De Rerum Natura

Lucretius

Lucretius. De Rerum Natura. William Ellery Leonard. E. P. Dutton. 1916.

  1. This terror, then, this darkness of the mind,
  2. Not sunrise with its flaring spokes of light,
  3. Nor glittering arrows of morning can disperse,
  4. But only Nature's aspect and her law,
  5. Which, teaching us, hath this exordium:
  6. Nothing from nothing ever yet was born.
  7. Fear holds dominion over mortality
  8. Only because, seeing in land and sky
  9. So much the cause whereof no wise they know,
  10. Men think Divinities are working there.
  11. Meantime, when once we know from nothing still
  12. Nothing can be create, we shall divine
  13. More clearly what we seek: those elements
  14. From which alone all things created are,
  15. And how accomplished by no tool of Gods.
  16. Suppose all sprang from all things: any kind
  17. Might take its origin from any thing,
  18. No fixed seed required. Men from the sea
  19. Might rise, and from the land the scaly breed,
  20. And, fowl full fledged come bursting from the sky;
  21. The horned cattle, the herds and all the wild
  22. Would haunt with varying offspring tilth and waste;
  23. Nor would the same fruits keep their olden trees,
  24. But each might grow from any stock or limb
  25. By chance and change. Indeed, and were there not
  26. For each its procreant atoms, could things have
  27. Each its unalterable mother old?
  28. But, since produced from fixed seeds are all,
  29. Each birth goes forth upon the shores of light
  30. From its own stuff, from its own primal bodies.
  31. And all from all cannot become, because
  32. In each resides a secret power its own.
  33. Again, why see we lavished o'er the lands
  34. At spring the rose, at summer heat the corn,
  35. The vines that mellow when the autumn lures,
  36. If not because the fixed seeds of things
  37. At their own season must together stream,
  38. And new creations only be revealed
  39. When the due times arrive and pregnant earth
  40. Safely may give unto the shores of light
  41. Her tender progenies? But if from naught
  42. Were their becoming, they would spring abroad
  43. Suddenly, unforeseen, in alien months,
  44. With no primordial germs, to be preserved
  45. From procreant unions at an adverse hour.
  1. Nor on the mingling of the living seeds
  2. Would space be needed for the growth of things
  3. Were life an increment of nothing: then
  4. The tiny babe forthwith would walk a man,
  5. And from the turf would leap a branching tree-
  6. Wonders unheard of; for, by Nature, each
  7. Slowly increases from its lawful seed,
  8. And through that increase shall conserve its kind.
  9. Whence take the proof that things enlarge and feed
  10. From out their proper matter. Thus it comes
  11. That earth, without her seasons of fixed rains,
  12. Could bear no produce such as makes us glad,
  13. And whatsoever lives, if shut from food,
  14. Prolongs its kind and guards its life no more.
  15. Thus easier 'tis to hold that many things
  16. Have primal bodies in common (as we see
  17. The single letters common to many words)
  18. Than aught exists without its origins.
  19. Moreover, why should Nature not prepare
  20. Men of a bulk to ford the seas afoot,
  21. Or rend the mighty mountains with their hands,
  22. Or conquer Time with length of days, if not
  23. Because for all begotten things abides
  24. The changeless stuff, and what from that may spring
  25. Is fixed forevermore? Lastly we see
  26. How far the tilled surpass the fields untilled
  27. And to the labour of our hands return
  28. Their more abounding crops; there are indeed
  29. Within the earth primordial germs of things,
  30. Which, as the ploughshare turns the fruitful clods
  31. And kneads the mould, we quicken into birth.
  32. Else would ye mark, without all toil of ours,
  33. Spontaneous generations, fairer forms.
  1. Confess then, naught from nothing can become,
  2. Since all must have their seeds, wherefrom to grow,
  3. Wherefrom to reach the gentle fields of air.
  4. Hence too it comes that Nature all dissolves
  5. Into their primal bodies again, and naught
  6. Perishes ever to annihilation.
  7. For, were aught mortal in its every part,
  8. Before our eyes it might be snatched away
  9. Unto destruction; since no force were needed
  10. To sunder its members and undo its bands.
  11. Whereas, of truth, because all things exist,
  12. With seed imperishable, Nature allows
  13. Destruction nor collapse of aught, until
  14. Some outward force may shatter by a blow,
  15. Or inward craft, entering its hollow cells,
  16. Dissolve it down. And more than this, if Time,
  17. That wastes with eld the works along the world,
  18. Destroy entire, consuming matter all,
  19. Whence then may Venus back to light of life
  20. Restore the generations kind by kind?
  21. Or how, when thus restored, may daedal Earth
  22. Foster and plenish with her ancient food,
  23. Which, kind by kind, she offers unto each?
  24. Whence may the water-springs, beneath the sea,
  25. Or inland rivers, far and wide away,
  26. Keep the unfathomable ocean full?
  27. And out of what does Ether feed the stars?
  28. For lapsed years and infinite age must else
  29. Have eat all shapes of mortal stock away:
  30. But be it the Long Ago contained those germs,
  31. By which this sum of things recruited lives,
  32. Those same infallibly can never die,
  33. Nor nothing to nothing evermore return.