Delphi Complete Works of Lucretius

by Titus Lucretius Carus

  Nor can the blows from outward still conserve,

  On every side, whatever sum of a world

  Has been united in a whole. They can

  Indeed, by frequent beating, check a part,

  Till others arriving may fulfil the sum;

  But meanwhile often are they forced to spring

  Rebounding back, and, as they spring, to yield,

  Unto those elements whence a world derives,

  Room and a time for flight, permitting them

  To be from off the massy union borne

  Free and afar. Wherefore, again, again:

  Needs must there come a many for supply;

  And also, that the blows themselves shall be

  Unfailing ever, must there ever be

  An infinite force of matter all sides round.

  And in these problems, shrink, my Memmius, far

  From yielding faith to that notorious talk:

  That all things inward to the centre press;

  And thus the nature of the world stands firm

  With never blows from outward, nor can be

  Nowhere disparted — since all height and depth

  Have always inward to the centre pressed

  (If thou art ready to believe that aught

  Itself can rest upon itself ); or that

  The ponderous bodies which be under earth

  Do all press upwards and do come to rest

  Upon the earth, in some way upside down,

  Like to those images of things we see

  At present through the waters. They contend,

  With like procedure, that all breathing things

  Head downward roam about, and yet cannot

  Tumble from earth to realms of sky below,

  No more than these our bodies wing away

  Spontaneously to vaults of sky above;

  That, when those creatures look upon the sun,

  We view the constellations of the night;

  And that with us the seasons of the sky

  They thus alternately divide, and thus

  Do pass the night coequal to our days,

  But a vain error has given these dreams to fools,

  Which they’ve embraced with reasoning perverse

  For centre none can be where world is still

  Boundless, nor yet, if now a centre were,

  Could aught take there a fixed position more

  Than for some other cause ‘tmight be dislodged.

  For all of room and space we call the void

  Must both through centre and non-centre yield

  Alike to weights where’er their motions tend.

  Nor is there any place, where, when they’ve come,

  Bodies can be at standstill in the void,

  Deprived of force of weight; nor yet may void

  Furnish support to any, — nay, it must,

  True to its bent of nature, still give way.

  Thus in such manner not at all can things

  Be held in union, as if overcome

  By craving for a centre.

  But besides,

  Seeing they feign that not all bodies press

  To centre inward, rather only those

  Of earth and water (liquid of the sea,

  And the big billows from the mountain slopes,

  And whatsoever are encased, as ‘twere,

  In earthen body), contrariwise, they teach

  How the thin air, and with it the hot fire,

  Is borne asunder from the centre, and how,

  For this all ether quivers with bright stars,

  And the sun’s flame along the blue is fed

  (Because the heat, from out the centre flying,

  All gathers there), and how, again, the boughs

  Upon the tree-tops could not sprout their leaves,

  Unless, little by little, from out the earth

  For each were nutriment...

  Lest, after the manner of the winged flames,

  The ramparts of the world should flee away,

  Dissolved amain throughout the mighty void,

  And lest all else should likewise follow after,

  Aye, lest the thundering vaults of heaven should burst

  And splinter upward, and the earth forthwith

  Withdraw from under our feet, and all its bulk,

  Among its mingled wrecks and those of heaven,

  With slipping asunder of the primal seeds,

  Should pass, along the immeasurable inane,

  Away forever, and, that instant, naught

  Of wrack and remnant would be left, beside

  The desolate space, and germs invisible.

  For on whatever side thou deemest first

  The primal bodies lacking, lo, that side

  Will be for things the very door of death:

  Wherethrough the throng of matter all will dash,

  Out and abroad.

  These points, if thou wilt ponder,

  Then, with but paltry trouble led along...

  For one thing after other will grow clear,

  Nor shall the blind night rob thee of the road,

  To hinder thy gaze on nature’s Farthest-forth.

  Thus things for things shall kindle torches new.

  BOOK II

  PROEM

  ’Tis sweet, when, down the mighty main, the winds

  Roll up its waste of waters, from the land

  To watch another’s labouring anguish far,

  Not that we joyously delight that man

  Should thus be smitten, but because ’tis sweet

  To mark what evils we ourselves be spared;

  ’Tis sweet, again, to view the mighty strife

  Of armies embattled yonder o’er the plains,

  Ourselves no sharers in the peril; but naught

  There is more goodly than to hold the high

  Serene plateaus, well fortressed by the wise,

  Whence thou may’st look below on other men

  And see them ev’rywhere wand’ring, all dispersed

  In their lone seeking for the road of life;

  Rivals in genius, or emulous in rank,

  Pressing through days and nights with hugest toil

  For summits of power and mastery of the world.

  O wretched minds of men! O blinded hearts!

  In how great perils, in what darks of life

  Are spent the human years, however brief! —

  O not to see that nature for herself

  Barks after nothing, save that pain keep off,

  Disjoined from the body, and that mind enjoy

  Delightsome feeling, far from care and fear!

  Therefore we see that our corporeal life

  Needs little, altogether, and only such

  As takes the pain away, and can besides

  Strew underneath some number of delights.

  More grateful ’tis at times (for nature craves

  No artifice nor luxury), if forsooth

  There be no golden images of boys

  Along the halls, with right hands holding out

  The lamps ablaze, the lights for evening feasts,

  And if the house doth glitter not with gold

  Nor gleam with silver, and to the lyre resound

  No fretted and gilded ceilings overhead,

  Yet still to lounge with friends in the soft grass

  Beside a river of water, underneath

  A big tree’s boughs, and merrily to refresh

  Our frames, with no vast outlay — most of all

  If the weather is laughing and the times of the year

  Besprinkle the green of the grass around with flowers.

  Nor yet the quicker will hot fevers go,

  If on a pictured tapestry thou toss,

  Or purple robe, than if ’tis thine to lie

  Upon the poor man’s bedding. Wherefore, since

  Treasure, nor rank, nor glory of a reign

  Avail us naught for this our body, thusr />
  Reckon them likewise nothing for the mind:

  Save then perchance, when thou beholdest forth

  Thy legions swarming round the Field of Mars,

  Rousing a mimic warfare — either side

  Strengthened with large auxiliaries and horse,

  Alike equipped with arms, alike inspired;

  Or save when also thou beholdest forth

  Thy fleets to swarm, deploying down the sea:

  For then, by such bright circumstance abashed,

  Religion pales and flees thy mind; O then

  The fears of death leave heart so free of care.

  But if we note how all this pomp at last

  Is but a drollery and a mocking sport,

  And of a truth man’s dread, with cares at heels,

  Dreads not these sounds of arms, these savage swords

  But among kings and lords of all the world

  Mingles undaunted, nor is overawed

  By gleam of gold nor by the splendour bright

  Of purple robe, canst thou then doubt that this

  Is aught, but power of thinking? — when, besides

  The whole of life but labours in the dark.

  For just as children tremble and fear all

  In the viewless dark, so even we at times

  Dread in the light so many things that be

  No whit more fearsome than what children feign,

  Shuddering, will be upon them in the dark.

  This terror then, this darkness of the mind,

  Not sunrise with its flaring spokes of light,

  Nor glittering arrows of morning can disperse,

  But only nature’s aspect and her law.

  ATOMIC MOTIONS

  Now come: I will untangle for thy steps

  Now by what motions the begetting bodies

  Of the world-stuff beget the varied world,

  And then forever resolve it when begot,

  And by what force they are constrained to this,

  And what the speed appointed unto them

  Wherewith to travel down the vast inane:

  Do thou remember to yield thee to my words.

  For truly matter coheres not, crowds not tight,

  Since we behold each thing to wane away,

  And we observe how all flows on and off,

  As ‘twere, with age-old time, and from our eyes

  How eld withdraws each object at the end,

  Albeit the sum is seen to bide the same,

  Unharmed, because these motes that leave each thing

  Diminish what they part from, but endow

  With increase those to which in turn they come,

  Constraining these to wither in old age,

  And those to flower at the prime (and yet

  Biding not long among them). Thus the sum

  Forever is replenished, and we live

  As mortals by eternal give and take.

  The nations wax, the nations wane away;

  In a brief space the generations pass,

  And like to runners hand the lamp of life

  One unto other.

  But if thou believe

  That the primordial germs of things can stop,

  And in their stopping give new motions birth,

  Afar thou wanderest from the road of truth.

  For since they wander through the void inane,

  All the primordial germs of things must needs

  Be borne along, either by weight their own,

  Or haply by another’s blow without.

  For, when, in their incessancy so oft

  They meet and clash, it comes to pass amain

  They leap asunder, face to face: not strange —

  Being most hard, and solid in their weights,

  And naught opposing motion, from behind.

  And that more clearly thou perceive how all

  These mites of matter are darted round about,

  Recall to mind how nowhere in the sum

  Of All exists a bottom, — nowhere is

  A realm of rest for primal bodies; since

  (As amply shown and proved by reason sure)

  Space has no bound nor measure, and extends

  Unmetered forth in all directions round.

  Since this stands certain, thus ’tis out of doubt

  No rest is rendered to the primal bodies

  Along the unfathomable inane; but rather,

  Inveterately plied by motions mixed,

  Some, at their jamming, bound aback and leave

  Huge gaps between, and some from off the blow

  Are hurried about with spaces small between.

  And all which, brought together with slight gaps,

  In more condensed union bound aback,

  Linked by their own all inter-tangled shapes, —

  These form the irrefragable roots of rocks

  And the brute bulks of iron, and what else

  Is of their kind...

  The rest leap far asunder, far recoil,

  Leaving huge gaps between: and these supply

  For us thin air and splendour-lights of the sun.

  And many besides wander the mighty void —

  Cast back from unions of existing things,

  Nowhere accepted in the universe,

  And nowise linked in motions to the rest.

  And of this fact (as I record it here)

  An image, a type goes on before our eyes

  Present each moment; for behold whenever

  The sun’s light and the rays, let in, pour down

  Across dark halls of houses: thou wilt see

  The many mites in many a manner mixed

  Amid a void in the very light of the rays,

  And battling on, as in eternal strife,

  And in battalions contending without halt,

  In meetings, partings, harried up and down.

  From this thou mayest conjecture of what sort

  The ceaseless tossing of primordial seeds

  Amid the mightier void — at least so far

  As small affair can for a vaster serve,

  And by example put thee on the spoor

  Of knowledge. For this reason too ’tis fit

  Thou turn thy mind the more unto these bodies

  Which here are witnessed tumbling in the light:

  Namely, because such tumblings are a sign

  That motions also of the primal stuff

  Secret and viewless lurk beneath, behind.

  For thou wilt mark here many a speck, impelled

  By viewless blows, to change its little course,

  And beaten backwards to return again,

  Hither and thither in all directions round.

  Lo, all their shifting movement is of old,

  From the primeval atoms; for the same

  Primordial seeds of things first move of self,

  And then those bodies built of unions small

  And nearest, as it were, unto the powers

  Of the primeval atoms, are stirred up

  By impulse of those atoms’ unseen blows,

  And these thereafter goad the next in size:

  Thus motion ascends from the primevals on,

  And stage by stage emerges to our sense,

  Until those objects also move which we

  Can mark in sunbeams, though it not appears

  What blows do urge them.

  Herein wonder not

  How ’tis that, while the seeds of things are all

  Moving forever, the sum yet seems to stand

  Supremely still, except in cases where

  A thing shows motion of its frame as whole.

  For far beneath the ken of senses lies

  The nature of those ultimates of the world;

  And so, since those themselves thou canst not see,

  Their motion also must they veil from men —

  For mark, indeed, how things we can see, oft

  Yet hide their motions, when afar from usr />
  Along the distant landscape. Often thus,

  Upon a hillside will the woolly flocks

  Be cropping their goodly food and creeping about

  Whither the summons of the grass, begemmed

  With the fresh dew, is calling, and the lambs,

  Well filled, are frisking, locking horns in sport:

  Yet all for us seem blurred and blent afar —

  A glint of white at rest on a green hill.

  Again, when mighty legions, marching round,

  Fill all the quarters of the plains below,

  Rousing a mimic warfare, there the sheen

  Shoots up the sky, and all the fields about

  Glitter with brass, and from beneath, a sound

  Goes forth from feet of stalwart soldiery,

  And mountain walls, smote by the shouting, send

  The voices onward to the stars of heaven,

  And hither and thither darts the cavalry,

  And of a sudden down the midmost fields

  Charges with onset stout enough to rock

  The solid earth: and yet some post there is

  Up the high mountains, viewed from which they seem

  To stand — a gleam at rest along the plains.

  Now what the speed to matter’s atoms given

  Thou mayest in few, my Memmius, learn from this:

  When first the dawn is sprinkling with new light

  The lands, and all the breed of birds abroad

  Flit round the trackless forests, with liquid notes

  Filling the regions along the mellow air,

  We see ’tis forthwith manifest to man

  How suddenly the risen sun is wont

  At such an hour to overspread and clothe

  The whole with its own splendour; but the sun’s

  Warm exhalations and this serene light

  Travel not down an empty void; and thus

  They are compelled more slowly to advance,

  Whilst, as it were, they cleave the waves of air;

  Nor one by one travel these particles

  Of the warm exhalations, but are all

  Entangled and enmassed, whereby at once

  Each is restrained by each, and from without

  Checked, till compelled more slowly to advance.

  But the primordial atoms with their old

  Simple solidity, when forth they travel

  Along the empty void, all undelayed

  By aught outside them there, and they, each one

  Being one unit from nature of its parts,

  Are borne to that one place on which they strive

  Still to lay hold, must then, beyond a doubt,

  Outstrip in speed, and be more swiftly borne

  Than light of sun, and over regions rush,