De Rerum Natura

Lucretius

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

  1. Thus too, if all things are create of four,
  2. And all again dissolved into the four,
  3. How can the four be called the primal germs
  4. Of things, more than all things themselves be thought,
  5. By retroversion, primal germs of them?
  6. For ever alternately are both begot,
  7. With interchange of nature and aspect
  8. From immemorial time. But if percase
  9. Thou think'st the frame of fire and earth, the air,
  10. The dew of water can in such wise meet
  11. As not by mingling to resign their nature,
  12. From them for thee no world can be create-
  13. No thing of breath, no stock or stalk of tree:
  14. In the wild congress of this varied heap
  15. Each thing its proper nature will display,
  16. And air will palpably be seen mixed up
  17. With earth together, unquenched heat with water.
  18. But primal germs in bringing things to birth
  19. Must have a latent, unseen quality,
  20. Lest some outstanding alien element
  21. Confuse and minish in the thing create
  22. Its proper being.
  23. But these men begin
  24. From heaven, and from its fires; and first they feign
  25. That fire will turn into the winds of air,
  26. Next, that from air the rain begotten is,
  27. And earth created out of rain, and then
  28. That all, reversely, are returned from earth-
  29. The moisture first, then air thereafter heat-
  30. And that these same ne'er cease in interchange,
  31. To go their ways from heaven to earth, from earth
  32. Unto the stars of the aethereal world-
  33. Which in no wise at all the germs can do.
  34. Since an immutable somewhat still must be,
  35. Lest all things utterly be sped to naught;
  36. For change in anything from out its bounds
  37. Means instant death of that which was before.
  38. Wherefore, since those things, mentioned heretofore,
  39. Suffer a changed state, they must derive
  40. From others ever unconvertible,
  41. Lest an things utterly return to naught.
  42. Then why not rather presuppose there be
  43. Bodies with such a nature furnished forth
  44. That, if perchance they have created fire,
  45. Can still (by virtue of a few withdrawn,
  46. Or added few, and motion and order changed)
  47. Fashion the winds of air, and thus all things
  48. Forevermore be interchanged with all?
  49. "But facts in proof are manifest," thou sayest,
  50. "That all things grow into the winds of air
  51. And forth from earth are nourished, and unless
  52. The season favour at propitious hour
  53. With rains enough to set the trees a-reel
  54. Under the soak of bulking thunderheads,
  55. And sun, for its share, foster and give heat,
  56. No grains, nor trees, nor breathing things can grow."
  57. True- and unless hard food and moisture soft
  58. Recruited man, his frame would waste away,
  59. And life dissolve from out his thews and bones;
  60. For out of doubt recruited and fed are we
  61. By certain things, as other things by others.
  62. Because in many ways the many germs
  63. Common to many things are mixed in things,
  64. No wonder 'tis that therefore divers things
  65. By divers things are nourished. And, again,
  66. Often it matters vastly with what others,
  67. In what positions the primordial germs
  68. Are bound together, and what motions, too,
  69. They give and get among themselves; for these
  70. Same germs do put together sky, sea, lands,
  71. Rivers, and sun, grains, trees, and breathing things,
  72. But yet commixed they are in divers modes
  73. With divers things, forever as they move.
  74. Nay, thou beholdest in our verses here
  75. Elements many, common to many worlds,
  76. Albeit thou must confess each verse, each word
  77. From one another differs both in sense
  78. And ring of sound- so much the elements
  79. Can bring about by change of order alone.
  80. But those which are the primal germs of things
  81. Have power to work more combinations still,
  82. Whence divers things can be produced in turn.
  1. Now let us also take for scrutiny
  2. The homeomeria of Anaxagoras,
  3. So called by Greeks, for which our pauper-speech
  4. Yieldeth no name in the Italian tongue,
  5. Although the thing itself is not o'erhard
  6. For explanation. First, then, when he speaks
  7. Of this homeomeria of things, he thinks
  8. Bones to be sprung from littlest bones minute,
  9. And from minute and littlest flesh all flesh,
  10. And blood created out of drops of blood,
  11. Conceiving gold compact of grains of gold,
  12. And earth concreted out of bits of earth,
  13. Fire made of fires, and water out of waters,
  14. Feigning the like with all the rest of stuff.
  15. Yet he concedes not any void in things,
  16. Nor any limit to cutting bodies down.
  17. Wherefore to me he seems on both accounts
  18. To err no less than those we named before.