De Rerum Natura
Lucretius
Lucretius. De Rerum Natura. William Ellery Leonard. E. P. Dutton. 1916.
- And note, besides, that liquor of honey or milk
- Yields in the mouth agreeable taste to tongue,
- Whilst nauseous wormwood, pungent centaury,
- With their foul flavour set the lips awry;
- Thus simple 'tis to see that whatsoever
- Can touch the senses pleasingly are made
- Of smooth and rounded elements, whilst those
- Which seem the bitter and the sharp, are held
- Entwined by elements more crook'd, and so
- Are wont to tear their ways into our senses,
- And rend our body as they enter in.
- In short all good to sense, all bad to touch,
- Being up-built of figures so unlike,
- Are mutually at strife- lest thou suppose
- That the shrill rasping of a squeaking saw
- Consists of elements as smooth as song
- Which, waked by nimble fingers, on the strings
- The sweet musicians fashion; or suppose
- That same-shaped atoms through men's nostrils pierce
- When foul cadavers burn, as when the stage
- Is with Cilician saffron sprinkled fresh,
- And the altar near exhales Panchaean scent;
- Or hold as of like seed the goodly hues
- Of things which feast our eyes, as those which sting
- Against the smarting pupil and draw tears,
- Or show, with gruesome aspect, grim and vile.
- For never a shape which charms our sense was made
- Without some elemental smoothness; whilst
- Whate'er is harsh and irksome has been framed
- Still with some roughness in its elements.
- Some, too, there are which justly are supposed
- To be nor smooth nor altogether hooked,
- With bended barbs, but slightly angled-out,
- To tickle rather than to wound the sense-
- And of which sort is the salt tartar of wine
- And flavours of the gummed elecampane.
- Again, that glowing fire and icy rime
- Are fanged with teeth unlike whereby to sting
- Our body's sense, the touch of each gives proof.
- For touch- by sacred majesties of Gods!-
- Touch is indeed the body's only sense-
- Be't that something in-from-outward works,
- Be't that something in the body born
- Wounds, or delighteth as it passes out
- Along the procreant paths of Aphrodite;
- Or be't the seeds by some collision whirl
- Disordered in the body and confound
- By tumult and confusion all the sense-
- As thou mayst find, if haply with the hand
- Thyself thou strike thy body's any part.
- On which account, the elemental forms
- Must differ widely, as enabled thus
- To cause diverse sensations.
- And, again,
- What seems to us the hardened and condensed
- Must be of atoms among themselves more hooked,
- Be held compacted deep within, as 'twere
- By branch-like atoms- of which sort the chief
- Are diamond stones, despisers of all blows,
- And stalwart flint and strength of solid iron,
- And brazen bars, which, budging hard in locks,
- Do grate and scream. But what are liquid, formed
- Of fluid body, they indeed must be
- Of elements more smooth and round- because
- Their globules severally will not cohere:
- To suck the poppy-seeds from palm of hand
- Is quite as easy as drinking water down,
- And they, once struck, roll like unto the same.
- But that thou seest among the things that flow
- Some bitter, as the brine of ocean is,
- Is not the least a marvel...
- For since 'tis fluid, smooth its atoms are
- And round, with painful rough ones mixed therein;
- Yet need not these be held together hooked:
- In fact, though rough, they're globular besides,
- Able at once to roll, and rasp the sense.
- And that the more thou mayst believe me here,
- That with smooth elements are mixed the rough
- (Whence Neptune's salt astringent body comes),
- There is a means to separate the twain,
- And thereupon dividedly to see
- How the sweet water, after filtering through
- So often underground, flows freshened forth
- Into some hollow; for it leaves above
- The primal germs of nauseating brine,
- Since cling the rough more readily in earth.
- Lastly, whatso thou markest to disperse
- Upon the instant- smoke, and cloud, and flame-
- Must not (even though not all of smooth and round)
- Be yet co-linked with atoms intertwined,
- That thus they can, without together cleaving,
- So pierce our body and so bore the rocks.
- Whatever we see...
- Given to senses, that thou must perceive
- They're not from linked but pointed elements.
- The which now having taught, I will go on
- To bind thereto a fact to this allied
- And drawing from this its proof: these primal germs
- Vary, yet only with finite tale of shapes.
- For were these shapes quite infinite, some seeds
- Would have a body of infinite increase.
- For in one seed, in one small frame of any,
- The shapes can't vary from one another much.
- Assume, we'll say, that of three minim parts
- Consist the primal bodies, or add a few:
- When, now, by placing all these parts of one
- At top and bottom, changing lefts and rights,
- Thou hast with every kind of shift found out
- What the aspect of shape of its whole body
- Each new arrangement gives, for what remains,
- If thou percase wouldst vary its old shapes,
- New parts must then be added; follows next,
- If thou percase wouldst vary still its shapes,
- That by like logic each arrangement still
- Requires its increment of other parts.
- Ergo, an augmentation of its frame
- Follows upon each novelty of forms.
- Wherefore, it cannot be thou'lt undertake
- That seeds have infinite differences in form,
- Lest thus thou forcest some indeed to be
- Of an immeasurable immensity-
- Which I have taught above cannot be proved.
- . . . . . .
- And now for thee barbaric robes, and gleam
- Of Meliboean purple, touched with dye
- Of the Thessalian shell...
- The peacock's golden generations, stained
- With spotted gaieties, would lie o'erthrown
- By some new colour of new things more bright;
- The odour of myrrh and savours of honey despised;
- The swan's old lyric, and Apollo's hymns,
- Once modulated on the many chords,
- Would likewise sink o'ermastered and be mute:
- For, lo, a somewhat, finer than the rest,
- Would be arising evermore. So, too,
- Into some baser part might all retire,
- Even as we said to better might they come:
- For, lo, a somewhat, loathlier than the rest
- To nostrils, ears, and eyes, and taste of tongue,
- Would then, by reasoning reversed, be there.
- Since 'tis not so, but unto things are given
- Their fixed limitations which do bound
- Their sum on either side, 'tmust be confessed
- That matter, too, by finite tale of shapes
- Does differ. Again, from earth's midsummer heats
- Unto the icy hoar-frosts of the year
- The forward path is fixed, and by like law
- O'ertravelled backwards at the dawn of spring.
- For each degree of hot, and each of cold,
- And the half-warm, all filling up the sum
- In due progression, lie, my Memmius, there
- Betwixt the two extremes: the things create
- Must differ, therefore, by a finite change,
- Since at each end marked off they ever are
- By fixed point- on one side plagued by flames
- And on the other by congealing frosts.
- The which now having taught, I will go on
- To bind thereto a fact to this allied
- And drawing from this its proof: those primal germs
- Which have been fashioned all of one like shape
- Are infinite in tale; for, since the forms
- Themselves are finite in divergences,
- Then those which are alike will have to be
- Infinite, else the sum of stuff remains
- A finite- what I've proved is not the fact,
- Showing in verse how corpuscles of stuff,
- From everlasting and to-day the same,
- Uphold the sum of things, all sides around
- By old succession of unending blows.
- For though thou view'st some beasts to be more rare,
- And mark'st in them a less prolific stock,
- Yet in another region, in lands remote,
- That kind abounding may make up the count;
- Even as we mark among the four-foot kind
- Snake-handed elephants, whose thousands wall
- With ivory ramparts India about,
- That her interiors cannot entered be-
- So big her count of brutes of which we see
- Such few examples. Or suppose, besides,
- We feign some thing, one of its kind and sole
- With body born, to which is nothing like
- In all the lands: yet now unless shall be
- An infinite count of matter out of which
- Thus to conceive and bring it forth to life,
- It cannot be created and- what's more-
- It cannot take its food and get increase.
- Yea, if through all the world in finite tale
- Be tossed the procreant bodies of one thing,
- Whence, then, and where in what mode, by what power,
- Shall they to meeting come together there,
- In such vast ocean of matter and tumult strange?-
- No means they have of joining into one.
- But, just as, after mighty ship-wrecks piled,
- The mighty main is wont to scatter wide
- The rowers' banks, the ribs, the yards, the prow,
- The masts and swimming oars, so that afar
- Along all shores of lands are seen afloat
- The carven fragments of the rended poop,
- Giving a lesson to mortality
- To shun the ambush of the faithless main,
- The violence and the guile, and trust it not
- At any hour, however much may smile
- The crafty enticements of the placid deep:
- Exactly thus, if once thou holdest true
- That certain seeds are finite in their tale,
- The various tides of matter, then, must needs
- Scatter them flung throughout the ages all,
- So that not ever can they join, as driven
- Together into union, nor remain
- In union, nor with increment can grow-
- But facts in proof are manifest for each:
- Things can be both begotten and increase.
- 'Tis therefore manifest that primal germs,
- Are infinite in any class thou wilt-
- From whence is furnished matter for all things.
- Nor can those motions that bring death prevail
- Forever, nor eternally entomb
- The welfare of the world; nor, further, can
- Those motions that give birth to things and growth
- Keep them forever when created there.
- Thus the long war, from everlasting waged,
- With equal strife among the elements
- Goes on and on. Now here, now there, prevail
- The vital forces of the world- or fall.
- Mixed with the funeral is the wildered wail
- Of infants coming to the shores of light:
- No night a day, no dawn a night hath followed
- That heard not, mingling with the small birth-cries,
- The wild laments, companions old of death
- And the black rites.
- This, too, in these affairs
- 'Tis fit thou hold well sealed, and keep consigned
- With no forgetting brain: nothing there is
- Whose nature is apparent out of hand
- That of one kind of elements consists-
- Nothing there is that's not of mixed seed.
- And whatsoe'er possesses in itself
- More largely many powers and properties
- Shows thus that here within itself there are
- The largest number of kinds and differing shapes
- Of elements. And, chief of all, the earth
- Hath in herself first bodies whence the springs,
- Rolling chill waters, renew forevermore
- The unmeasured main; hath whence the fires arise-
- For burns in many a spot her flamed crust,
- Whilst the impetuous Aetna raves indeed
- From more profounder fires- and she, again,
- Hath in herself the seed whence she can raise
- The shining grains and gladsome trees for men;
- Whence, also, rivers, fronds, and gladsome pastures
- Can she supply for mountain-roaming beasts.
- Wherefore great mother of gods, and mother of beasts,
- And parent of man hath she alone been named.
- Her hymned the old and learned bards of Greece
- . . . . . .
- Seated in chariot o'er the realms of air
- To drive her team of lions, teaching thus
- That the great earth hangs poised and cannot lie
- Resting on other earth. Unto her car
- They've yoked the wild beasts, since a progeny,
- However savage, must be tamed and chid
- By care of parents. They have girt about
- With turret-crown the summit of her head,
- Since, fortressed in her goodly strongholds high,
- 'Tis she sustains the cities; now, adorned
- With that same token, to-day is carried forth,
- With solemn awe through many a mighty land,
- The image of that mother, the divine.
- Her the wide nations, after antique rite,
- Do name Idaean Mother, giving her
- Escort of Phrygian bands, since first, they say,
- From out those regions 'twas that grain began
- Through all the world. To her do they assign
- The Galli, the emasculate, since thus
- They wish to show that men who violate
- The majesty of the mother and have proved
- Ingrate to parents are to be adjudged
- Unfit to give unto the shores of light
- A living progeny. The Galli come:
- And hollow cymbals, tight-skinned tambourines
- Resound around to bangings of their hands;
- The fierce horns threaten with a raucous bray;
- The tubed pipe excites their maddened minds
- In Phrygian measures; they bear before them knives,
- Wild emblems of their frenzy, which have power
- The rabble's ingrate heads and impious hearts
- To panic with terror of the goddess' might.
- And so, when through the mighty cities borne,
- She blesses man with salutations mute,
- They strew the highway of her journeyings
- With coin of brass and silver, gifting her
- With alms and largesse, and shower her and shade
- With flowers of roses falling like the snow
- Upon the Mother and her companion-bands.
- Here is an armed troop, the which by Greeks
- Are called the Phrygian Curetes. Since
- Haply among themselves they use to play
- In games of arms and leap in measure round
- With bloody mirth and by their nodding shake
- The terrorizing crests upon their heads,
- This is the armed troop that represents
- The arm'd Dictaean Curetes, who, in Crete,
- As runs the story, whilom did out-drown
- That infant cry of Zeus, what time their band,
- Young boys, in a swift dance around the boy,
- To measured step beat with the brass on brass,
- That Saturn might not get him for his jaws,
- And give its mother an eternal wound
- Along her heart. And 'tis on this account
- That armed they escort the mighty Mother,
- Or else because they signify by this
- That she, the goddess, teaches men to be
- Eager with armed valour to defend
- Their motherland, and ready to stand forth,
- The guard and glory of their parents' years.
- A tale, however beautifully wrought,
- That's wide of reason by a long remove:
- For all the gods must of themselves enjoy
- Immortal aeons and supreme repose,
- Withdrawn from our affairs, detached, afar:
- Immune from peril and immune from pain,
- Themselves abounding in riches of their own,
- Needing not us, they are not touched by wrath
- They are not taken by service or by gift.
- Truly is earth insensate for all time;
- But, by obtaining germs of many things,
- In many a way she brings the many forth
- Into the light of sun. And here, whoso
- Decides to call the ocean Neptune, or
- The grain-crop Ceres, and prefers to abuse
- The name of Bacchus rather than pronounce
- The liquor's proper designation, him
- Let us permit to go on calling earth
- Mother of Gods, if only he will spare
- To taint his soul with foul religion.
- So, too, the wooly flocks, and horned kine,
- And brood of battle-eager horses, grazing
- Often together along one grassy plain,
- Under the cope of one blue sky, and slaking
- From out one stream of water each its thirst,
- All live their lives with face and form unlike,
- Keeping the parents' nature, parents' habits,
- Which, kind by kind, through ages they repeat.
- So great in any sort of herb thou wilt,
- So great again in any river of earth
- Are the distinct diversities of matter.
- Hence, further, every creature- any one
- From out them all- compounded is the same
- Of bones, blood, veins, heat, moisture, flesh, and thews-
- All differing vastly in their forms, and built
- Of elements dissimilar in shape.
- Again, all things by fire consumed ablaze,
- Within their frame lay up, if naught besides,
- At least those atoms whence derives their power
- To throw forth fire and send out light from under,
- To shoot the sparks and scatter embers wide.
- If, with like reasoning of mind, all else
- Thou traverse through, thou wilt discover thus
- That in their frame the seeds of many things
- They hide, and divers shapes of seeds contain.
- Further, thou markest much, to which are given
- Along together colour and flavour and smell,
- Among which, chief, are most burnt offerings.
- . . . . . .
- Thus must they be of divers shapes composed.
- A smell of scorching enters in our frame
- Where the bright colour from the dye goes not;
- And colour in one way, flavour in quite another
- Works inward to our senses- so mayst see
- They differ too in elemental shapes.
- Thus unlike forms into one mass combine,
- And things exist by intermixed seed.
- But still 'tmust not be thought that in all ways
- All things can be conjoined; for then wouldst view
- Portents begot about thee every side:
- Hulks of mankind half brute astarting up,
- At times big branches sprouting from man's trunk,
- Limbs of a sea-beast to a land-beast knit,
- And nature along the all-producing earth
- Feeding those dire Chimaeras breathing flame
- From hideous jaws- Of which 'tis simple fact
- That none have been begot; because we see
- All are from fixed seed and fixed dam
- Engendered and so function as to keep
- Throughout their growth their own ancestral type.
- This happens surely by a fixed law:
- For from all food-stuff, when once eaten down,
- Go sundered atoms, suited to each creature,
- Throughout their bodies, and, conjoining there,
- Produce the proper motions; but we see
- How, contrariwise, nature upon the ground
- Throws off those foreign to their frame; and many
- With viewless bodies from their bodies fly,
- By blows impelled- those impotent to join
- To any part, or, when inside, to accord
- And to take on the vital motions there.
- But think not, haply, living forms alone
- Are bound by these laws: they distinguished all.
- . . . . . .
- For just as all things of creation are,
- In their whole nature, each to each unlike,
- So must their atoms be in shape unlike-
- Not since few only are fashioned of like form,
- But since they all, as general rule, are not
- The same as all. Nay, here in these our verses,
- Elements many, common to many words,
- Thou seest, though yet 'tis needful to confess
- The words and verses differ, each from each,
- Compounded out of different elements-
- Not since few only, as common letters, run
- Through all the words, or no two words are made,
- One and the other, from all like elements,
- But since they all, as general rule, are not
- The same as all. Thus, too, in other things,
- Whilst many germs common to many things
- There are, yet they, combined among themselves,
- Can form new wholes to others quite unlike.
- Thus fairly one may say that humankind,
- The grains, the gladsome trees, are all made up
- Of different atoms. Further, since the seeds
- Are different, difference must there also be
- In intervening spaces, thoroughfares,
- Connections, weights, blows, clashings, motions, all
- Which not alone distinguish living forms,
- But sunder earth's whole ocean from the lands,
- And hold all heaven from the lands away.
- Now come, this wisdom by my sweet toil sought
- Look thou perceive, lest haply thou shouldst guess
- That the white objects shining to thine eyes
- Are gendered of white atoms, or the black
- Of a black seed; or yet believe that aught
- That's steeped in any hue should take its dye
- From bits of matter tinct with hue the same.
- For matter's bodies own no hue the least-
- Or like to objects or, again, unlike.
- But, if percase it seem to thee that mind
- Itself can dart no influence of its own
- Into these bodies, wide thou wand'rest off.
- For since the blind-born, who have ne'er surveyed
- The light of sun, yet recognise by touch
- Things that from birth had ne'er a hue for them,
- 'Tis thine to know that bodies can be brought
- No less unto the ken of our minds too,
- Though yet those bodies with no dye be smeared.
- Again, ourselves whatever in the dark
- We touch, the same we do not find to be
- Tinctured with any colour.
- Now that here
- I win the argument, I next will teach
- . . . . . .
- Now, every colour changes, none except,
- And every...
- Which the primordials ought nowise to do.
- Since an immutable somewhat must remain,
- Lest all things utterly be brought to naught.
- For change of anything from out its bounds
- Means instant death of that which was before.
- Wherefore be mindful not to stain with colour
- The seeds of things, lest things return for thee
- All utterly to naught.
- But now, if seeds
- Receive no property of colour, and yet
- Be still endowed with variable forms
- From which all kinds of colours they beget
- And vary (by reason that ever it matters much
- With what seeds, and in what positions joined,
- And what the motions that they give and get),
- Forthwith most easily thou mayst devise
- Why what was black of hue an hour ago
- Can of a sudden like the marble gleam,-
- As ocean, when the high winds have upheaved
- Its level plains, is changed to hoary waves
- Of marble whiteness: for, thou mayst declare,
- That, when the thing we often see as black
- Is in its matter then commixed anew,
- Some atoms rearranged, and some withdrawn,
- And added some, 'tis seen forthwith to turn
- Glowing and white. But if of azure seeds
- Consist the level waters of the deep,
- They could in nowise whiten: for however
- Thou shakest azure seeds, the same can never
- Pass into marble hue. But, if the seeds-
- Which thus produce the ocean's one pure sheen-
- Be now with one hue, now another dyed,
- As oft from alien forms and divers shapes
- A cube's produced all uniform in shape,
- 'Twould be but natural, even as in the cube
- We see the forms to be dissimilar,
- That thus we'd see in brightness of the deep
- (Or in whatever one pure sheen thou wilt)
- Colours diverse and all dissimilar.
- Besides, the unlike shapes don't thwart the least
- The whole in being externally a cube;
- But differing hues of things do block and keep
- The whole from being of one resultant hue.
- Then, too, the reason which entices us
- At times to attribute colours to the seeds
- Falls quite to pieces, since white things are not
- Create from white things, nor are black from black,
- But evermore they are create from things
- Of divers colours. Verily, the white
- Will rise more readily, is sooner born
- Out of no colour, than of black or aught
- Which stands in hostile opposition thus.
- Besides, since colours cannot be, sans light,
- And the primordials come not forth to light,
- 'Tis thine to know they are not clothed with colour-
- Truly, what kind of colour could there be
- In the viewless dark? Nay, in the light itself
- A colour changes, gleaming variedly,
- When smote by vertical or slanting ray.
- Thus in the sunlight shows the down of doves
- That circles, garlanding, the nape and throat:
- Now it is ruddy with a bright gold-bronze,
- Now, by a strange sensation it becomes
- Green-emerald blended with the coral-red.
- The peacock's tail, filled with the copious light,
- Changes its colours likewise, when it turns.
- Wherefore, since by some blow of light begot,
- Without such blow these colours can't become.
- And since the pupil of the eye receives
- Within itself one kind of blow, when said
- To feel a white hue, then another kind,
- When feeling a black or any other hue,
- And since it matters nothing with what hue
- The things thou touchest be perchance endowed,
- But rather with what sort of shape equipped,
- 'Tis thine to know the atoms need not colour,
- But render forth sensations, as of touch,
- That vary with their varied forms.
- Besides,
- Since special shapes have not a special colour,
- And all formations of the primal germs
- Can be of any sheen thou wilt, why, then,
- Are not those objects which are of them made
- Suffused, each kind with colours of every kind?
- For then 'twere meet that ravens, as they fly,
- Should dartle from white pinions a white sheen,
- Or swans turn black from seed of black, or be
- Of any single varied dye thou wilt.
- Again, the more an object's rent to bits,
- The more thou see its colour fade away
- Little by little till 'tis quite extinct;
- As happens when the gaudy linen's picked
- Shred after shred away: the purple there,
- Phoenician red, most brilliant of all dyes,
- Is lost asunder, ravelled thread by thread;
- Hence canst perceive the fragments die away
- From out their colour, long ere they depart
- Back to the old primordials of things.
- And, last, since thou concedest not all bodies
- Send out a voice or smell, it happens thus
- That not to all thou givest sounds and smells.
- So, too, since we behold not all with eyes,
- 'Tis thine to know some things there are as much
- Orphaned of colour, as others without smell,
- And reft of sound; and those the mind alert
- No less can apprehend than it can mark
- The things that lack some other qualities.
- But think not haply that the primal bodies
- Remain despoiled alone of colour: so,
- Are they from warmth dissevered and from cold
- And from hot exhalations; and they move,
- Both sterile of sound and dry of juice; and throw
- Not any odour from their proper bodies.
- Just as, when undertaking to prepare
- A liquid balm of myrrh and marjoram,
- And flower of nard, which to our nostrils breathes
- Odour of nectar, first of all behooves
- Thou seek, as far as find thou may and can,
- The inodorous olive-oil (which never sends
- One whiff of scent to nostrils), that it may
- The least debauch and ruin with sharp tang
- The odorous essence with its body mixed
- And in it seethed. And on the same account
- The primal germs of things must not be thought
- To furnish colour in begetting things,
- Nor sound, since pow'rless they to send forth aught
- From out themselves, nor any flavour, too,
- Nor cold, nor exhalation hot or warm.
- . . . . . .
- The rest; yet since these things are mortal all-
- The pliant mortal, with a body soft;
- The brittle mortal, with a crumbling frame;
- The hollow with a porous-all must be
- Disjoined from the primal elements,
- If still we wish under the world to lay
- Immortal ground-works, whereupon may rest
- The sum of weal and safety, lest for thee
- All things return to nothing utterly.
- Now, too: whate'er we see possessing sense
- Must yet confessedly be stablished all
- From elements insensate. And those signs,
- So clear to all and witnessed out of hand,
- Do not refute this dictum nor oppose;
- But rather themselves do lead us by the hand,
- Compelling belief that living things are born
- Of elements insensate, as I say.
- Sooth, we may see from out the stinking dung
- Live worms spring up, when, after soaking rains,
- The drenched earth rots; and all things change the same:
- Lo, change the rivers, the fronds, the gladsome pastures
- Into the cattle, the cattle their nature change
- Into our bodies, and from our body, oft
- Grow strong the powers and bodies of wild beasts
- And mighty-winged birds. Thus nature changes
- All foods to living frames, and procreates
- From them the senses of live creatures all,
- In manner about as she uncoils in flames
- Dry logs of wood and turns them all to fire.
- And seest not, therefore, how it matters much
- After what order are set the primal germs,
- And with what other germs they all are mixed,
- And what the motions that they give and get?