De Rerum Natura

Lucretius

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

  1. Again, if bounds have not been set against
  2. The breaking down of this corporeal world,
  3. Yet must all bodies of whatever things
  4. Have still endured from everlasting time
  5. Unto this present, as not yet assailed
  6. By shocks of peril. But because the same
  7. Are, to thy thinking, of a nature frail,
  8. It ill accords that thus they could remain
  9. (As thus they do) through everlasting time,
  10. Vexed through the ages (as indeed they are)
  11. By the innumerable blows of chance.
  12. So in our programme of creation, mark
  13. How 'tis that, though the bodies of all stuff
  14. Are solid to the core, we yet explain
  15. The ways whereby some things are fashioned soft-
  16. Air, water, earth, and fiery exhalations-
  17. And by what force they function and go on:
  18. The fact is founded in the void of things.
  19. But if the primal germs themselves be soft,
  20. Reason cannot be brought to bear to show
  21. The ways whereby may be created these
  22. Great crags of basalt and the during iron;
  23. For their whole nature will profoundly lack
  24. The first foundations of a solid frame.
  25. But powerful in old simplicity,
  26. Abide the solid, the primeval germs;
  27. And by their combinations more condensed,
  28. All objects can be tightly knit and bound
  29. And made to show unconquerable strength.
  30. Again, since all things kind by kind obtain
  31. Fixed bounds of growing and conserving life;
  32. Since Nature hath inviolably decreed
  33. What each can do, what each can never do;
  34. Since naught is changed, but all things so abide
  35. That ever the variegated birds reveal
  36. The spots or stripes peculiar to their kind,
  37. Spring after spring: thus surely all that is
  38. Must be composed of matter immutable.
  39. For if the primal germs in any wise
  40. Were open to conquest and to change, 'twould be
  41. Uncertain also what could come to birth
  42. And what could not, and by what law to each
  43. Its scope prescribed, its boundary stone that clings
  44. So deep in Time. Nor could the generations
  45. Kind after kind so often reproduce
  46. The nature, habits, motions, ways of life,
  47. Of their progenitors.
  1. And then again,
  2. Since there is ever an extreme bounding point
  3. . . . . . .
  4. Of that first body which our senses now
  5. Cannot perceive: That bounding point indeed
  6. Exists without all parts, a minimum
  7. Of nature, nor was e'er a thing apart,
  8. As of itself,- nor shall hereafter be,
  9. Since 'tis itself still parcel of another,
  10. A first and single part, whence other parts
  11. And others similar in order lie
  12. In a packed phalanx, filling to the full
  13. The nature of first body: being thus
  14. Not self-existent, they must cleave to that
  15. From which in nowise they can sundered be.
  16. So primal germs have solid singleness,
  17. Which tightly packed and closely joined cohere
  18. By virtue of their minim particles-
  19. No compound by mere union of the same;
  20. But strong in their eternal singleness,
  21. Nature, reserving them as seeds for things,
  22. Permitteth naught of rupture or decrease.
  23. Moreover, were there not a minimum,
  24. The smallest bodies would have infinites,
  25. Since then a half-of-half could still be halved,
  26. With limitless division less and less.
  27. Then what the difference 'twixt the sum and least?
  28. None: for however infinite the sum,
  29. Yet even the smallest would consist the same
  30. Of infinite parts. But since true reason here
  31. Protests, denying that the mind can think it,
  32. Convinced thou must confess such things there are
  33. As have no parts, the minimums of nature.
  34. And since these are, likewise confess thou must
  35. That primal bodies are solid and eterne.
  36. Again, if Nature, creatress of all things,
  37. Were wont to force all things to be resolved
  38. Unto least parts, then would she not avail
  39. To reproduce from out them anything;
  40. Because whate'er is not endowed with parts
  41. Cannot possess those properties required
  42. Of generative stuff- divers connections,
  43. Weights, blows, encounters, motions, whereby things
  44. Forevermore have being and go on.