De Rerum Natura

Lucretius

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

  1. Now what the speed to matter's atoms given
  2. Thou mayest in few, my Memmius, learn from this:
  3. When first the dawn is sprinkling with new light
  4. The lands, and all the breed of birds abroad
  5. Flit round the trackless forests, with liquid notes
  6. Filling the regions along the mellow air,
  7. We see 'tis forthwith manifest to man
  8. How suddenly the risen sun is wont
  9. At such an hour to overspread and clothe
  10. The whole with its own splendour; but the sun's
  11. Warm exhalations and this serene light
  12. Travel not down an empty void; and thus
  13. They are compelled more slowly to advance,
  14. Whilst, as it were, they cleave the waves of air;
  15. Nor one by one travel these particles
  16. Of the warm exhalations, but are all
  17. Entangled and enmassed, whereby at once
  18. Each is restrained by each, and from without
  19. Checked, till compelled more slowly to advance.
  20. But the primordial atoms with their old
  21. Simple solidity, when forth they travel
  22. Along the empty void, all undelayed
  23. By aught outside them there, and they, each one
  24. Being one unit from nature of its parts,
  25. Are borne to that one place on which they strive
  26. Still to lay hold, must then, beyond a doubt,
  27. Outstrip in speed, and be more swiftly borne
  28. Than light of sun, and over regions rush,
  29. Of space much vaster, in the self-same time
  30. The sun's effulgence widens round the sky.
  31. . . . . . .
  32. Nor to pursue the atoms one by one,
  33. To see the law whereby each thing goes on.
  34. But some men, ignorant of matter, think,
  35. Opposing this, that not without the gods,
  36. In such adjustment to our human ways,
  37. Can nature change the seasons of the years,
  38. And bring to birth the grains and all of else
  39. To which divine Delight, the guide of life,
  40. Persuades mortality and leads it on,
  41. That, through her artful blandishments of love,
  42. It propagate the generations still,
  43. Lest humankind should perish. When they feign
  44. That gods have stablished all things but for man,
  45. They seem in all ways mightily to lapse
  46. From reason's truth: for ev'n if ne'er I knew
  47. What seeds primordial are, yet would I dare
  48. This to affirm, ev'n from deep judgment based
  49. Upon the ways and conduct of the skies-
  50. This to maintain by many a fact besides-
  51. That in no wise the nature of the world
  52. For us was builded by a power divine-
  53. So great the faults it stands encumbered with:
  54. The which, my Memmius, later on, for thee
  55. We will clear up. Now as to what remains
  56. Concerning motions we'll unfold our thought.
  1. Now is the place, meseems, in these affairs
  2. To prove for thee this too: nothing corporeal
  3. Of its own force can e'er be upward borne,
  4. Or upward go- nor let the bodies of flames
  5. Deceive thee here: for they engendered are
  6. With urge to upwards, taking thus increase,
  7. Whereby grow upwards shining grains and trees,
  8. Though all the weight within them downward bears.
  9. Nor, when the fires will leap from under round
  10. The roofs of houses, and swift flame laps up
  11. Timber and beam, 'tis then to be supposed
  12. They act of own accord, no force beneath
  13. To urge them up. 'Tis thus that blood, discharged
  14. From out our bodies, spurts its jets aloft
  15. And spatters gore. And hast thou never marked
  16. With what a force the water will disgorge
  17. Timber and beam? The deeper, straight and down,
  18. We push them in, and, many though we be,
  19. The more we press with main and toil, the more
  20. The water vomits up and flings them back,
  21. That, more than half their length, they there emerge,
  22. Rebounding. Yet we never doubt, meseems,
  23. That all the weight within them downward bears
  24. Through empty void. Well, in like manner, flames
  25. Ought also to be able, when pressed out,
  26. Through winds of air to rise aloft, even though
  27. The weight within them strive to draw them down.
  28. Hast thou not seen, sweeping so far and high,
  29. The meteors, midnight flambeaus of the sky,
  30. How after them they draw long trails of flame
  31. Wherever Nature gives a thoroughfare?
  32. How stars and constellations drop to earth,
  33. Seest not? Nay, too, the sun from peak of heaven
  34. Sheds round to every quarter its large heat,
  35. And sows the new-ploughed intervales with light:
  36. Thus also sun's heat downward tends to earth.
  37. Athwart the rain thou seest the lightning fly;
  38. Now here, now there, bursting from out the clouds,
  39. The fires dash zig-zag- and that flaming power
  40. Falls likewise down to earth.