape\r\n The race of gods and men, he yet must dread\r\n \u0027Twill not be hid forever\u0026mdash;since, indeed,\r\n So many, oft babbling on amid their dreams\r\n Or raving in sickness, have betrayed themselves\r\n (As stories tell) and published at last\r\n Old secrets and the sins.\r\n\r\n But nature \u0027twas\r\n Urged men to utter various sounds of tongue\r\n And need and use did mould the names of things,\r\n About in same wise as the lack-speech years\r\n Compel young children unto gesturings,\r\n Making them point with finger here and there\r\n At what\u0027s before them. For each creature feels\r\n By instinct to what use to put his powers.\r\n Ere yet the bull-calf\u0027s scarce begotten horns\r\n Project above his brows, with them he \u0027gins\r\n Enraged to butt and savagely to thrust.\r\n But whelps of panthers and the lion\u0027s cubs\r\n With claws and paws and bites are at the fray\r\n Already, when their teeth and claws be scarce\r\n As yet engendered. So again, we see\r\n All breeds of winged creatures trust to wings\r\n And from their fledgling pinions seek to get\r\n A fluttering assistance. Thus, to think\r\n That in those days some man apportioned round\r\n To things their names, and that from him men learned\r\n Their first nomenclature, is foolery.\r\n For why could he mark everything by words\r\n And utter the various sounds of tongue, what time\r\n The rest may be supposed powerless\r\n To do the same? And, if the rest had not\r\n Already one with other used words,\r\n Whence was implanted in the teacher, then,\r\n Fore-knowledge of their use, and whence was given\r\n To him alone primordial faculty\r\n To know and see in mind what \u0027twas he willed?\r\n Besides, one only man could scarce subdue\r\n An overmastered multitude to choose\r\n To get by heart his names of things. A task\r\n Not easy \u0027tis in any wise to teach\r\n And to persuade the deaf concerning what\r\n \u0027Tis needful for to do. For ne\u0027er would they\r\n Allow, nor ne\u0027er in anywise endure\r\n Perpetual vain dingdong in their ears\r\n Of spoken sounds unheard before. And what,\r\n At last, in this affair so wondrous is,\r\n That human race (in whom a voice and tongue\r\n Were now in vigour) should by divers words\r\n Denote its objects, as each divers sense\r\n Might prompt?\u0026mdash;since even the speechless herds, aye, since\r\n The very generations of wild beasts\r\n Are wont dissimilar and divers sounds\r\n To rouse from in them, when there\u0027s fear or pain,\r\n And when they burst with joys. And this, forsooth,\r\n \u0027Tis thine to know from plainest facts: when first\r\n Huge flabby jowls of mad Molossian hounds,\r\n Baring their hard white teeth, begin to snarl,\r\n They threaten, with infuriate lips peeled back,\r\n In sounds far other than with which they bark\r\n And fill with voices all the regions round.\r\n And when with fondling tongue they start to lick\r\n Their puppies, or do toss them round with paws,\r\n Feigning with gentle bites to gape and snap,\r\n They fawn with yelps of voice far other then\r\n Than when, alone within the house, they bay,\r\n Or whimpering slink with cringing sides from blows.\r\n Again the neighing of the horse, is that\r\n Not seen to differ likewise, when the stud\r\n In buoyant flower of his young years raves,\r\n Goaded by winged Love, amongst the mares,\r\n And when with widening nostrils out he snorts\r\n The call to battle, and when haply he\r\n Whinnies at times with terror-quaking limbs?\r\n Lastly, the flying race, the dappled birds,\r\n Hawks, ospreys, sea-gulls, searching food and life\r\n Amid the ocean billows in the brine,\r\n Utter at other times far other cries\r\n Than when they fight for food, or with their prey\r\n Struggle and strain. And birds there are which change\r\n With changing weather their own raucous songs\u0026mdash;\r\n As long-lived generations of the crows\r\n Or flocks of rooks, when they be said to cry\r\n For rain and water and to call at times\r\n For winds and gales. Ergo, if divers moods\r\n Compel the brutes, though speechless evermore,\r\n To send forth divers sounds, O truly then\r\n How much more likely \u0027twere that mortal men\r\n In those days could with many a different sound\r\n Denote each separate thing.\r\n\r\n And now what cause\r\n Hath spread divinities of gods abroad\r\n Through mighty nations, and filled the cities full\r\n Of the high altars, and led to practices\r\n Of solemn rites in season\u0026mdash;rites which still\r\n Flourish in midst of great affairs of state\r\n And midst great centres of man\u0027s civic life,\r\n The rites whence still a poor mortality\r\n Is grafted that quaking awe which rears aloft\r\n Still the new temples of gods from land to land\r\n And drives mankind to visit them in throngs\r\n On holy days\u0026mdash;\u0027tis not so hard to give\r\n Reason thereof in speech. Because, in sooth,\r\n Even in those days would the race of man\r\n Be seeing excelling visages of gods\r\n With mind awake; and in his sleeps, yet more\u0026mdash;\r\n Bodies of wondrous growth. And, thus, to these\r\n Would men attribute sense, because they seemed\r\n To move their limbs and speak pronouncements high,\r\n Befitting glorious visage and vast powers.\r\n And men would give them an eternal life,\r\n Because their visages forevermore\r\n Were there before them, and their shapes remained,\r\n And chiefly, however, because men would not think\r\n Beings augmented with such mighty powers\r\n Could well by any force o\u0027ermastered be.\r\n And men would think them in their happiness\r\n Excelling far, because the fear of death\r\n Vexed no one of them at all, and since\r\n At same time in men\u0027s sleeps men saw them do\r\n So many wonders, and yet feel therefrom\r\n Themselves no weariness. Besides, men marked\r\n How in a fixed order rolled around\r\n The systems of the sky, and changed times\r\n Of annual seasons, nor were able then\r\n To know thereof the causes. Therefore \u0027twas\r\n Men would take refuge in consigning all\r\n Unto divinities, and in feigning all\r\n Was guided by their nod. And in the sky\r\n They set the seats and vaults of gods, because\r\n Across the sky night and the moon are seen\r\n To roll along\u0026mdash;moon, day, and night, and night\u0027s\r\n Old awesome constellations evermore,\r\n And the night-wandering fireballs of the sky,\r\n And flying flames, clouds, and the sun, the rains,\r\n Snow and the winds, the lightnings, and the hail,\r\n And the swift rumblings, and the hollow roar\r\n Of mighty menacings forevermore.\r\n\r\n O humankind unhappy!\u0026mdash;when it ascribed\r\n Unto divinities such awesome deeds,\r\n And coupled thereto rigours of fierce wrath!\r\n What groans did men on that sad day beget\r\n Even for themselves, and O what wounds for us,\r\n What tears for our children\u0027s children! Nor, O man,\r\n Is thy true piety in this: with head\r\n Under the veil, still to be seen to turn\r\n Fronting a stone, and ever to approach\r\n Unto all altars; nor so prone on earth\r\n Forward to fall, to spread upturned palms\r\n Before the shrines of gods, nor yet to dew\r\n Altars with profuse blood of four-foot beasts,\r\n Nor vows with vows to link. But rather this:\r\n To look on all things with a master eye\r\n And mind at peace. For when we gaze aloft\r\n Upon the skiey vaults of yon great world\r\n And ether, fixed high o\u0027er twinkling stars,\r\n And into our thought there come the journeyings\r\n Of sun and moon, O then into our breasts,\r\n O\u0027erburdened already with their other ills,\r\n Begins forthwith to rear its sudden head\r\n One more misgiving: lest o\u0027er us, percase,\r\n It be the gods\u0027 immeasurable power\r\n That rolls, with varied motion, round and round\r\n The far white constellations. For the lack\r\n Of aught of reasons tries the puzzled mind:\r\n Whether was ever a birth-time of the world,\r\n And whether, likewise, any end shall be\r\n How far the ramparts of the world can still\r\n Outstand this strain of ever-roused motion,\r\n Or whether, divinely with eternal weal\r\n Endowed, they can through endless tracts of age\r\n Glide on, defying the o\u0027er-mighty powers\r\n Of the immeasurable ages. Lo,\r\n What man is there whose mind with dread of gods\r\n Cringes not close, whose limbs with terror-spell\r\n Crouch not together, when the parched earth\r\n Quakes with the horrible thunderbolt amain,\r\n And across the mighty sky the rumblings run?\r\n Do not the peoples and the nations shake,\r\n And haughty kings do they not hug their limbs,\r\n Strook through with fear of the divinities,\r\n Lest for aught foully done or madly said\r\n The heavy time be now at hand to pay?\r\n When, too, fierce force of fury-winds at sea\r\n Sweepeth a navy\u0027s admiral down the main\r\n With his stout legions and his elephants,\r\n Doth he not seek the peace of gods with vows,\r\n And beg in prayer, a-tremble, lulled winds\r\n And friendly gales?\u0026mdash;in vain, since, often up-caught\r\n In fury-cyclones, is he borne along,\r\n For all his mouthings, to the shoals of doom.\r\n Ah, so irrevocably some hidden power\r\n Betramples forevermore affairs of men,\r\n And visibly grindeth with its heel in mire\r\n The lictors\u0027 glorious rods and axes dire,\r\n Having them in derision! Again, when earth\r\n From end to end is rocking under foot,\r\n And shaken cities ruin down, or threaten\r\n Upon the verge, what wonder is it then\r\n That mortal generations abase themselves,\r\n And unto gods in all affairs of earth\r\n Assign as last resort almighty powers\r\n And wondrous energies to govern all?\r\n\r\n Now for the rest: copper and gold and iron\r\n Discovered were, and with them silver\u0027s weight\r\n And power of lead, when with prodigious heat\r\n The conflagrations burned the forest trees\r\n Among the mighty mountains, by a bolt\r\n Of lightning from the sky, or else because\r\n Men, warring in the woodlands, on their foes\r\n Had hurled fire to frighten and dismay,\r\n Or yet because, by goodness of the soil\r\n Invited, men desired to clear rich fields\r\n And turn the countryside to pasture-lands,\r\n Or slay the wild and thrive upon the spoils.\r\n (For hunting by pit-fall and by fire arose\r\n Before the art of hedging the covert round\r\n With net or stirring it with dogs of chase.)\r\n Howso the fact, and from what cause soever\r\n The flamy heat with awful crack and roar\r\n Had there devoured to their deepest roots\r\n The forest trees and baked the earth with fire,\r\n Then from the boiling veins began to ooze\r\n O rivulets of silver and of gold,\r\n Of lead and copper too, collecting soon\r\n Into the hollow places of the ground.\r\n And when men saw the cooled lumps anon\r\n To shine with splendour-sheen upon the ground,\r\n Much taken with that lustrous smooth delight,\r\n They \u0027gan to pry them out, and saw how each\r\n Had got a shape like to its earthy mould.\r\n Then would it enter their heads how these same lumps,\r\n If melted by heat, could into any form\r\n Or figure of things be run, and how, again,\r\n If hammered out, they could be nicely drawn\r\n To sharpest points or finest edge, and thus\r\n Yield to the forgers tools and give them power\r\n To chop the forest down, to hew the logs,\r\n To shave the beams and planks, besides to bore\r\n And punch and drill. And men began such work\r\n At first as much with tools of silver and gold\r\n As with the impetuous strength of the stout copper;\r\n But vainly\u0026mdash;since their over-mastered power\r\n Would soon give way, unable to endure,\r\n Like copper, such hard labour. In those days\r\n Copper it was that was the thing of price;\r\n And gold lay useless, blunted with dull edge.\r\n Now lies the copper low, and gold hath come\r\n Unto the loftiest honours. Thus it is\r\n That rolling ages change the times of things:\r\n What erst was of a price, becomes at last\r\n A discard of no honour; whilst another\r\n Succeeds to glory, issuing from contempt,\r\n And day by day is sought for more and more,\r\n And, when \u0027tis found, doth flower in men\u0027s praise,\r\n Objects of wondrous honour.\r\n\r\n Now, Memmius,\r\n How nature of iron discovered was, thou mayst\r\n Of thine own self divine. Man\u0027s ancient arms\r\n Were hands, and nails and teeth, stones too and boughs\u0026mdash;\r\n Breakage of forest trees\u0026mdash;and flame and fire,\r\n As soon as known. Thereafter force of iron\r\n And copper discovered was; and copper\u0027s use\r\n Was known ere iron\u0027s, since more tractable\r\n Its nature is and its abundance more.\r\n With copper men to work the soil began,\r\n With copper to rouse the hurly waves of war,\r\n To straw the monstrous wounds, and seize away\r\n Another\u0027s flocks and fields. For unto them,\r\n Thus armed, all things naked of defence\r\n Readily yielded. Then by slow degrees\r\n The sword of iron succeeded, and the shape\r\n Of brazen sickle into scorn was turned:\r\n With iron to cleave the soil of earth they \u0027gan,\r\n And the contentions of uncertain war\r\n Were rendered equal.\r\n\r\n And, lo, man was wont\r\n Armed to mount upon the ribs of horse\r\n And guide him with the rein, and play about\r\n With right hand free, oft times before he tried\r\n Perils of war in yoked chariot;\r\n And yoked pairs abreast came earlier\r\n Than yokes of four, or scythed chariots\r\n Whereinto clomb the men-at-arms. And next\r\n The Punic folk did train the elephants\u0026mdash;\r\n Those curst Lucanian oxen, hideous,\r\n The serpent-handed, with turrets on their bulks\u0026mdash;\r\n To dure the wounds of war and panic-strike\r\n The mighty troops of Mars. Thus Discord sad\r\n Begat the one Thing after other, to be\r\n The terror of the nations under arms,\r\n And day by day to horrors of old war\r\n She added an increase.\r\n\r\n Bulls, too, they tried\r\n In war\u0027s grim business; and essayed to send\r\n Outrageous boars against the foes. And some\r\n Sent on before their ranks puissant lions\r\n With armed trainers and with masters fierce\r\n To guide and hold in chains\u0026mdash;and yet in vain,\r\n Since fleshed with pell-mell slaughter, fierce they flew,\r\n And blindly through the squadrons havoc wrought,\r\n Shaking the frightful crests upon their heads,\r\n Now here, now there. Nor could the horsemen calm\r\n Their horses, panic-breasted at the roar,\r\n And rein them round to front the foe. With spring\r\n The infuriate she-lions would up-leap\r\n Now here, now there; and whoso came apace\r\n Against them, these they\u0027d rend across the face;\r\n And others unwitting from behind they\u0027d tear\r\n Down from their mounts, and twining round them, bring\r\n Tumbling to earth, o\u0027ermastered by the wound,\r\n And with those powerful fangs and hooked claws\r\n Fasten upon them. Bulls would toss their friends,\r\n And trample under foot, and from beneath\r\n Rip flanks and bellies of horses with their horns,\r\n And with a threat\u0027ning forehead jam the sod;\r\n And boars would gore with stout tusks their allies,\r\n Splashing in fury their own blood on spears\r\n Splintered in their own bodies, and would fell\r\n In rout and ruin infantry and horse.\r\n For there the beasts-of-saddle tried to scape\r\n The savage thrusts of tusk by shying off,\r\n Or rearing up with hoofs a-paw in air.\r\n In vain\u0026mdash;since there thou mightest see them sink,\r\n Their sinews severed, and with heavy fall\r\n Bestrew the ground. And such of these as men\r\n Supposed well-trained long ago at home,\r\n Were in the thick of action seen to foam\r\n In fury, from the wounds, the shrieks, the flight,\r\n The panic, and the tumult; nor could men\r\n Aught of their numbers rally. For each breed\r\n And various of the wild beasts fled apart\r\n Hither or thither, as often in wars to-day\r\n Flee those Lucanian oxen, by the steel\r\n Grievously mangled, after they have wrought\r\n Upon their friends so many a dreadful doom.\r\n (If \u0027twas, indeed, that thus they did at all:\r\n But scarcely I\u0027ll believe that men could not\r\n With mind foreknow and see, as sure to come,\r\n Such foul and general disaster.\u0026mdash;This\r\n We, then, may hold as true in the great All,\r\n In divers worlds on divers plan create,\u0026mdash;\r\n Somewhere afar more likely than upon\r\n One certain earth.) But men chose this to do\r\n Less in the hope of conquering than to give\r\n Their enemies a goodly cause of woe,\r\n Even though thereby they perished themselves,\r\n Since weak in numbers and since wanting arms.\r\n\r\n Now, clothes of roughly inter-plaited strands\r\n Were earlier than loom-wove coverings;\r\n The loom-wove later than man\u0027s iron is,\r\n Since iron is needful in the weaving art,\r\n Nor by no other means can there be wrought\r\n Such polished tools\u0026mdash;the treadles, spindles, shuttles,\r\n And sounding yarn-beams. And nature forced the men,\r\n Before the woman kind, to work the wool:\r\n For all the male kind far excels in skill,\r\n And cleverer is by much\u0026mdash;until at last\r\n The rugged farmer folk jeered at such tasks,\r\n And so were eager soon to give them o\u0027er\r\n To women\u0027s hands, and in more hardy toil\r\n To harden arms and hands.\r\n\r\n But nature herself,\r\n Mother of things, was the first seed-sower\r\n And primal grafter; since the berries and acorns,\r\n Dropping from off the trees, would there beneath\r\n Put forth in season swarms of little shoots;\r\n Hence too men\u0027s fondness for ingrafting slips\r\n Upon the boughs and setting out in holes\r\n The young shrubs o\u0027er the fields. Then would they try\r\n Ever new modes of tilling their loved crofts,\r\n And mark they would how earth improved the taste\r\n Of the wild fruits by fond and fostering care.\r\n And day by day they\u0027d force the woods to move\r\n Still higher up the mountain, and to yield\r\n The place below for tilth, that there they might,\r\n On plains and uplands, have their meadow-plats,\r\n Cisterns and runnels, crops of standing grain,\r\n And happy vineyards, and that all along\r\n O\u0027er hillocks, intervales, and plains might run\r\n The silvery-green belt of olive-trees,\r\n Marking the plotted landscape; even as now\r\n Thou seest so marked with varied loveliness\r\n All the terrain which men adorn and plant\r\n With rows of goodly fruit-trees and hedge round\r\n With thriving shrubberies sown.\r\n\r\n But by the mouth\r\n To imitate the liquid notes of birds\r\n Was earlier far \u0027mongst men than power to make,\r\n By measured song, melodious verse and give\r\n Delight to ears. And whistlings of the wind\r\n Athrough the hollows of the reeds first taught\r\n The peasantry to blow into the stalks\r\n Of hollow hemlock-herb. Then bit by bit\r\n They learned sweet plainings, such as pipe out-pours,\r\n Beaten by finger-tips of singing men,\r\n When heard through unpathed groves and forest deeps\r\n And woodsy meadows, through the untrod haunts\r\n Of shepherd folk and spots divinely still.\r\n Thus time draws forward each and everything\r\n Little by little unto the midst of men,\r\n And reason uplifts it to the shores of light.\r\n These tunes would soothe and glad the minds of mortals\r\n When sated with food,\u0026mdash;for songs are welcome then.\r\n And often, lounging with friends in the soft grass\r\n Beside a river of water, underneath\r\n A big tree\u0027s branches, merrily they\u0027d refresh\r\n Their frames, with no vast outlay\u0026mdash;most of all\r\n If the weather were smiling and the times of the year\r\n Were painting the green of the grass around with flowers.\r\n Then jokes, then talk, then peals of jollity\r\n Would circle round; for then the rustic muse\r\n Was in her glory; then would antic Mirth\r\n Prompt them to garland head and shoulders about\r\n With chaplets of intertwined flowers and leaves,\r\n And to dance onward, out of tune, with limbs\r\n Clownishly swaying, and with clownish foot\r\n To beat our mother earth\u0026mdash;from whence arose\r\n Laughter and peals of jollity, for, lo,\r\n Such frolic acts were in their glory then,\r\n Being more new and strange. And wakeful men\r\n Found solaces for their unsleeping hours\r\n In drawing forth variety of notes,\r\n In modulating melodies, in running\r\n With puckered lips along the tuned reeds,\r\n Whence, even in our day do the watchmen guard\r\n These old traditions, and have learned well\r\n To keep true measure. And yet they no whit\r\n Do get a larger fruit of gladsomeness\r\n Than got the woodland aborigines\r\n In olden times. For what we have at hand\u0026mdash;\r\n If theretofore naught sweeter we have known\u0026mdash;\r\n That chiefly pleases and seems best of all;\r\n But then some later, likely better, find\r\n Destroys its worth and changes our desires\r\n Regarding good of yesterday.\r\n\r\n And thus\r\n Began the loathing of the acorn; thus\r\n Abandoned were those beds with grasses strewn\r\n And with the leaves beladen. Thus, again,\r\n Fell into new contempt the pelts of beasts\u0026mdash;\r\n Erstwhile a robe of honour, which, I guess,\r\n Aroused in those days envy so malign\r\n That the first wearer went to woeful death\r\n By ambuscades,\u0026mdash;and yet that hairy prize,\r\n Rent into rags by greedy foemen there\r\n And splashed by blood, was ruined utterly\r\n Beyond all use or vantage. Thus of old\r\n \u0027Twas pelts, and of to-day \u0027tis purple and gold\r\n That cark men\u0027s lives with cares and weary with war.\r\n Wherefore, methinks, resides the greater blame\r\n With us vain men to-day: for cold would rack,\r\n Without their pelts, the naked sons of earth;\r\n But us it nothing hurts to do without\r\n The purple vestment, broidered with gold\r\n And with imposing figures, if we still\r\n Make shift with some mean garment of the Plebs.\r\n So man in vain futilities toils on\r\n Forever and wastes in idle cares his years\u0026mdash;\r\n Because, of very truth, he hath not learnt\r\n What the true end of getting is, nor yet\r\n At all how far true pleasure may increase.\r\n And \u0027tis desire for better and for more\r\n Hath carried by degrees mortality\r\n Out onward to the deep, and roused up\r\n From the far bottom mighty waves of war.\r\n\r\n But sun and moon, those watchmen of the world,\r\n With their own lanterns traversing around\r\n The mighty, the revolving vault, have taught\r\n Unto mankind that seasons of the years\r\n Return again, and that the Thing takes place\r\n After a fixed plan and order fixed.\r\n\r\n Already would they pass their life, hedged round\r\n By the strong towers; and cultivate an earth\r\n All portioned out and boundaried; already\r\n Would the sea flower and sail-winged ships;\r\n Already men had, under treaty pacts,\r\n Confederates and allies, when poets began\r\n To hand heroic actions down in verse;\r\n Nor long ere this had letters been devised\u0026mdash;\r\n Hence is our age unable to look back\r\n On what has gone before, except where reason\r\n Shows us a footprint.\r\n\r\n Sailings on the seas,\r\n Tillings of fields, walls, laws, and arms, and roads,\r\n Dress and the like, all prizes, all delights\r\n Of finer life, poems, pictures, chiselled shapes\r\n Of polished sculptures\u0026mdash;all these arts were learned\r\n By practice and the mind\u0027s experience,\r\n As men walked forward step by eager step.\r\n Thus time draws forward each and everything\r\n Little by little into the midst of men,\r\n And reason uplifts it to the shores of light.\r\n For one thing after other did men see\r\n Grow clear by intellect, till with their arts\r\n They\u0027ve now achieved the supreme pinnacle.\r\n\u003c/pre\u003e\r\n \u003cp\u003e\r\n \u003ca id=\"link2H_4_0030\"\u003e\r\n \u003c!– H2 anchor –\u003e \u003c/a\u003e\r\n \u003c/p\u003e\r\n \u003cdiv style=\"height: 4em;\"\u003e\r\n \u003cbr \u003e\u003cbr \u003e\u003cbr \u003e\u003cbr \u003e\r\n \u003c/div\u003e\r\n \u003ch2\u003e\r\n BOOK VI\r\n \u003c/h2\u003e\r\n \u003cp\u003e\r\n \u003ca id=\"link2H_4_0031\"\u003e\r\n \u003c!– H2 anchor –\u003e \u003c/a\u003e\r\n \u003c/p\u003e\r\n \u003cdiv style=\"height: 4em;\"\u003e\r\n \u003cbr \u003e\u003cbr \u003e\u003cbr \u003e\u003cbr \u003e\r\n \u003c/div\u003e\r\n \u003ch2\u003e\r\n PROEM\r\n \u003c/h2\u003e\r\n\u003cpre\u003e\r\n \u0027Twas Athens first, the glorious in name,\r\n That whilom gave to hapless sons of men\r\n The sheaves of harvest, and re-ordered life,\r\n And decreed laws; and she the first that gave\r\n Life its sweet solaces, when she begat\r\n A man of heart so wise, who whilom poured\r\n All wisdom forth from his truth-speaking mouth;\r\n The glory of whom, though dead, is yet to-day,\r\n Because of those discoveries divine\r\n Renowned of old, exalted to the sky.\r\n For when saw he that well-nigh everything\r\n Which needs of man most urgently require\r\n Was ready to hand for mortals, and that life,\r\n As far as might be, was established safe,\r\n That men were lords in riches, honour, praise,\r\n And eminent in goodly fame of sons,\r\n And that they yet, O yet, within the home,\r\n Still had the anxious heart which vexed life\r\n Unpausingly with torments of the mind,\r\n And raved perforce with angry plaints, then he,\r\n Then he, the master, did perceive that \u0027twas\r\n The vessel itself which worked the bane, and all,\r\n However wholesome, which from here or there\r\n Was gathered into it, was by that bane\r\n Spoilt from within,\u0026mdash;in part, because he saw\r\n The vessel so cracked and leaky that nowise\r\n \u0027T could ever be filled to brim; in part because\r\n He marked how it polluted with foul taste\r\n Whate\u0027er it got within itself. So he,\r\n The master, then by his truth-speaking words,\r\n Purged the breasts of men, and set the bounds\r\n Of lust and terror, and exhibited\r\n The supreme good whither we all endeavour,\r\n And showed the path whereby we might arrive\r\n Thereunto by a little cross-cut straight,\r\n And what of ills in all affairs of mortals\r\n Upsprang and flitted deviously about\r\n (Whether by chance or force), since nature thus\r\n Had destined; and from out what gates a man\r\n Should sally to each combat. And he proved\r\n That mostly vainly doth the human race\r\n Roll in its bosom the grim waves of care.\r\n For just as children tremble and fear all\r\n In the viewless dark, so even we at times\r\n Dread in the light so many things that be\r\n No whit more fearsome than what children feign,\r\n Shuddering, will be upon them in the dark.\r\n This terror then, this darkness of the mind,\r\n Not sunrise with its flaring spokes of light,\r\n Nor glittering arrows of morning can disperse,\r\n But only nature\u0027s aspect and her law.\r\n Wherefore the more will I go on to weave\r\n In verses this my undertaken task.\r\n\r\n And since I\u0027ve taught thee that the world\u0027s great vaults\r\n Are mortal and that sky is fashioned\r\n Of frame e\u0027en born in time, and whatsoe\u0027er\r\n Therein go on and must perforce go on\r\n\r\n\u003c/pre\u003e\r\n \u003chr \u003e\r\n\u003cpre\u003e\r\n The most I have unravelled; what remains\r\n Do thou take in, besides; since once for all\r\n To climb into that chariot\u0027 renowned\r\n\r\n\u003c/pre\u003e\r\n \u003chr \u003e\r\n\u003cpre\u003e\r\n Of winds arise; and they appeased are\r\n So that all things again…\r\n\r\n\u003c/pre\u003e\r\n \u003chr \u003e\r\n\u003cpre\u003e\r\n Which were, are changed now, with fury stilled;\r\n All other movements through the earth and sky\r\n Which mortals gaze upon (O anxious oft\r\n In quaking thoughts!), and which abase their minds\r\n With dread of deities and press them crushed\r\n Down to the earth, because their ignorance\r\n Of cosmic causes forces them to yield\r\n All things unto the empery of gods\r\n And to concede the kingly rule to them.\r\n For even those men who have learned full well\r\n That godheads lead a long life free of care,\r\n If yet meanwhile they wonder by what plan\r\n Things can go on (and chiefly yon high things\r\n Observed o\u0027erhead on the ethereal coasts),\r\n Again are hurried back unto the fears\r\n Of old religion and adopt again\r\n Harsh masters, deemed almighty,\u0026mdash;wretched men,\r\n Unwitting what can be and what cannot,\r\n And by what law to each its scope prescribed,\r\n Its boundary stone that clings so deep in Time.\r\n Wherefore the more are they borne wandering on\r\n By blindfold reason. And, Memmius, unless\r\n From out thy mind thou spuest all of this\r\n And casteth far from thee all thoughts which be\r\n Unworthy gods and alien to their peace,\r\n Then often will the holy majesties\r\n Of the high gods be harmful unto thee,\r\n As by thy thought degraded,\u0026mdash;not, indeed,\r\n That essence supreme of gods could be by this\r\n So outraged as in wrath to thirst to seek\r\n Revenges keen; but even because thyself\r\n Thou plaguest with the notion that the gods,\r\n Even they, the Calm Ones in serene repose,\r\n Do roll the mighty waves of wrath on wrath;\r\n Nor wilt thou enter with a serene breast\r\n Shrines of the gods; nor wilt thou able be\r\n In tranquil peace of mind to take and know\r\n Those images which from their holy bodies\r\n Are carried into intellects of men,\r\n As the announcers of their form divine.\r\n What sort of life will follow after this\r\n \u0027Tis thine to see. But that afar from us\r\n Veriest reason may drive such life away,\r\n Much yet remains to be embellished yet\r\n In polished verses, albeit hath issued forth\r\n So much from me already; lo, there is\r\n The law and aspect of the sky to be\r\n By reason grasped; there are the tempest times\r\n And the bright lightnings to be hymned now\u0026mdash;\r\n Even what they do and from what cause soe\u0027er\r\n They\u0027re borne along\u0026mdash;that thou mayst tremble not,\r\n Marking off regions of prophetic skies\r\n For auguries, O foolishly distraught\r\n Even as to whence the flying flame hath come,\r\n Or to which half of heaven it turns, or how\r\n Through walled places it hath wound its way,\r\n Or, after proving its dominion there,\r\n How it hath speeded forth from thence amain\u0026mdash;\r\n Whereof nowise the causes do men know,\r\n And think divinities are working there.\r\n Do thou, Calliope, ingenious Muse,\r\n Solace of mortals and delight of gods,\r\n Point out the course before me, as I race\r\n On to the white line of the utmost goal,\r\n That I may get with signal praise the crown,\r\n With thee my guide!\r\n\u003c/pre\u003e\r\n \u003cp\u003e\r\n \u003ca id=\"link2H_4_0032\"\u003e\r\n \u003c!– H2 anchor –\u003e \u003c/a\u003e\r\n \u003c/p\u003e\r\n \u003cdiv style=\"height: 4em;\"\u003e\r\n \u003cbr \u003e\u003cbr \u003e\u003cbr \u003e\u003cbr \u003e\r\n \u003c/div\u003e\r\n \u003ch2\u003e\r\n GREAT METEOROLOGICAL PHENOMENA, ETC.\r\n \u003c/h2\u003e\r\n\u003cpre\u003e\r\n And so in first place, then,\r\n With thunder are shaken the blue deeps of heaven,\r\n Because the ethereal clouds, scudding aloft,\r\n Together clash, what time \u0027gainst one another\r\n The winds are battling. For never a sound there comes\r\n From out the serene regions of the sky;\r\n But wheresoever in a host more dense\r\n The clouds foregather, thence more often comes\r\n A crash with mighty rumbling. And, again,\r\n Clouds cannot be of so condensed a frame\r\n As stones and timbers, nor again so fine\r\n As mists and flying smoke; for then perforce\r\n They\u0027d either fall, borne down by their brute weight,\r\n Like stones, or, like the smoke, they\u0027d powerless be\r\n To keep their mass, or to retain within\r\n Frore snows and storms of hail. And they give forth\r\n O\u0027er skiey levels of the spreading world\r\n A sound on high, as linen-awning, stretched\r\n O\u0027er mighty theatres, gives forth at times\r\n A cracking roar, when much \u0027tis beaten about\r\n Betwixt the poles and cross-beams. Sometimes, too,\r\n Asunder rent by wanton gusts, it raves\r\n And imitates the tearing sound of sheets\r\n Of paper\u0026mdash;even this kind of noise thou mayst\r\n In thunder hear\u0026mdash;or sound as when winds whirl\r\n With lashings and do buffet about in air\r\n A hanging cloth and flying paper-sheets.\r\n For sometimes, too, it chances that the clouds\r\n Cannot together crash head-on, but rather\r\n Move side-wise and with motions contrary\r\n Graze each the other\u0027s body without speed,\r\n From whence that dry sound grateth on our ears,\r\n So long drawn-out, until the clouds have passed\r\n From out their close positions.\r\n\r\n And, again,\r\n In following wise all things seem oft to quake\r\n At shock of heavy thunder, and mightiest walls\r\n Of the wide reaches of the upper world\r\n There on the instant to have sprung apart,\r\n Riven asunder, what time a gathered blast\r\n Of the fierce hurricane hath all at once\r\n Twisted its way into a mass of clouds,\r\n And, there enclosed, ever more and more\r\n Compelleth by its spinning whirl the cloud\r\n To grow all hollow with a thickened crust\r\n Surrounding; for thereafter, when the force\r\n And the keen onset of the wind have weakened\r\n That crust, lo, then the cloud, to-split in twain,\r\n Gives forth a hideous crash with bang and boom.\r\n No marvel this; since oft a bladder small,\r\n Filled up with air, will, when of sudden burst,\r\n Give forth a like large sound.\r\n\r\n There\u0027s reason, too,\r\n Why clouds make sounds, as through them blow the winds:\r\n We see, borne down the sky, oft shapes of clouds\r\n Rough-edged or branched many forky ways;\r\n And \u0027tis the same, as when the sudden flaws\r\n Of north-west wind through the dense forest blow,\r\n Making the leaves to sough and limbs to crash.\r\n It happens too at times that roused force\r\n Of the fierce hurricane to-rends the cloud,\r\n Breaking right through it by a front assault;\r\n For what a blast of wind may do up there\r\n Is manifest from facts when here on earth\r\n A blast more gentle yet uptwists tall trees\r\n And sucks them madly from their deepest roots.\r\n Besides, among the clouds are waves, and these\r\n Give, as they roughly break, a rumbling roar;\r\n As when along deep streams or the great sea\r\n Breaks the loud surf. It happens, too, whenever\r\n Out from one cloud into another falls\r\n The fiery energy of thunderbolt,\r\n That straightaway the cloud, if full of wet,\r\n Extinguishes the fire with mighty noise;\r\n As iron, white from the hot furnaces,\r\n Sizzles, when speedily we\u0027ve plunged its glow\r\n Down the cold water. Further, if a cloud\r\n More dry receive the fire, \u0027twill suddenly\r\n Kindle to flame and burn with monstrous sound,\r\n As if a flame with whirl of winds should range\r\n Along the laurel-tressed mountains far,\r\n Upburning with its vast assault those trees;\r\n Nor is there aught that in the crackling flame\r\n Consumes with sound more terrible to man\r\n Than Delphic laurel of Apollo lord.\r\n Oft, too, the multitudinous crash of ice\r\n And down-pour of swift hail gives forth a sound\r\n Among the mighty clouds on high; for when\r\n The wind hath packed them close, each mountain mass\r\n Of rain-cloud, there congealed utterly\r\n And mixed with hail-stones, breaks and booms…\r\n\r\n\u003c/pre\u003e\r\n \u003chr \u003e\r\n\u003cpre\u003e\r\n Likewise, it lightens, when the clouds have struck,\r\n By their collision, forth the seeds of fire:\r\n As if a stone should smite a stone or steel,\r\n For light then too leaps forth and fire then scatters\r\n The shining sparks. But with our ears we get\r\n The thunder after eyes behold the flash,\r\n Because forever things arrive the ears\r\n More tardily than the eyes\u0026mdash;as thou mayst see\r\n From this example too: when markest thou\r\n Some man far yonder felling a great tree\r\n With double-edged ax, it comes to pass\r\n Thine eye beholds the swinging stroke before\r\n The blow gives forth a sound athrough thine ears:\r\n Thus also we behold the flashing ere\r\n We hear the thunder, which discharged is\r\n At same time with the fire and by same cause,\r\n Born of the same collision.\r\n\r\n In following wise\r\n The clouds suffuse with leaping light the lands,\r\n And the storm flashes with tremulous elan:\r\n When the wind hath invaded a cloud, and, whirling there,\r\n Hath wrought (as I have shown above) the cloud\r\n Into a hollow with a thickened crust,\r\n It becomes hot of own velocity:\r\n Just as thou seest how motion will o\u0027erheat\r\n And set ablaze all objects,\u0026mdash;verily\r\n A leaden ball, hurtling through length of space,\r\n Even melts. Therefore, when this same wind a-fire\r\n Hath split black cloud, it scatters the fire-seeds,\r\n Which, so to say, have been pressed out by force\r\n Of sudden from the cloud;\u0026mdash;and these do make\r\n The pulsing flashes of flame; thence followeth\r\n The detonation which attacks our ears\r\n More tardily than aught which comes along\r\n Unto the sight of eyeballs. This takes place\u0026mdash;\r\n As know thou mayst\u0026mdash;at times when clouds are dense\r\n And one upon the other piled aloft\r\n With wonderful upheavings\u0026mdash;nor be thou\r\n Deceived because we see how broad their base\r\n From underneath, and not how high they tower.\r\n For make thine observations at a time\r\n When winds shall bear athwart the horizon\u0027s blue\r\n Clouds like to mountain-ranges moving on,\r\n Or when about the sides of mighty peaks\r\n Thou seest them one upon the other massed\r\n And burdening downward, anchored in high repose,\r\n With the winds sepulchred on all sides round:\r\n Then canst thou know their mighty masses, then\r\n Canst view their caverns, as if builded there\r\n Of beetling crags; which, when the hurricanes\r\n In gathered storm have filled utterly,\r\n Then, prisoned in clouds, they rave around\r\n With mighty roarings, and within those dens\r\n Bluster like savage beasts, and now from here,\r\n And now from there, send growlings through the clouds,\r\n And seeking an outlet, whirl themselves about,\r\n And roll from \u0027mid the clouds the seeds of fire,\r\n And heap them multitudinously there,\r\n And in the hollow furnaces within\r\n Wheel flame around, until from bursted cloud\r\n In forky flashes they have gleamed forth.\r\n\r\n Again, from following cause it comes to pass\r\n That yon swift golden hue of liquid fire\r\n Darts downward to the earth: because the clouds\r\n Themselves must hold abundant seeds of fire;\r\n For, when they be without all moisture, then\r\n They be for most part of a flamy hue\r\n And a resplendent. And, indeed, they must\r\n Even from the light of sun unto themselves\r\n Take multitudinous seeds, and so perforce\r\n Redden and pour their bright fires all abroad.\r\n And therefore, when the wind hath driven and thrust,\r\n Hath forced and squeezed into one spot these clouds,\r\n They pour abroad the seeds of fire pressed out,\r\n Which make to flash these colours of the flame.\r\n Likewise, it lightens also when the clouds\r\n Grow rare and thin along the sky; for, when\r\n The wind with gentle touch unravels them\r\n And breaketh asunder as they move, those seeds\r\n Which make the lightnings must by nature fall;\r\n At such an hour the horizon lightens round\r\n Without the hideous terror of dread noise\r\n And skiey uproar.\r\n\r\n To proceed apace,\r\n What sort of nature thunderbolts possess\r\n Is by their strokes made manifest and by\r\n The brand-marks of their searing heat on things,\r\n And by the scorched scars exhaling round\r\n The heavy fumes of sulphur. For all these\r\n Are marks, O not of wind or rain, but fire.\r\n Again, they often enkindle even the roofs\r\n Of houses and inside the very rooms\r\n With swift flame hold a fierce dominion.\r\n Know thou that nature fashioned this fire\r\n Subtler than fires all other, with minute\r\n And dartling bodies,\u0026mdash;a fire \u0027gainst which there\u0027s naught\r\n Can in the least hold out: the thunderbolt,\r\n The mighty, passes through the hedging walls\r\n Of houses, like to voices or a shout,\u0026mdash;\r\n Through stones, through bronze it passes, and it melts\r\n Upon the instant bronze and gold; and makes,\r\n Likewise, the wines sudden to vanish forth,\r\n The wine-jars intact,\u0026mdash;because, ye see,\r\n Its heat arriving renders loose and porous\r\n Readily all the wine\u0026mdash;jar\u0027s earthen sides,\r\n And winding its way within, it scattereth\r\n The elements primordial of the wine\r\n With speedy dissolution\u0026mdash;process which\r\n Even in an age the fiery steam of sun\r\n Could not accomplish, however puissant he\r\n With his hot coruscations: so much more\r\n Agile and overpowering is this force.\r\n\r\n\u003c/pre\u003e\r\n \u003chr \u003e\r\n\u003cpre\u003e\r\n Now in what manner engendered are these things,\r\n How fashioned of such impetuous strength\r\n As to cleave towers asunder, and houses all\r\n To overtopple, and to wrench apart\r\n Timbers and beams, and heroes\u0027 monuments\r\n To pile in ruins and upheave amain,\r\n And to take breath forever out of men,\r\n And to o\u0027erthrow the cattle everywhere,\u0026mdash;\r\n Yes, by what force the lightnings do all this,\r\n All this and more, I will unfold to thee,\r\n Nor longer keep thee in mere promises.\r\n\r\n The bolts of thunder, then, must be conceived\r\n As all begotten in those crasser clouds\r\n Up-piled aloft; for, from the sky serene\r\n And from the clouds of lighter density,\r\n None are sent forth forever. That \u0027tis so\r\n Beyond a doubt, fact plain to sense declares:\r\n To wit, at such a time the densed clouds\r\n So mass themselves through all the upper air\r\n That we might think that round about all murk\r\n Had parted forth from Acheron and filled\r\n The mighty vaults of sky\u0026mdash;so grievously,\r\n As gathers thus the storm-clouds\u0027 gruesome might,\r\n Do faces of black horror hang on high\u0026mdash;\r\n When tempest begins its thunderbolts to forge.\r\n Besides, full often also out at sea\r\n A blackest thunderhead, like cataract\r\n Of pitch hurled down from heaven, and far away\r\n Bulging with murkiness, down on the waves\r\n Falls with vast uproar, and draws on amain\r\n The darkling tempests big with thunderbolts\r\n And hurricanes, itself the while so crammed\r\n Tremendously with fires and winds, that even\r\n Back on the lands the people shudder round\r\n And seek for cover. Therefore, as I said,\r\n The storm must be conceived as o\u0027er our head\r\n Towering most high; for never would the clouds\r\n O\u0027erwhelm the lands with such a massy dark,\r\n Unless up-builded heap on lofty heap,\r\n To shut the round sun off. Nor could the clouds,\r\n As on they come, engulf with rain so vast\r\n As thus to make the rivers overflow\r\n And fields to float, if ether were not thus\r\n Furnished with lofty-piled clouds. Lo, then,\r\n Here be all things fulfilled with winds and fires\u0026mdash;\r\n Hence the long lightnings and the thunders loud.\r\n For, verily, I\u0027ve taught thee even now\r\n How cavernous clouds hold seeds innumerable\r\n Of fiery exhalations, and they must\r\n From off the sunbeams and the heat of these\r\n Take many still. And so, when that same wind\r\n (Which, haply, into one region of the sky\r\n Collects those clouds) hath pressed from out the same\r\n The many fiery seeds, and with that fire\r\n Hath at the same time inter-mixed itself,\r\n O then and there that wind, a whirlwind now,\r\n Deep in the belly of the cloud spins round\r\n In narrow confines, and sharpens there inside\r\n In glowing furnaces the thunderbolt.\r\n For in a two-fold manner is that wind\r\n Enkindled all: it trembles into heat\r\n Both by its own velocity and by\r\n Repeated touch of fire. Thereafter, when\r\n The energy of wind is heated through\r\n And the fierce impulse of the fire hath sped\r\n Deeply within, O then the thunderbolt,\r\n Now ripened, so to say, doth suddenly\r\n Splinter the cloud, and the aroused flash\r\n Leaps onward, lumining with forky light\r\n All places round. And followeth anon\r\n A clap so heavy that the skiey vaults,\r\n As if asunder burst, seem from on high\r\n To engulf the earth. Then fearfully a quake\r\n Pervades the lands, and \u0027long the lofty skies\r\n Run the far rumblings. For at such a time\r\n Nigh the whole tempest quakes, shook through and through,\r\n And roused are the roarings,\u0026mdash;from which shock\r\n Comes such resounding and abounding rain,\r\n That all the murky ether seems to turn\r\n Now into rain, and, as it tumbles down,\r\n To summon the fields back to primeval floods:\r\n So big the rains that be sent down on men\r\n By burst of cloud and by the hurricane,\r\n What time the thunder-clap, from burning bolt\r\n That cracks the cloud, flies forth along. At times\r\n The force of wind, excited from without,\r\n Smiteth into a cloud already hot\r\n With a ripe thunderbolt. And when that wind\r\n Hath splintered that cloud, then down there cleaves forthwith\r\n Yon fiery coil of flame which still we call,\r\n Even with our fathers\u0027 word, a thunderbolt.\r\n The same thing haps toward every other side\r\n Whither that force hath swept. It happens, too,\r\n That sometimes force of wind, though hurtled forth\r\n Without all fire, yet in its voyage through space\r\n Igniteth, whilst it comes along, along,\u0026mdash;\r\n Losing some larger bodies which cannot\r\n Pass, like the others, through the bulks of air,\u0026mdash;\r\n And, scraping together out of air itself\r\n Some smaller bodies, carries them along,\r\n And these, commingling, by their flight make fire:\r\n Much in the manner as oft a leaden ball\r\n Grows hot upon its aery course, the while\r\n It loseth many bodies of stark cold\r\n And taketh into itself along the air\r\n New particles of fire. It happens, too,\r\n That force of blow itself arouses fire,\r\n When force of wind, a-cold and hurtled forth\r\n Without all fire, hath strook somewhere amain\u0026mdash;\r\n No marvel, because, when with terrific stroke\r\n \u0027Thas smitten, the elements of fiery-stuff\r\n Can stream together from out the very wind\r\n And, simultaneously, from out that thing\r\n Which then and there receives the stroke: as flies\r\n The fire when with the steel we hack the stone;\r\n Nor yet, because the force of steel\u0027s a-cold,\r\n Rush the less speedily together there\r\n Under the stroke its seeds of radiance hot.\r\n And therefore, thuswise must an object too\r\n Be kindled by a thunderbolt, if haply\r\n \u0027Thas been adapt and suited to the flames.\r\n Yet force of wind must not be rashly deemed\r\n As altogether and entirely cold\u0026mdash;\r\n That force which is discharged from on high\r\n With such stupendous power; but if \u0027tis not\r\n Upon its course already kindled with fire,\r\n It yet arriveth warmed and mixed with heat.\r\n\r\n And, now, the speed and stroke of thunderbolt\r\n Is so tremendous, and with glide so swift\r\n Those thunderbolts rush on and down, because\r\n Their roused force itself collects itself\r\n First always in the clouds, and then prepares\r\n For the huge effort of their going-forth;\r\n Next, when the cloud no longer can retain\r\n The increment of their fierce impetus,\r\n Their force is pressed out, and therefore flies\r\n With impetus so wondrous, like to shots\r\n Hurled from the powerful Roman catapults.\r\n Note, too, this force consists of elements\r\n Both small and smooth, nor is there aught that can\r\n With ease resist such nature. For it darts\r\n Between and enters through the pores of things;\r\n And so it never falters in delay\r\n Despite innumerable collisions, but\r\n Flies shooting onward with a swift elan.\r\n Next, since by nature always every weight\r\n Bears downward, doubled is the swiftness then\r\n And that elan is still more wild and dread,\r\n When, verily, to weight are added blows,\r\n So that more madly and more fiercely then\r\n The thunderbolt shakes into shivers all\r\n That blocks its path, following on its way.\r\n Then, too, because it comes along, along\r\n With one continuing elan, it must\r\n Take on velocity anew, anew,\r\n Which still increases as it goes, and ever\r\n Augments the bolt\u0027s vast powers and to the blow\r\n Gives larger vigour; for it forces all,\r\n All of the thunder\u0027s seeds of fire, to sweep\r\n In a straight line unto one place, as \u0027twere,\u0026mdash;\r\n Casting them one by other, as they roll,\r\n Into that onward course. Again, perchance,\r\n In coming along, it pulls from out the air\r\n Some certain bodies, which by their own blows\r\n Enkindle its velocity. And, lo,\r\n It comes through objects leaving them unharmed,\r\n It goes through many things and leaves them whole,\r\n Because the liquid fire flieth along\r\n Athrough their pores. And much it does transfix,\r\n When these primordial atoms of the bolt\r\n Have fallen upon the atoms of these things\r\n Precisely where the intertwined atoms\r\n Are held together. And, further, easily\r\n Brass it unbinds and quickly fuseth gold,\r\n Because its force is so minutely made\r\n Of tiny parts and elements so smooth\r\n That easily they wind their way within,\r\n And, when once in, quickly unbind all knots\r\n And loosen all the bonds of union there.\r\n\r\n And most in autumn is shaken the house of heaven,\r\n The house so studded with the glittering stars,\r\n And the whole earth around\u0026mdash;most too in spring\r\n When flowery times unfold themselves: for, lo,\r\n In the cold season is there lack of fire,\r\n And winds are scanty in the hot, and clouds\r\n Have not so dense a bulk. But when, indeed,\r\n The seasons of heaven are betwixt these twain,\r\n The divers causes of the thunderbolt\r\n Then all concur; for then both cold and heat\r\n Are mixed in the cross-seas of the year,\r\n So that a discord rises among things\r\n And air in vast tumultuosity\r\n Billows, infuriate with the fires and winds\u0026mdash;\r\n Of which the both are needed by the cloud\r\n For fabrication of the thunderbolt.\r\n For the first part of heat and last of cold\r\n Is the time of spring; wherefore must things unlike\r\n Do battle one with other, and, when mixed,\r\n Tumultuously rage. And when rolls round\r\n The latest heat mixed with the earliest chill\u0026mdash;\r\n The time which bears the name of autumn\u0026mdash;then\r\n Likewise fierce cold-spells wrestle with fierce heats.\r\n On this account these seasons of the year\r\n Are nominated \"cross-seas.\"\u0026mdash;And no marvel\r\n If in those times the thunderbolts prevail\r\n And storms are roused turbulent in heaven,\r\n Since then both sides in dubious warfare rage\r\n Tumultuously, the one with flames, the other\r\n With winds and with waters mixed with winds.\r\n\r\n This, this it is, O Memmius, to see through\r\n The very nature of fire-fraught thunderbolt;\r\n O this it is to mark by what blind force\r\n It maketh each effect, and not, O not\r\n To unwind Etrurian scrolls oracular,\r\n Inquiring tokens of occult will of gods,\r\n Even as to whence the flying flame hath come,\r\n Or to which half of heaven it turns, or how\r\n Through walled places it hath wound its way,\r\n Or, after proving its dominion there,\r\n How it hath speeded forth from thence amain,\r\n Or what the thunderstroke portends of ill\r\n From out high heaven. But if Jupiter\r\n And other gods shake those refulgent vaults\r\n With dread reverberations and hurl fire\r\n Whither it pleases each, why smite they not\r\n Mortals of reckless and revolting crimes,\r\n That such may pant from a transpierced breast\r\n Forth flames of the red levin\u0026mdash;unto men\r\n A drastic lesson?\u0026mdash;why is rather he\u0026mdash;\r\n O he self-conscious of no foul offence\u0026mdash;\r\n Involved in flames, though innocent, and clasped\r\n Up-caught in skiey whirlwind and in fire?\r\n Nay, why, then, aim they at eternal wastes,\r\n And spend themselves in vain?\u0026mdash;perchance, even so\r\n To exercise their arms and strengthen shoulders?\r\n Why suffer they the Father\u0027s javelin\r\n To be so blunted on the earth? And why\r\n Doth he himself allow it, nor spare the same\r\n Even for his enemies? O why most oft\r\n Aims he at lofty places? Why behold we\r\n Marks of his lightnings most on mountain tops?\r\n Then for what reason shoots he at the sea?\u0026mdash;\r\n What sacrilege have waves and bulk of brine\r\n And floating fields of foam been guilty of?\r\n Besides, if \u0027tis his will that we beware\r\n Against the lightning-stroke, why feareth he\r\n To grant us power for to behold the shot?\r\n And, contrariwise, if wills he to o\u0027erwhelm us,\r\n Quite off our guard, with fire, why thunders he\r\n Off in yon quarter, so that we may shun?\r\n Why rouseth he beforehand darkling air\r\n And the far din and rumblings? And O how\r\n Canst thou believe he shoots at one same time\r\n Into diverse directions? Or darest thou\r\n Contend that never hath it come to pass\r\n That divers strokes have happened at one time?\r\n But oft and often hath it come to pass,\r\n And often still it must, that, even as showers\r\n And rains o\u0027er many regions fall, so too\r\n Dart many thunderbolts at one same time.\r\n Again, why never hurtles Jupiter\r\n A bolt upon the lands nor pours abroad\r\n Clap upon clap, when skies are cloudless all?\r\n Or, say, doth he, so soon as ever the clouds\r\n Have come thereunder, then into the same\r\n Descend in person, that from thence he may\r\n Near-by decide upon the stroke of shaft?\r\n And, lastly, why, with devastating bolt\r\n Shakes he asunder holy shrines of gods\r\n And his own thrones of splendour, and to-breaks\r\n The well-wrought idols of divinities,\r\n And robs of glory his own images\r\n By wound of violence?\r\n\r\n But to return apace,\r\n Easy it is from these same facts to know\r\n In just what wise those things (which from their sort\r\n The Greeks have named \"bellows\") do come down,\r\n Discharged from on high, upon the seas.\r\n For it haps that sometimes from the sky descends\r\n Upon the seas a column, as if pushed,\r\n Round which the surges seethe, tremendously\r\n Aroused by puffing gusts; and whatso\u0027er\r\n Of ships are caught within that tumult then\r\n Come into extreme peril, dashed along.\r\n This haps when sometimes wind\u0027s aroused force\r\n Can\u0027t burst the cloud it tries to, but down-weighs\r\n That cloud, until \u0027tis like a column from sky\r\n Upon the seas pushed downward\u0026mdash;gradually,\r\n As if a Somewhat from on high were shoved\r\n By fist and nether thrust of arm, and lengthened\r\n Far to the waves. And when the force of wind\r\n Hath rived this cloud, from out the cloud it rushes\r\n Down on the seas, and starts among the waves\r\n A wondrous seething, for the eddying whirl\r\n Descends and downward draws along with it\r\n That cloud of ductile body. And soon as ever\r\n \u0027Thas shoved unto the levels of the main\r\n That laden cloud, the whirl suddenly then\r\n Plunges its whole self into the waters there\r\n And rouses all the sea with monstrous roar,\r\n Constraining it to seethe. It happens too\r\n That very vortex of the wind involves\r\n Itself in clouds, scraping from out the air\r\n The seeds of cloud, and counterfeits, as \u0027twere,\r\n The \"bellows\" pushed from heaven. And when this shape\r\n Hath dropped upon the lands and burst apart,\r\n It belches forth immeasurable might\r\n Of whirlwind and of blast. Yet since \u0027tis formed\r\n At most but rarely, and on land the hills\r\n Must block its way, \u0027tis seen more oft out there\r\n On the broad prospect of the level main\r\n Along the free horizons.\r\n\r\n Into being\r\n The clouds condense, when in this upper space\r\n Of the high heaven have gathered suddenly,\r\n As round they flew, unnumbered particles\u0026mdash;\r\n World\u0027s rougher ones, which can, though interlinked\r\n With scanty couplings, yet be fastened firm,\r\n The one on other caught. These particles\r\n First cause small clouds to form; and, thereupon,\r\n These catch the one on other and swarm in a flock\r\n And grow by their conjoining, and by winds\r\n Are borne along, along, until collects\r\n The tempest fury. Happens, too, the nearer\r\n The mountain summits neighbour to the sky,\r\n The more unceasingly their far crags smoke\r\n With the thick darkness of swart cloud, because\r\n When first the mists do form, ere ever the eyes\r\n Can there behold them (tenuous as they be),\r\n The carrier-winds will drive them up and on\r\n Unto the topmost summits of the mountain;\r\n And then at last it happens, when they be\r\n In vaster throng upgathered, that they can\r\n By this very condensation lie revealed,\r\n And that at same time they are seen to surge\r\n From very vertex of the mountain up\r\n Into far ether. For very fact and feeling,\r\n As we up-climb high mountains, proveth clear\r\n That windy are those upward regions free.\r\n Besides, the clothes hung-out along the shore,\r\n When in they take the clinging moisture, prove\r\n That nature lifts from over all the sea\r\n Unnumbered particles. Whereby the more\r\n \u0027Tis manifest that many particles\r\n Even from the salt upheavings of the main\r\n Can rise together to augment the bulk\r\n Of massed clouds. For moistures in these twain\r\n Are near akin. Besides, from out all rivers,\r\n As well as from the land itself, we see\r\n Up-rising mists and steam, which like a breath\r\n Are forced out from them and borne aloft,\r\n To curtain heaven with their murk, and make,\r\n By slow foregathering, the skiey clouds.\r\n For, in addition, lo, the heat on high\r\n Of constellated ether burdens down\r\n Upon them, and by sort of condensation\r\n Weaveth beneath the azure firmament\r\n The reek of darkling cloud. It happens, too,\r\n That hither to the skies from the Beyond\r\n Do come those particles which make the clouds\r\n And flying thunderheads. For I have taught\r\n That this their number is innumerable\r\n And infinite the sum of the Abyss,\r\n And I have shown with what stupendous speed\r\n Those bodies fly and how they\u0027re wont to pass\r\n Amain through incommunicable space.\r\n Therefore, \u0027tis not exceeding strange, if oft\r\n In little time tempest and darkness cover\r\n With bulking thunderheads hanging on high\r\n The oceans and the lands, since everywhere\r\n Through all the narrow tubes of yonder ether,\r\n Yea, so to speak, through all the breathing-holes\r\n Of the great upper-world encompassing,\r\n There be for the primordial elements\r\n Exits and entrances.\r\n\r\n Now come, and how\r\n The rainy moisture thickens into being\r\n In the lofty clouds, and how upon the lands\r\n \u0027Tis then discharged in down-pour of large showers,\r\n I will unfold. And first triumphantly\r\n Will I persuade thee that up-rise together,\r\n With clouds themselves, full many seeds of water\r\n From out all things, and that they both increase\u0026mdash;\r\n Both clouds and water which is in the clouds\u0026mdash;\r\n In like proportion, as our frames increase\r\n In like proportion with our blood, as well\r\n As sweat or any moisture in our members.\r\n Besides, the clouds take in from time to time\r\n Much moisture risen from the broad marine,\u0026mdash;\r\n Whilst the winds bear them o\u0027er the mighty sea,\r\n Like hanging fleeces of white wool. Thuswise,\r\n Even from all rivers is there lifted up\r\n Moisture into the clouds. And when therein\r\n The seeds of water so many in many ways\r\n Have come together, augmented from all sides,\r\n The close-jammed clouds then struggle to discharge\r\n Their rain-storms for a two-fold reason: lo,\r\n The wind\u0027s force crowds them, and the very excess\r\n Of storm-clouds (massed in a vaster throng)\r\n Giveth an urge and pressure from above\r\n And makes the rains out-pour. Besides when, too,\r\n The clouds are winnowed by the winds, or scattered\r\n Smitten on top by heat of sun, they send\r\n Their rainy moisture, and distil their drops,\r\n Even as the wax, by fiery warmth on top,\r\n Wasteth and liquefies abundantly.\r\n But comes the violence of the bigger rains\r\n When violently the clouds are weighted down\r\n Both by their cumulated mass and by\r\n The onset of the wind. And rains are wont\r\n To endure awhile and to abide for long,\r\n When many seeds of waters are aroused,\r\n And clouds on clouds and racks on racks outstream\r\n In piled layers and are borne along\r\n From every quarter, and when all the earth\r\n Smoking exhales her moisture. At such a time\r\n When sun with beams amid the tempest-murk\r\n Hath shone against the showers of black rains,\r\n Then in the swart clouds there emerges bright\r\n The radiance of the bow.\r\n\r\n And as to things\r\n Not mentioned here which of themselves do grow\r\n Or of themselves are gendered, and all things\r\n Which in the clouds condense to being\u0026mdash;all,\r\n Snow and the winds, hail and the hoar-frosts chill,\r\n And freezing, mighty force\u0026mdash;of lakes and pools\r\n The mighty hardener, and mighty check\r\n Which in the winter curbeth everywhere\r\n The rivers as they go\u0026mdash;\u0027tis easy still,\r\n Soon to discover and with mind to see\r\n How they all happen, whereby gendered,\r\n When once thou well hast understood just what\r\n Functions have been vouchsafed from of old\r\n Unto the procreant atoms of the world.\r\n Now come, and what the law of earthquakes is\r\n Hearken, and first of all take care to know\r\n That the under-earth, like to the earth around us,\r\n Is full of windy caverns all about;\r\n And many a pool and many a grim abyss\r\n She bears within her bosom, ay, and cliffs\r\n And jagged scarps; and many a river, hid\r\n Beneath her chine, rolls rapidly along\r\n Its billows and plunging boulders. For clear fact\r\n Requires that earth must be in every part\r\n Alike in constitution. Therefore, earth,\r\n With these things underneath affixed and set,\r\n Trembleth above, jarred by big down-tumblings,\r\n When time hath undermined the huge caves,\r\n The subterranean. Yea, whole mountains fall,\r\n And instantly from spot of that big jar\r\n There quiver the tremors far and wide abroad.\r\n And with good reason: since houses on the street\r\n Begin to quake throughout, when jarred by a cart\r\n Of no large weight; and, too, the furniture\r\n Within the house up-bounds, when a paving-block\r\n Gives either iron rim of the wheels a jolt.\r\n It happens, too, when some prodigious bulk\r\n Of age-worn soil is rolled from mountain slopes\r\n Into tremendous pools of water dark,\r\n That the reeling land itself is rocked about\r\n By the water\u0027s undulations; as a basin\r\n Sometimes won\u0027t come to rest until the fluid\r\n Within it ceases to be rocked about\r\n In random undulations.\r\n\r\n And besides,\r\n When subterranean winds, up-gathered there\r\n In the hollow deeps, bulk forward from one spot,\r\n And press with the big urge of mighty powers\r\n Against the lofty grottos, then the earth\r\n Bulks to that quarter whither push amain\r\n The headlong winds. Then all the builded houses\r\n Above ground\u0026mdash;and the more, the higher up-reared\r\n Unto the sky\u0026mdash;lean ominously, careening\r\n Into the same direction; and the beams,\r\n Wrenched forward, over-hang, ready to go.\r\n Yet dread men to believe that there awaits\r\n The nature of the mighty world a time\r\n Of doom and cataclysm, albeit they see\r\n So great a bulk of lands to bulge and break!\r\n And lest the winds blew back again, no force\r\n Could rein things in nor hold from sure career\r\n On to disaster. But now because those winds\r\n Blow back and forth in alternation strong,\r\n And, so to say, rallying charge again,\r\n And then repulsed retreat, on this account\r\n Earth oftener threatens than she brings to pass\r\n Collapses dire. For to one side she leans,\r\n Then back she sways; and after tottering\r\n Forward, recovers then her seats of poise.\r\n Thus, this is why whole houses rock, the roofs\r\n More than the middle stories, middle more\r\n Than lowest, and the lowest least of all.\r\n\r\n Arises, too, this same great earth-quaking,\r\n When wind and some prodigious force of air,\r\n Collected from without or down within\r\n The old telluric deeps, have hurled themselves\r\n Amain into those caverns sub-terrene,\r\n And there at first tumultuously chafe\r\n Among the vasty grottos, borne about\r\n In mad rotations, till their lashed force\r\n Aroused out-bursts abroad, and then and there,\r\n Riving the deep earth, makes a mighty chasm\u0026mdash;\r\n What once in Syrian Sidon did befall,\r\n And once in Peloponnesian Aegium,\r\n Twain cities which such out-break of wild air\r\n And earth\u0027s convulsion, following hard upon,\r\n O\u0027erthrew of old. And many a walled town,\r\n Besides, hath fall\u0027n by such omnipotent\r\n Convulsions on the land, and in the sea\r\n Engulfed hath sunken many a city down\r\n With all its populace. But if, indeed,\r\n They burst not forth, yet is the very rush\r\n Of the wild air and fury-force of wind\r\n Then dissipated, like an ague-fit,\r\n Through the innumerable pores of earth,\r\n To set her all a-shake\u0026mdash;even as a chill,\r\n When it hath gone into our marrow-bones,\r\n Sets us convulsively, despite ourselves,\r\n A-shivering and a-shaking. Therefore, men\r\n With two-fold terror bustle in alarm\r\n Through cities to and fro: they fear the roofs\r\n Above the head; and underfoot they dread\r\n The caverns, lest the nature of the earth\r\n Suddenly rend them open, and she gape,\r\n Herself asunder, with tremendous maw,\r\n And, all confounded, seek to chock it full\r\n With her own ruins. Let men, then, go on\r\n Feigning at will that heaven and earth shall be\r\n Inviolable, entrusted evermore\r\n To an eternal weal: and yet at times\r\n The very force of danger here at hand\r\n Prods them on some side with this goad of fear\u0026mdash;\r\n This among others\u0026mdash;that the earth, withdrawn\r\n Abruptly from under their feet, be hurried down,\r\n Down into the abyss, and the Sum-of-Things\r\n Be following after, utterly fordone,\r\n Till be but wrack and wreckage of a world.\r\n\r\n\u003c/pre\u003e\r\n \u003chr \u003e\r\n\u003cpre\u003e\r\nEXTRAORDINARY AND PARADOXICAL TELLURIC\r\n PHENOMENA\r\n\u003c/pre\u003e\r\n\u003cpre\u003e\r\n In chief, men marvel nature renders not\r\n Bigger and bigger the bulk of ocean, since\r\n So vast the down-rush of the waters be,\r\n And every river out of every realm\r\n Cometh thereto; and add the random rains\r\n And flying tempests, which spatter every sea\r\n And every land bedew; add their own springs:\r\n Yet all of these unto the ocean\u0027s sum\r\n Shall be but as the increase of a drop.\r\n Wherefore \u0027tis less a marvel that the sea,\r\n The mighty ocean, increaseth not. Besides,\r\n Sun with his heat draws off a mighty part:\r\n Yea, we behold that sun with burning beams\r\n To dry our garments dripping all with wet;\r\n And many a sea, and far out-spread beneath,\r\n Do we behold. Therefore, however slight\r\n The portion of wet that sun on any spot\r\n Culls from the level main, he still will take\r\n From off the waves in such a wide expanse\r\n Abundantly. Then, further, also winds,\r\n Sweeping the level waters, can bear off\r\n A mighty part of wet, since we behold\r\n Oft in a single night the highways dried\r\n By winds, and soft mud crusted o\u0027er at dawn.\r\n Again, I\u0027ve taught thee that the clouds bear off\r\n Much moisture too, up-taken from the reaches\r\n Of the mighty main, and sprinkle it about\r\n O\u0027er all the zones, when rain is on the lands\r\n And winds convey the aery racks of vapour.\r\n Lastly, since earth is porous through her frame,\r\n And neighbours on the seas, girdling their shores,\r\n The water\u0027s wet must seep into the lands\r\n From briny ocean, as from lands it comes\r\n Into the seas. For brine is filtered off,\r\n And then the liquid stuff seeps back again\r\n And all re-poureth at the river-heads,\r\n Whence in fresh-water currents it returns\r\n Over the lands, adown the channels which\r\n Were cleft erstwhile and erstwhile bore along\r\n The liquid-footed floods.\r\n\r\n And now the cause\r\n Whereby athrough the throat of Aetna\u0027s Mount\r\n Such vast tornado-fires out-breathe at times,\r\n I will unfold: for with no middling might\r\n Of devastation the flamy tempest rose\r\n And held dominion in Sicilian fields:\r\n Drawing upon itself the upturned faces\r\n Of neighbouring clans, what time they saw afar\r\n The skiey vaults a-fume and sparkling all,\r\n And filled their bosoms with dread anxiety\r\n Of what new thing nature were travailing at.\r\n\r\n In these affairs it much behooveth thee\r\n To look both wide and deep, and far abroad\r\n To peer to every quarter, that thou mayst\r\n Remember how boundless is the Sum-of-Things,\r\n And mark how infinitely small a part\r\n Of the whole Sum is this one sky of ours\u0026mdash;\r\n O not so large a part as is one man\r\n Of the whole earth. And plainly if thou viewest\r\n This cosmic fact, placing it square in front,\r\n And plainly understandest, thou wilt leave\r\n Wondering at many things. For who of us\r\n Wondereth if some one gets into his joints\r\n A fever, gathering head with fiery heat,\r\n Or any other dolorous disease\r\n Along his members? For anon the foot\r\n Grows blue and bulbous; often the sharp twinge\r\n Seizes the teeth, attacks the very eyes;\r\n Out-breaks the sacred fire, and, crawling on\r\n Over the body, burneth every part\r\n It seizeth on, and works its hideous way\r\n Along the frame. No marvel this, since, lo,\r\n Of things innumerable be seeds enough,\r\n And this our earth and sky do bring to us\r\n Enough of bane from whence can grow the strength\r\n Of maladies uncounted. Thuswise, then,\r\n We must suppose to all the sky and earth\r\n Are ever supplied from out the infinite\r\n All things, O all in stores enough whereby\r\n The shaken earth can of a sudden move,\r\n And fierce typhoons can over sea and lands\r\n Go tearing on, and Aetna\u0027s fires o\u0027erflow,\r\n And heaven become a flame-burst. For that, too,\r\n Happens at times, and the celestial vaults\r\n Glow into fire, and rainy tempests rise\r\n In heavier congregation, when, percase,\r\n The seeds of water have foregathered thus\r\n From out the infinite. \"Aye, but passing huge\r\n The fiery turmoil of that conflagration!\"\r\n So sayst thou; well, huge many a river seems\r\n To him that erstwhile ne\u0027er a larger saw;\r\n Thus, huge seems tree or man; and everything\r\n Which mortal sees the biggest of each class,\r\n That he imagines to be \"huge\"; though yet\r\n All these, with sky and land and sea to boot,\r\n Are all as nothing to the sum entire\r\n Of the all-Sum.\r\n\r\n But now I will unfold\r\n At last how yonder suddenly angered flame\r\n Out-blows abroad from vasty furnaces\r\n Aetnaean. First, the mountain\u0027s nature is\r\n All under-hollow, propped about, about\r\n With caverns of basaltic piers. And, lo,\r\n In all its grottos be there wind and air\u0026mdash;\r\n For wind is made when air hath been uproused\r\n By violent agitation. When this air\r\n Is heated through and through, and, raging round,\r\n Hath made the earth and all the rocks it touches\r\n Horribly hot, and hath struck off from them\r\n Fierce fire of swiftest flame, it lifts itself\r\n And hurtles thus straight upwards through its throat\r\n Into high heav\u0027n, and thus bears on afar\r\n Its burning blasts and scattereth afar\r\n Its ashes, and rolls a smoke of pitchy murk\r\n And heaveth the while boulders of wondrous weight\u0026mdash;\r\n Leaving no doubt in thee that \u0027tis the air\u0027s\r\n Tumultuous power. Besides, in mighty part,\r\n The sea there at the roots of that same mount\r\n Breaks its old billows and sucks back its surf.\r\n And grottos from the sea pass in below\r\n Even to the bottom of the mountain\u0027s throat.\r\n Herethrough thou must admit there go…\r\n\r\n\u003c/pre\u003e\r\n \u003chr \u003e\r\n\u003cpre\u003e\r\n And the conditions force [the water and air]\r\n Deeply to penetrate from the open sea,\r\n And to out-blow abroad, and to up-bear\r\n Thereby the flame, and to up-cast from deeps\r\n The boulders, and to rear the clouds of sand.\r\n For at the top be \"bowls,\" as people there\r\n Are wont to name what we at Rome do call\r\n The throats and mouths.\r\n\r\n There be, besides, some thing\r\n Of which \u0027tis not enough one only cause\r\n To state\u0026mdash;but rather several, whereof one\r\n Will be the true: lo, if thou shouldst espy\r\n Lying afar some fellow\u0027s lifeless corse,\r\n \u0027Twere meet to name all causes of a death,\r\n That cause of his death might thereby be named:\r\n For prove thou mayst he perished not by steel,\r\n By cold, nor even by poison nor disease,\r\n Yet somewhat of this sort hath come to him\r\n We know\u0026mdash;And thus we have to say the same\r\n In divers cases.\r\n\r\n Toward the summer, Nile\r\n Waxeth and overfloweth the champaign,\r\n Unique in all the landscape, river sole\r\n Of the Aegyptians. In mid-season heats\r\n Often and oft he waters Aegypt o\u0027er,\r\n Either because in summer against his mouths\r\n Come those northwinds which at that time of year\r\n Men name the Etesian blasts, and, blowing thus\r\n Upstream, retard, and, forcing back his waves,\r\n Fill him o\u0027erfull and force his flow to stop.\r\n For out of doubt these blasts which driven be\r\n From icy constellations of the pole\r\n Are borne straight up the river. Comes that river\r\n From forth the sultry places down the south,\r\n Rising far up in midmost realm of day,\r\n Among black generations of strong men\r\n With sun-baked skins. \u0027Tis possible, besides,\r\n That a big bulk of piled sand may bar\r\n His mouths against his onward waves, when sea,\r\n Wild in the winds, tumbles the sand to inland;\r\n Whereby the river\u0027s outlet were less free,\r\n Likewise less headlong his descending floods.\r\n It may be, too, that in this season rains\r\n Are more abundant at its fountain head,\r\n Because the Etesian blasts of those northwinds\r\n Then urge all clouds into those inland parts.\r\n And, soothly, when they\u0027re thus foregathered there,\r\n Urged yonder into midmost realm of day,\r\n Then, crowded against the lofty mountain sides,\r\n They\u0027re massed and powerfully pressed. Again,\r\n Perchance, his waters wax, O far away,\r\n Among the Aethiopians\u0027 lofty mountains,\r\n When the all-beholding sun with thawing beams\r\n Drives the white snows to flow into the vales.\r\n\r\n Now come; and unto thee I will unfold,\r\n As to the Birdless spots and Birdless tarns,\r\n What sort of nature they are furnished with.\r\n First, as to name of \"birdless,\"\u0026mdash;that derives\r\n From very fact, because they noxious be\r\n Unto all birds. For when above those spots\r\n In horizontal flight the birds have come,\r\n Forgetting to oar with wings, they furl their sails,\r\n And, with down-drooping of their delicate necks,\r\n Fall headlong into earth, if haply such\r\n The nature of the spots, or into water,\r\n If haply spreads thereunder Birdless tarn.\r\n Such spot\u0027s at Cumae, where the mountains smoke,\r\n Charged with the pungent sulphur, and increased\r\n With steaming springs. And such a spot there is\r\n Within the walls of Athens, even there\r\n On summit of Acropolis, beside\r\n Fane of Tritonian Pallas bountiful,\r\n Where never cawing crows can wing their course,\r\n Not even when smoke the altars with good gifts,\u0026mdash;\r\n But evermore they flee\u0026mdash;yet not from wrath\r\n Of Pallas, grieved at that espial old,\r\n As poets of the Greeks have sung the tale;\r\n But very nature of the place compels.\r\n In Syria also\u0026mdash;as men say\u0026mdash;a spot\r\n Is to be seen, where also four-foot kinds,\r\n As soon as ever they\u0027ve set their steps within,\r\n Collapse, o\u0027ercome by its essential power,\r\n As if there slaughtered to the under-gods.\r\n Lo, all these wonders work by natural law,\r\n And from what causes they are brought to pass\r\n The origin is manifest; so, haply,\r\n Let none believe that in these regions stands\r\n The gate of Orcus, nor us then suppose,\r\n Haply, that thence the under-gods draw down\r\n Souls to dark shores of Acheron\u0026mdash;as stags,\r\n The wing-footed, are thought to draw to light,\r\n By sniffing nostrils, from their dusky lairs\r\n The wriggling generations of wild snakes.\r\n How far removed from true reason is this,\r\n Perceive thou straight; for now I\u0027ll try to say\r\n Somewhat about the very fact.\r\n\r\n And, first,\r\n This do I say, as oft I\u0027ve said before:\r\n In earth are atoms of things of every sort;\r\n And know, these all thus rise from out the earth\u0026mdash;\r\n Many life-giving which be good for food,\r\n And many which can generate disease\r\n And hasten death, O many primal seeds\r\n Of many things in many modes\u0026mdash;since earth\r\n Contains them mingled and gives forth discrete.\r\n And we have shown before that certain things\r\n Be unto certain creatures suited more\r\n For ends of life, by virtue of a nature,\r\n A texture, and primordial shapes, unlike\r\n For kinds alike. Then too \u0027tis thine to see\r\n How many things oppressive be and foul\r\n To man, and to sensation most malign:\r\n Many meander miserably through ears;\r\n Many in-wind athrough the nostrils too,\r\n Malign and harsh when mortal draws a breath;\r\n Of not a few must one avoid the touch;\r\n Of not a few must one escape the sight;\r\n And some there be all loathsome to the taste;\r\n And many, besides, relax the languid limbs\r\n Along the frame, and undermine the soul\r\n In its abodes within. To certain trees\r\n There hath been given so dolorous a shade\r\n That often they gender achings of the head,\r\n If one but be beneath, outstretched on the sward.\r\n There is, again, on Helicon\u0027s high hills\r\n A tree that\u0027s wont to kill a man outright\r\n By fetid odour of its very flower.\r\n And when the pungent stench of the night-lamp,\r\n Extinguished but a moment since, assails\r\n The nostrils, then and there it puts to sleep\r\n A man afflicted with the falling sickness\r\n And foamings at the mouth. A woman, too,\r\n At the heavy castor drowses back in chair,\r\n And from her delicate fingers slips away\r\n Her gaudy handiwork, if haply she\r\n Hath got the whiff at menstruation-time.\r\n Once more, if thou delayest in hot baths,\r\n When thou art over-full, how readily\r\n From stool in middle of the steaming water\r\n Thou tumblest in a fit! How readily\r\n The heavy fumes of charcoal wind their way\r\n Into the brain, unless beforehand we\r\n Of water \u0027ve drunk. But when a burning fever,\r\n O\u0027ermastering man, hath seized upon his limbs,\r\n Then odour of wine is like a hammer-blow.\r\n And seest thou not how in the very earth\r\n Sulphur is gendered and bitumen thickens\r\n With noisome stench?\u0026mdash;What direful stenches, too,\r\n Scaptensula out-breathes from down below,\r\n When men pursue the veins of silver and gold,\r\n With pick-axe probing round the hidden realms\r\n Deep in the earth?\u0026mdash;Or what of deadly bane\r\n The mines of gold exhale? O what a look,\r\n And what a ghastly hue they give to men!\r\n And seest thou not, or hearest, how they\u0027re wont\r\n In little time to perish, and how fail\r\n The life-stores in those folk whom mighty power\r\n Of grim necessity confineth there\r\n In such a task? Thus, this telluric earth\r\n Out-streams with all these dread effluvia\r\n And breathes them out into the open world\r\n And into the visible regions under heaven.\r\n\r\n Thus, too, those Birdless places must up-send\r\n An essence bearing death to winged things,\r\n Which from the earth rises into the breezes\r\n To poison part of skiey space, and when\r\n Thither the winged is on pennons borne,\r\n There, seized by the unseen poison, \u0027tis ensnared,\r\n And from the horizontal of its flight\r\n Drops to the spot whence sprang the effluvium.\r\n And when \u0027thas there collapsed, then the same power\r\n Of that effluvium takes from all its limbs\r\n The relics of its life. That power first strikes\r\n The creatures with a wildering dizziness,\r\n And then thereafter, when they\u0027re once down-fallen\r\n Into the poison\u0027s very fountains, then\r\n Life, too, they vomit out perforce, because\r\n So thick the stores of bane around them fume.\r\n\r\n Again, at times it happens that this power,\r\n This exhalation of the Birdless places,\r\n Dispels the air betwixt the ground and birds,\r\n Leaving well-nigh a void. And thither when\r\n In horizontal flight the birds have come,\r\n Forthwith their buoyancy of pennons limps,\r\n All useless, and each effort of both wings\r\n Falls out in vain. Here, when without all power\r\n To buoy themselves and on their wings to lean,\r\n Lo, nature constrains them by their weight to slip\r\n Down to the earth, and lying prostrate there\r\n Along the well-nigh empty void, they spend\r\n Their souls through all the openings of their frame.\r\n\r\n\u003c/pre\u003e\r\n \u003chr \u003e\r\n\u003cpre\u003e\r\n Further, the water of wells is colder then\r\n At summer time, because the earth by heat\r\n Is rarefied, and sends abroad in air\r\n Whatever seeds it peradventure have\r\n Of its own fiery exhalations.\r\n The more, then, the telluric ground is drained\r\n Of heat, the colder grows the water hid\r\n Within the earth. Further, when all the earth\r\n Is by the cold compressed, and thus contracts\r\n And, so to say, concretes, it happens, lo,\r\n That by contracting it expresses then\r\n Into the wells what heat it bears itself.\r\n\r\n \u0027Tis said at Hammon\u0027s fane a fountain is,\r\n In daylight cold and hot in time of night.\r\n This fountain men be-wonder over-much,\r\n And think that suddenly it seethes in heat\r\n By intense sun, the subterranean, when\r\n Night with her terrible murk hath cloaked the lands\u0026mdash;\r\n What\u0027s not true reasoning by a long remove:\r\n I\u0027 faith when sun o\u0027erhead, touching with beams\r\n An open body of water, had no power\r\n To render it hot upon its upper side,\r\n Though his high light possess such burning glare,\r\n How, then, can he, when under the gross earth,\r\n Make water boil and glut with fiery heat?\u0026mdash;\r\n And, specially, since scarcely potent he\r\n Through hedging walls of houses to inject\r\n His exhalations hot, with ardent rays.\r\n What, then\u0027s, the principle? Why, this, indeed:\r\n The earth about that spring is porous more\r\n Than elsewhere the telluric ground, and be\r\n Many the seeds of fire hard by the water;\r\n On this account, when night with dew-fraught shades\r\n Hath whelmed the earth, anon the earth deep down\r\n Grows chill, contracts; and thuswise squeezes out\r\n Into the spring what seeds she holds of fire\r\n (As one might squeeze with fist), which render hot\r\n The touch and steam of the fluid. Next, when sun,\r\n Up-risen, with his rays has split the soil\r\n And rarefied the earth with waxing heat,\r\n Again into their ancient abodes return\r\n The seeds of fire, and all the Hot of water\r\n Into the earth retires; and this is why\r\n The fountain in the daylight gets so cold.\r\n Besides, the water\u0027s wet is beat upon\r\n By rays of sun, and, with the dawn, becomes\r\n Rarer in texture under his pulsing blaze;\r\n And, therefore, whatso seeds it holds of fire\r\n It renders up, even as it renders oft\r\n The frost that it contains within itself\r\n And thaws its ice and looseneth the knots.\r\n There is, moreover, a fountain cold in kind\r\n That makes a bit of tow (above it held)\r\n Take fire forthwith and shoot a flame; so, too,\r\n A pitch-pine torch will kindle and flare round\r\n Along its waves, wherever \u0027tis impelled\r\n Afloat before the breeze. No marvel, this:\r\n Because full many seeds of heat there be\r\n Within the water; and, from earth itself\r\n Out of the deeps must particles of fire\r\n Athrough the entire fountain surge aloft,\r\n And speed in exhalations into air\r\n Forth and abroad (yet not in numbers enow\r\n As to make hot the fountain). And, moreo\u0027er,\r\n Some force constrains them, scattered through the water,\r\n Forthwith to burst abroad, and to combine\r\n In flame above. Even as a fountain far\r\n There is at Aradus amid the sea,\r\n Which bubbles out sweet water and disparts\r\n From round itself the salt waves; and, behold,\r\n In many another region the broad main\r\n Yields to the thirsty mariners timely help,\r\n Belching sweet waters forth amid salt waves.\r\n Just so, then, can those seeds of fire burst forth\r\n Athrough that other fount, and bubble out\r\n Abroad against the bit of tow; and when\r\n They there collect or cleave unto the torch,\r\n Forthwith they readily flash aflame, because\r\n The tow and torches, also, in themselves\r\n Have many seeds of latent fire. Indeed,\r\n And seest thou not, when near the nightly lamps\r\n Thou bringest a flaxen wick, extinguished\r\n A moment since, it catches fire before\r\n \u0027Thas touched the flame, and in same wise a torch?\r\n And many another object flashes aflame\r\n When at a distance, touched by heat alone,\r\n Before \u0027tis steeped in veritable fire.\r\n This, then, we must suppose to come to pass\r\n In that spring also.\r\n\r\n Now to other things!\r\n And I\u0027ll begin to treat by what decree\r\n Of nature it came to pass that iron can be\r\n By that stone drawn which Greeks the magnet call\r\n After the country\u0027s name (its origin\r\n Being in country of Magnesian folk).\r\n This stone men marvel at; and sure it oft\r\n Maketh a chain of rings, depending, lo,\r\n From off itself! Nay, thou mayest see at times\r\n Five or yet more in order dangling down\r\n And swaying in the delicate winds, whilst one\r\n Depends from other, cleaving to under-side,\r\n And ilk one feels the stone\u0027s own power and bonds\u0026mdash;\r\n So over-masteringly its power flows down.\r\n\r\n In things of this sort, much must be made sure\r\n Ere thou account of the thing itself canst give,\r\n And the approaches roundabout must be;\r\n Wherefore the more do I exact of thee\r\n A mind and ears attent.\r\n\r\n First, from all things\r\n We see soever, evermore must flow,\r\n Must be discharged and strewn about, about,\r\n Bodies that strike the eyes, awaking sight.\r\n From certain things flow odours evermore,\r\n As cold from rivers, heat from sun, and spray\r\n From waves of ocean, eater-out of walls\r\n Along the coasts. Nor ever cease to seep\r\n The varied echoings athrough the air.\r\n Then, too, there comes into the mouth at times\r\n The wet of a salt taste, when by the sea\r\n We roam about; and so, whene\u0027er we watch\r\n The wormwood being mixed, its bitter stings.\r\n To such degree from all things is each thing\r\n Borne streamingly along, and sent about\r\n To every region round; and nature grants\r\n Nor rest nor respite of the onward flow,\r\n Since \u0027tis incessantly we feeling have,\r\n And all the time are suffered to descry\r\n And smell all things at hand, and hear them sound.\r\n\r\n Now will I seek again to bring to mind\r\n How porous a body all things have\u0026mdash;a fact\r\n Made manifest in my first canto, too.\r\n For, truly, though to know this doth import\r\n For many things, yet for this very thing\r\n On which straightway I\u0027m going to discourse,\r\n \u0027Tis needful most of all to make it sure\r\n That naught\u0027s at hand but body mixed with void.\r\n A first ensample: in grottos, rocks o\u0027erhead\r\n Sweat moisture and distil the oozy drops;\r\n Likewise, from all our body seeps the sweat;\r\n There grows the beard, and along our members all\r\n And along our frame the hairs. Through all our veins\r\n Disseminates the foods, and gives increase\r\n And aliment down to the extreme parts,\r\n Even to the tiniest finger-nails. Likewise,\r\n Through solid bronze the cold and fiery heat\r\n We feel to pass; likewise, we feel them pass\r\n Through gold, through silver, when we clasp in hand\r\n The brimming goblets. And, again, there flit\r\n Voices through houses\u0027 hedging walls of stone;\r\n Odour seeps through, and cold, and heat of fire\r\n That\u0027s wont to penetrate even strength of iron.\r\n Again, where corselet of the sky girds round\r\n\r\n\u003c/pre\u003e\r\n \u003chr \u003e\r\n\u003cpre\u003e\r\n And at same time, some Influence of bane,\r\n When from Beyond \u0027thas stolen into [our world].\r\n And tempests, gathering from the earth and sky,\r\n Back to the sky and earth absorbed retire\u0026mdash;\r\n With reason, since there\u0027s naught that\u0027s fashioned not\r\n With body porous.\r\n\r\n Furthermore, not all\r\n The particles which be from things thrown off\r\n Are furnished with same qualities for sense,\r\n Nor be for all things equally adapt.\r\n A first ensample: the sun doth bake and parch\r\n The earth; but ice he thaws, and with his beams\r\n Compels the lofty snows, up-reared white\r\n Upon the lofty hills, to waste away;\r\n Then, wax, if set beneath the heat of him,\r\n Melts to a liquid. And the fire, likewise,\r\n Will melt the copper and will fuse the gold,\r\n But hides and flesh it shrivels up and shrinks.\r\n The water hardens the iron just off the fire,\r\n But hides and flesh (made hard by heat) it softens.\r\n The oleaster-tree as much delights\r\n The bearded she-goats, verily as though\r\n \u0027Twere nectar-steeped and shed ambrosia;\r\n Than which is naught that burgeons into leaf\r\n More bitter food for man. A hog draws back\r\n For marjoram oil, and every unguent fears\r\n Fierce poison these unto the bristled hogs,\r\n Yet unto us from time to time they seem,\r\n As \u0027twere, to give new life. But, contrariwise,\r\n Though unto us the mire be filth most foul,\r\n To hogs that mire doth so delightsome seem\r\n That they with wallowing from belly to back\r\n Are never cloyed.\r\n\r\n A point remains, besides,\r\n Which best it seems to tell of, ere I go\r\n To telling of the fact at hand itself.\r\n Since to the varied things assigned be\r\n The many pores, those pores must be diverse\r\n In nature one from other, and each have\r\n Its very shape, its own direction fixed.\r\n And so, indeed, in breathing creatures be\r\n The several senses, of which each takes in\r\n Unto itself, in its own fashion ever,\r\n Its own peculiar object. For we mark\r\n How sounds do into one place penetrate,\r\n Into another flavours of all juice,\r\n And savour of smell into a third. Moreover,\r\n One sort through rocks we see to seep, and, lo,\r\n One sort to pass through wood, another still\r\n Through gold, and others to go out and off\r\n Through silver and through glass. For we do see\r\n Through some pores form-and-look of things to flow,\r\n Through others heat to go, and some things still\r\n To speedier pass than others through same pores.\r\n Of verity, the nature of these same paths,\r\n Varying in many modes (as aforesaid)\r\n Because of unlike nature and warp and woof\r\n Of cosmic things, constrains it so to be.\r\n\r\n Wherefore, since all these matters now have been\r\n Established and settled well for us\r\n As premises prepared, for what remains\r\n \u0027Twill not be hard to render clear account\r\n By means of these, and the whole cause reveal\r\n Whereby the magnet lures the strength of iron.\r\n First, stream there must from off the lode-stone seeds\r\n Innumerable, a very tide, which smites\r\n By blows that air asunder lying betwixt\r\n The stone and iron. And when is emptied out\r\n This space, and a large place between the two\r\n Is made a void, forthwith the primal germs\r\n Of iron, headlong slipping, fall conjoined\r\n Into the vacuum, and the ring itself\r\n By reason thereof doth follow after and go\r\n Thuswise with all its body. And naught there is\r\n That of its own primordial elements\r\n More thoroughly knit or tighter linked coheres\r\n Than nature and cold roughness of stout iron.\r\n Wherefore, \u0027tis less a marvel what I said,\r\n That from such elements no bodies can\r\n From out the iron collect in larger throng\r\n And be into the vacuum borne along,\r\n Without the ring itself do follow after.\r\n And this it does, and followeth on until\r\n \u0027Thath reached the stone itself and cleaved to it\r\n By links invisible. Moreover, likewise,\r\n The motion\u0027s assisted by a thing of aid\r\n (Whereby the process easier becomes),\u0026mdash;\r\n Namely, by this: as soon as rarer grows\r\n That air in front of the ring, and space between\r\n Is emptied more and made a void, forthwith\r\n It happens all the air that lies behind\r\n Conveys it onward, pushing from the rear.\r\n For ever doth the circumambient air\r\n Drub things unmoved, but here it pushes forth\r\n The iron, because upon one side the space\r\n Lies void and thus receives the iron in.\r\n This air, whereof I am reminding thee,\r\n Winding athrough the iron\u0027s abundant pores\r\n So subtly into the tiny parts thereof,\r\n Shoves it and pushes, as wind the ship and sails.\r\n The same doth happen in all directions forth:\r\n From whatso side a space is made a void,\r\n Whether from crosswise or above, forthwith\r\n The neighbour particles are borne along\r\n Into the vacuum; for of verity,\r\n They\u0027re set a-going by poundings from elsewhere,\r\n Nor by themselves of own accord can they\r\n Rise upwards into the air. Again, all things\r\n Must in their framework hold some air, because\r\n They are of framework porous, and the air\r\n Encompasses and borders on all things.\r\n Thus, then, this air in iron so deeply stored\r\n Is tossed evermore in vexed motion,\r\n And therefore drubs upon the ring sans doubt\r\n And shakes it up inside….\r\n\r\n\u003c/pre\u003e\r\n \u003chr \u003e\r\n\u003cpre\u003e\r\n In sooth, that ring is thither borne along\r\n To where \u0027thas once plunged headlong\u0026mdash;thither, lo,\r\n Unto the void whereto it took its start.\r\n\r\n It happens, too, at times that nature of iron\r\n Shrinks from this stone away, accustomed\r\n By turns to flee and follow. Yea, I\u0027ve seen\r\n Those Samothracian iron rings leap up,\r\n And iron filings in the brazen bowls\r\n Seethe furiously, when underneath was set\r\n The magnet stone. So strongly iron seems\r\n To crave to flee that rock. Such discord great\r\n Is gendered by the interposed brass,\r\n Because, forsooth, when first the tide of brass\r\n Hath seized upon and held possession of\r\n The iron\u0027s open passage-ways, thereafter\r\n Cometh the tide of the stone, and in that iron\r\n Findeth all spaces full, nor now hath holes\r\n To swim through, as before. \u0027Tis thus constrained\r\n With its own current \u0027gainst the iron\u0027s fabric\r\n To dash and beat; by means whereof it spues\r\n Forth from itself\u0026mdash;and through the brass stirs up\u0026mdash;\r\n The things which otherwise without the brass\r\n It sucks into itself. In these affairs\r\n Marvel thou not that from this stone the tide\r\n Prevails not likewise other things to move\r\n With its own blows: for some stand firm by weight,\r\n As gold; and some cannot be moved forever,\r\n Because so porous in their framework they\r\n That there the tide streams through without a break,\r\n Of which sort stuff of wood is seen to be.\r\n Therefore, when iron (which lies between the two)\r\n Hath taken in some atoms of the brass,\r\n Then do the streams of that Magnesian rock\r\n Move iron by their smitings.\r\n\r\n Yet these things\r\n Are not so alien from others, that I\r\n Of this same sort am ill prepared to name\r\n Ensamples still of things exclusively\r\n To one another adapt. Thou seest, first,\r\n How lime alone cementeth stones: how wood\r\n Only by glue-of-bull with wood is joined\u0026mdash;\r\n So firmly too that oftener the boards\r\n Crack open along the weakness of the grain\r\n Ere ever those taurine bonds will lax their hold.\r\n The vine-born juices with the water-springs\r\n Are bold to mix, though not the heavy pitch\r\n With the light oil-of-olive. And purple dye\r\n Of shell-fish so uniteth with the wool\u0027s\r\n Body alone that it cannot be ta\u0027en\r\n Away forever\u0026mdash;nay, though thou gavest toil\r\n To restore the same with the Neptunian flood,\r\n Nay, though all ocean willed to wash it out\r\n With all its waves. Again, gold unto gold\r\n Doth not one substance bind, and only one?\r\n And is not brass by tin joined unto brass?\r\n And other ensamples how many might one find!\r\n What then? Nor is there unto thee a need\r\n Of such long ways and roundabout, nor boots it\r\n For me much toil on this to spend. More fit\r\n It is in few words briefly to embrace\r\n Things many: things whose textures fall together\r\n So mutually adapt, that cavities\r\n To solids correspond, these cavities\r\n Of this thing to the solid parts of that,\r\n And those of that to solid parts of this\u0026mdash;\r\n Such joinings are the best. Again, some things\r\n Can be the one with other coupled and held,\r\n Linked by hooks and eyes, as \u0027twere; and this\r\n Seems more the fact with iron and this stone.\r\n Now, of diseases what the law, and whence\r\n The Influence of bane upgathering can\r\n Upon the race of man and herds of cattle\r\n Kindle a devastation fraught with death,\r\n I will unfold. And, first, I\u0027ve taught above\r\n That seeds there be of many things to us\r\n Life-giving, and that, contrariwise, there must\r\n Fly many round bringing disease and death.\r\n When these have, haply, chanced to collect\r\n And to derange the atmosphere of earth,\r\n The air becometh baneful. And, lo, all\r\n That Influence of bane, that pestilence,\r\n Or from Beyond down through our atmosphere,\r\n Like clouds and mists, descends, or else collects\r\n From earth herself and rises, when, a-soak\r\n And beat by rains unseasonable and suns,\r\n Our earth hath then contracted stench and rot.\r\n Seest thou not, also, that whoso arrive\r\n In region far from fatherland and home\r\n Are by the strangeness of the clime and waters\r\n Distempered?\u0026mdash;since conditions vary much.\r\n For in what else may we suppose the clime\r\n Among the Britons to differ from Aegypt\u0027s own\r\n (Where totters awry the axis of the world),\r\n Or in what else to differ Pontic clime\r\n From Gades\u0027 and from climes adown the south,\r\n On to black generations of strong men\r\n With sun-baked skins? Even as we thus do see\r\n Four climes diverse under the four main-winds\r\n And under the four main-regions of the sky,\r\n So, too, are seen the colour and face of men\r\n Vastly to disagree, and fixed diseases\r\n To seize the generations, kind by kind:\r\n There is the elephant-disease which down\r\n In midmost Aegypt, hard by streams of Nile,\r\n Engendered is\u0026mdash;and never otherwhere.\r\n In Attica the feet are oft attacked,\r\n And in Achaean lands the eyes. And so\r\n The divers spots to divers parts and limbs\r\n Are noxious; \u0027tis a variable air\r\n That causes this. Thus when an atmosphere,\r\n Alien by chance to us, begins to heave,\r\n And noxious airs begin to crawl along,\r\n They creep and wind like unto mist and cloud,\r\n Slowly, and everything upon their way\r\n They disarrange and force to change its state.\r\n It happens, too, that when they\u0027ve come at last\r\n Into this atmosphere of ours, they taint\r\n And make it like themselves and alien.\r\n Therefore, asudden this devastation strange,\r\n This pestilence, upon the waters falls,\r\n Or settles on the very crops of grain\r\n Or other meat of men and feed of flocks.\r\n Or it remains a subtle force, suspense\r\n In the atmosphere itself; and when therefrom\r\n We draw our inhalations of mixed air,\r\n Into our body equally its bane\r\n Also we must suck in. In manner like,\r\n Oft comes the pestilence upon the kine,\r\n And sickness, too, upon the sluggish sheep.\r\n Nor aught it matters whether journey we\r\n To regions adverse to ourselves and change\r\n The atmospheric cloak, or whether nature\r\n Herself import a tainted atmosphere\r\n To us or something strange to our own use\r\n Which can attack us soon as ever it come.\r\n\u003c/pre\u003e\r\n \u003cp\u003e\r\n \u003ca id=\"link2H_4_0033\"\u003e\r\n \u003c!– H2 anchor –\u003e \u003c/a\u003e\r\n \u003c/p\u003e\r\n \u003cdiv style=\"height: 4em;\"\u003e\r\n \u003cbr \u003e\u003cbr \u003e\u003cbr \u003e\u003cbr \u003e\r\n \u003c/div\u003e\r\n \u003ch2\u003e\r\n THE PLAGUE ATHENS\r\n \u003c/h2\u003e\r\n\u003cpre\u003e\r\n \u0027Twas such a manner of disease, \u0027twas such\r\n Mortal miasma in Cecropian lands\r\n Whilom reduced the plains to dead men\u0027s bones,\r\n Unpeopled the highways, drained of citizens\r\n The Athenian town. For coming from afar,\r\n Rising in lands of Aegypt, traversing\r\n Reaches of air and floating fields of foam,\r\n At last on all Pandion\u0027s folk it swooped;\r\n Whereat by troops unto disease and death\r\n Were they o\u0027er-given. At first, they\u0027d bear about\r\n A skull on fire with heat, and eyeballs twain\r\n Red with suffusion of blank glare. Their throats,\r\n Black on the inside, sweated oozy blood;\r\n And the walled pathway of the voice of man\r\n Was clogged with ulcers; and the very tongue,\r\n The mind\u0027s interpreter, would trickle gore,\r\n Weakened by torments, tardy, rough to touch.\r\n Next when that Influence of bane had chocked,\r\n Down through the throat, the breast, and streamed had\r\n E\u0027en into sullen heart of those sick folk,\r\n Then, verily, all the fences of man\u0027s life\r\n Began to topple. From the mouth the breath\r\n Would roll a noisome stink, as stink to heaven\r\n Rotting cadavers flung unburied out.\r\n And, lo, thereafter, all the body\u0027s strength\r\n And every power of mind would languish, now\r\n In very doorway of destruction.\r\n And anxious anguish and ululation (mixed\r\n With many a groan) companioned alway\r\n The intolerable torments. Night and day,\r\n Recurrent spasms of vomiting would rack\r\n Alway their thews and members, breaking down\r\n With sheer exhaustion men already spent.\r\n And yet on no one\u0027s body couldst thou mark\r\n The skin with o\u0027er-much heat to burn aglow,\r\n But rather the body unto touch of hands\r\n Would offer a warmish feeling, and thereby\r\n Show red all over, with ulcers, so to say,\r\n Inbranded, like the \"sacred fires\" o\u0027erspread\r\n Along the members. The inward parts of men,\r\n In truth, would blaze unto the very bones;\r\n A flame, like flame in furnaces, would blaze\r\n Within the stomach. Nor couldst aught apply\r\n Unto their members light enough and thin\r\n For shift of aid\u0026mdash;but coolness and a breeze\r\n Ever and ever. Some would plunge those limbs\r\n On fire with bane into the icy streams,\r\n Hurling the body naked into the waves;\r\n Many would headlong fling them deeply down\r\n The water-pits, tumbling with eager mouth\r\n Already agape. The insatiable thirst\r\n That whelmed their parched bodies, lo, would make\r\n A goodly shower seem like to scanty drops.\r\n Respite of torment was there none. Their frames\r\n Forspent lay prone. With silent lips of fear\r\n Would Medicine mumble low, the while she saw\r\n So many a time men roll their eyeballs round,\r\n Staring wide-open, unvisited of sleep,\r\n The heralds of old death. And in those months\r\n Was given many another sign of death:\r\n The intellect of mind by sorrow and dread\r\n Deranged, the sad brow, the countenance\r\n Fierce and delirious, the tormented ears\r\n Beset with ringings, the breath quick and short\r\n Or huge and intermittent, soaking sweat\r\n A-glisten on neck, the spittle in fine gouts\r\n Tainted with colour of crocus and so salt,\r\n The cough scarce wheezing through the rattling throat.\r\n Aye, and the sinews in the fingered hands\r\n Were sure to contract, and sure the jointed frame\r\n To shiver, and up from feet the cold to mount\r\n Inch after inch: and toward the supreme hour\r\n At last the pinched nostrils, nose\u0027s tip\r\n A very point, eyes sunken, temples hollow,\r\n Skin cold and hard, the shuddering grimace,\r\n The pulled and puffy flesh above the brows!\u0026mdash;\r\n O not long after would their frames lie prone\r\n In rigid death. And by about the eighth\r\n Resplendent light of sun, or at the most\r\n On the ninth flaming of his flambeau, they\r\n Would render up the life. If any then\r\n Had \u0027scaped the doom of that destruction, yet\r\n Him there awaited in the after days\r\n A wasting and a death from ulcers vile\r\n And black discharges of the belly, or else\r\n Through the clogged nostrils would there ooze along\r\n Much fouled blood, oft with an aching head:\r\n Hither would stream a man\u0027s whole strength and flesh.\r\n And whoso had survived that virulent flow\r\n Of the vile blood, yet into thews of him\r\n And into his joints and very genitals\r\n Would pass the old disease. And some there were,\r\n Dreading the doorways of destruction\r\n So much, lived on, deprived by the knife\r\n Of the male member; not a few, though lopped\r\n Of hands and feet, would yet persist in life,\r\n And some there were who lost their eyeballs: O\r\n So fierce a fear of death had fallen on them!\r\n And some, besides, were by oblivion\r\n Of all things seized, that even themselves they knew\r\n No longer. And though corpse on corpse lay piled\r\n Unburied on ground, the race of birds and beasts\r\n Would or spring back, scurrying to escape\r\n The virulent stench, or, if they\u0027d tasted there,\r\n Would languish in approaching death. But yet\r\n Hardly at all during those many suns\r\n Appeared a fowl, nor from the woods went forth\r\n The sullen generations of wild beasts\u0026mdash;\r\n They languished with disease and died and died.\r\n In chief, the faithful dogs, in all the streets\r\n Outstretched, would yield their breath distressfully\r\n For so that Influence of bane would twist\r\n Life from their members. Nor was found one sure\r\n And universal principle of cure:\r\n For what to one had given the power to take\r\n The vital winds of air into his mouth,\r\n And to gaze upward at the vaults of sky,\r\n The same to others was their death and doom.\r\n\r\n In those affairs, O awfullest of all,\r\n O pitiable most was this, was this:\r\n Whoso once saw himself in that disease\r\n Entangled, ay, as damned unto death,\r\n Would lie in wanhope, with a sullen heart,\r\n Would, in fore-vision of his funeral,\r\n Give up the ghost, O then and there. For, lo,\r\n At no time did they cease one from another\r\n To catch contagion of the greedy plague,\u0026mdash;\r\n As though but woolly flocks and horned herds;\r\n And this in chief would heap the dead on dead:\r\n For who forbore to look to their own sick,\r\n O these (too eager of life, of death afeard)\r\n Would then, soon after, slaughtering Neglect\r\n Visit with vengeance of evil death and base\u0026mdash;\r\n Themselves deserted and forlorn of help.\r\n But who had stayed at hand would perish there\r\n By that contagion and the toil which then\r\n A sense of honour and the pleading voice\r\n Of weary watchers, mixed with voice of wail\r\n Of dying folk, forced them to undergo.\r\n This kind of death each nobler soul would meet.\r\n The funerals, uncompanioned, forsaken,\r\n Like rivals contended to be hurried through.\r\n\r\n\u003c/pre\u003e\r\n \u003chr \u003e\r\n\u003cpre\u003e\r\n And men contending to ensepulchre\r\n Pile upon pile the throng of their own dead:\r\n And weary with woe and weeping wandered home;\r\n And then the most would take to bed from grief.\r\n Nor could be found not one, whom nor disease\r\n Nor death, nor woe had not in those dread times\r\n Attacked.\r\n\r\n By now the shepherds and neatherds all,\r\n Yea, even the sturdy guiders of curved ploughs,\r\n Began to sicken, and their bodies would lie\r\n Huddled within back-corners of their huts,\r\n Delivered by squalor and disease to death.\r\n O often and often couldst thou then have seen\r\n On lifeless children lifeless parents prone,\r\n Or offspring on their fathers\u0027, mothers\u0027 corpse\r\n Yielding the life. And into the city poured\r\n O not in least part from the countryside\r\n That tribulation, which the peasantry\r\n Sick, sick, brought thither, thronging from every quarter,\r\n Plague-stricken mob. All places would they crowd,\r\n All buildings too; whereby the more would death\r\n Up-pile a-heap the folk so crammed in town.\r\n Ah, many a body thirst had dragged and rolled\r\n Along the highways there was lying strewn\r\n Besides Silenus-headed water-fountains,\u0026mdash;\r\n The life-breath choked from that too dear desire\r\n Of pleasant waters. Ah, everywhere along\r\n The open places of the populace,\r\n And along the highways, O thou mightest see\r\n Of many a half-dead body the sagged limbs,\r\n Rough with squalor, wrapped around with rags,\r\n Perish from very nastiness, with naught\r\n But skin upon the bones, well-nigh already\r\n Buried\u0026mdash;in ulcers vile and obscene filth.\r\n All holy temples, too, of deities\r\n Had Death becrammed with the carcasses;\r\n And stood each fane of the Celestial Ones\r\n Laden with stark cadavers everywhere\u0026mdash;\r\n Places which warders of the shrines had crowded\r\n With many a guest. For now no longer men\r\n Did mightily esteem the old Divine,\r\n The worship of the gods: the woe at hand\r\n Did over-master. Nor in the city then\r\n Remained those rites of sepulture, with which\r\n That pious folk had evermore been wont\r\n To buried be. For it was wildered all\r\n In wild alarms, and each and every one\r\n With sullen sorrow would bury his own dead,\r\n As present shift allowed. And sudden stress\r\n And poverty to many an awful act\r\n Impelled; and with a monstrous screaming they\r\n Would, on the frames of alien funeral pyres,\r\n Place their own kin, and thrust the torch beneath\r\n Oft brawling with much bloodshed round about\r\n Rather than quit dead bodies loved in life.\r\n\u003c/pre\u003e\r\n\u003c/article\u003e"}],"SectionSequence":["Back Link","Work Title","Deck","Author","Period","Era","Composition","Date Note","Region","Terra Avita","Terra Avita Region","Modern Country","Original Title","Language","Primary Discipline","Secondary Discipline","Tradition","Full Versions","Core Thesis","Classification","Arguments","Influence","Significance","Evidence Note","Full Text"],"Counts":{"ContextCards":3,"GeoCards":4,"DisciplineCards":2,"Links":11,"Sections":25,"Styles":3,"Scripts":1}}