De Rerum Natura

Lucretius

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

  1. In that long-ago
  2. The wheel of the sun could nowhere be discerned
  3. Flying far up with its abounding blaze,
  4. Nor constellations of the mighty world,
  5. Nor ocean, nor heaven, nor even earth nor air.
  6. Nor aught of things like unto things of ours
  7. Could then be seen- but only some strange storm
  8. And a prodigious hurly-burly mass
  9. Compounded of all kinds of primal germs,
  10. Whose battling discords in disorder kept
  11. Interstices, and paths, coherencies,
  12. And weights, and blows, encounterings, and motions,
  13. Because, by reason of their forms unlike
  14. And varied shapes, they could not all thuswise
  15. Remain conjoined nor harmoniously
  16. Have interplay of movements. But from there
  17. Portions began to fly asunder, and like
  18. With like to join, and to block out a world,
  19. And to divide its members and dispose
  20. Its mightier parts- that is, to set secure
  21. The lofty heavens from the lands, and cause
  22. The sea to spread with waters separate,
  23. And fires of ether separate and pure
  24. Likewise to congregate apart.