Delphi Complete Works of Lucretius

by Titus Lucretius Carus

  Thus, too, those Birdless places must up-send

  An essence bearing death to winged things,

  Which from the earth rises into the breezes

  To poison part of skiey space, and when

  Thither the winged is on pennons borne,

  There, seized by the unseen poison, ’tis ensnared,

  And from the horizontal of its flight

  Drops to the spot whence sprang the effluvium.

  And when ‘thas there collapsed, then the same power

  Of that effluvium takes from all its limbs

  The relics of its life. That power first strikes

  The creatures with a wildering dizziness,

  And then thereafter, when they’re once down-fallen

  Into the poison’s very fountains, then

  Life, too, they vomit out perforce, because

  So thick the stores of bane around them fume.

  Again, at times it happens that this power,

  This exhalation of the Birdless places,

  Dispels the air betwixt the ground and birds,

  Leaving well-nigh a void. And thither when

  In horizontal flight the birds have come,

  Forthwith their buoyancy of pennons limps,

  All useless, and each effort of both wings

  Falls out in vain. Here, when without all power

  To buoy themselves and on their wings to lean,

  Lo, nature constrains them by their weight to slip

  Down to the earth, and lying prostrate there

  Along the well-nigh empty void, they spend

  Their souls through all the openings of their frame.

  Further, the water of wells is colder then

  At summer time, because the earth by heat

  Is rarefied, and sends abroad in air

  Whatever seeds it peradventure have

  Of its own fiery exhalations.

  The more, then, the telluric ground is drained

  Of heat, the colder grows the water hid

  Within the earth. Further, when all the earth

  Is by the cold compressed, and thus contracts

  And, so to say, concretes, it happens, lo,

  That by contracting it expresses then

  Into the wells what heat it bears itself.

  ’Tis said at Hammon’s fane a fountain is,

  In daylight cold and hot in time of night.

  This fountain men be-wonder over-much,

  And think that suddenly it seethes in heat

  By intense sun, the subterranean, when

  Night with her terrible murk hath cloaked the lands —

  What’s not true reasoning by a long remove:

  I’ faith when sun o’erhead, touching with beams

  An open body of water, had no power

  To render it hot upon its upper side,

  Though his high light possess such burning glare,

  How, then, can he, when under the gross earth,

  Make water boil and glut with fiery heat? —

  And, specially, since scarcely potent he

  Through hedging walls of houses to inject

  His exhalations hot, with ardent rays.

  What, then’s, the principle? Why, this, indeed:

  The earth about that spring is porous more

  Than elsewhere the telluric ground, and be

  Many the seeds of fire hard by the water;

  On this account, when night with dew-fraught shades

  Hath whelmed the earth, anon the earth deep down

  Grows chill, contracts; and thuswise squeezes out

  Into the spring what seeds she holds of fire

  (As one might squeeze with fist), which render hot

  The touch and steam of the fluid. Next, when sun,

  Up-risen, with his rays has split the soil

  And rarefied the earth with waxing heat,

  Again into their ancient abodes return

  The seeds of fire, and all the Hot of water

  Into the earth retires; and this is why

  The fountain in the daylight gets so cold.

  Besides, the water’s wet is beat upon

  By rays of sun, and, with the dawn, becomes

  Rarer in texture under his pulsing blaze;

  And, therefore, whatso seeds it holds of fire

  It renders up, even as it renders oft

  The frost that it contains within itself

  And thaws its ice and looseneth the knots.

  There is, moreover, a fountain cold in kind

  That makes a bit of tow (above it held)

  Take fire forthwith and shoot a flame; so, too,

  A pitch-pine torch will kindle and flare round

  Along its waves, wherever ’tis impelled

  Afloat before the breeze. No marvel, this:

  Because full many seeds of heat there be

  Within the water; and, from earth itself

  Out of the deeps must particles of fire

  Athrough the entire fountain surge aloft,

  And speed in exhalations into air

  Forth and abroad (yet not in numbers enow

  As to make hot the fountain). And, moreo’er,

  Some force constrains them, scattered through the water,

  Forthwith to burst abroad, and to combine

  In flame above. Even as a fountain far

  There is at Aradus amid the sea,

  Which bubbles out sweet water and disparts

  From round itself the salt waves; and, behold,

  In many another region the broad main

  Yields to the thirsty mariners timely help,

  Belching sweet waters forth amid salt waves.

  Just so, then, can those seeds of fire burst forth

  Athrough that other fount, and bubble out

  Abroad against the bit of tow; and when

  They there collect or cleave unto the torch,

  Forthwith they readily flash aflame, because

  The tow and torches, also, in themselves

  Have many seeds of latent fire. Indeed,

  And seest thou not, when near the nightly lamps

  Thou bringest a flaxen wick, extinguished

  A moment since, it catches fire before

  ‘Thas touched the flame, and in same wise a torch?

  And many another object flashes aflame

  When at a distance, touched by heat alone,

  Before ’tis steeped in veritable fire.

  This, then, we must suppose to come to pass

  In that spring also.

  Now to other things!

  And I’ll begin to treat by what decree

  Of nature it came to pass that iron can be

  By that stone drawn which Greeks the magnet call

  After the country’s name (its origin

  Being in country of Magnesian folk).

  This stone men marvel at; and sure it oft

  Maketh a chain of rings, depending, lo,

  From off itself! Nay, thou mayest see at times

  Five or yet more in order dangling down

  And swaying in the delicate winds, whilst one

  Depends from other, cleaving to under-side,

  And ilk one feels the stone’s own power and bonds —

  So over-masteringly its power flows down.

  In things of this sort, much must be made sure

  Ere thou account of the thing itself canst give,

  And the approaches roundabout must be;

  Wherefore the more do I exact of thee

  A mind and ears attent.

  First, from all things

  We see soever, evermore must flow,

  Must be discharged and strewn about, about,

  Bodies that strike the eyes, awaking sight.

  From certain things flow odours evermore,

  As cold from rivers, heat from sun, and spray

  From waves of ocean, eater-out of walls

  Along the coasts. Nor ever cease to seep

/>   The varied echoings athrough the air.

  Then, too, there comes into the mouth at times

  The wet of a salt taste, when by the sea

  We roam about; and so, whene’er we watch

  The wormwood being mixed, its bitter stings.

  To such degree from all things is each thing

  Borne streamingly along, and sent about

  To every region round; and nature grants

  Nor rest nor respite of the onward flow,

  Since ’tis incessantly we feeling have,

  And all the time are suffered to descry

  And smell all things at hand, and hear them sound.

  Now will I seek again to bring to mind

  How porous a body all things have — a fact

  Made manifest in my first canto, too.

  For, truly, though to know this doth import

  For many things, yet for this very thing

  On which straightway I’m going to discourse,

  ’Tis needful most of all to make it sure

  That naught’s at hand but body mixed with void.

  A first ensample: in grottos, rocks o’erhead

  Sweat moisture and distil the oozy drops;

  Likewise, from all our body seeps the sweat;

  There grows the beard, and along our members all

  And along our frame the hairs. Through all our veins

  Disseminates the foods, and gives increase

  And aliment down to the extreme parts,

  Even to the tiniest finger-nails. Likewise,

  Through solid bronze the cold and fiery heat

  We feel to pass; likewise, we feel them pass

  Through gold, through silver, when we clasp in hand

  The brimming goblets. And, again, there flit

  Voices through houses’ hedging walls of stone;

  Odour seeps through, and cold, and heat of fire

  That’s wont to penetrate even strength of iron.

  Again, where corselet of the sky girds round

  And at same time, some Influence of bane,

  When from Beyond ‘thas stolen into [our world].

  And tempests, gathering from the earth and sky,

  Back to the sky and earth absorbed retire —

  With reason, since there’s naught that’s fashioned not

  With body porous.

  Furthermore, not all

  The particles which be from things thrown off

  Are furnished with same qualities for sense,

  Nor be for all things equally adapt.

  A first ensample: the sun doth bake and parch

  The earth; but ice he thaws, and with his beams

  Compels the lofty snows, up-reared white

  Upon the lofty hills, to waste away;

  Then, wax, if set beneath the heat of him,

  Melts to a liquid. And the fire, likewise,

  Will melt the copper and will fuse the gold,

  But hides and flesh it shrivels up and shrinks.

  The water hardens the iron just off the fire,

  But hides and flesh (made hard by heat) it softens.

  The oleaster-tree as much delights

  The bearded she-goats, verily as though

  ‘Twere nectar-steeped and shed ambrosia;

  Than which is naught that burgeons into leaf

  More bitter food for man. A hog draws back

  For marjoram oil, and every unguent fears

  Fierce poison these unto the bristled hogs,

  Yet unto us from time to time they seem,

  As ‘twere, to give new life. But, contrariwise,

  Though unto us the mire be filth most foul,

  To hogs that mire doth so delightsome seem

  That they with wallowing from belly to back

  Are never cloyed.

  A point remains, besides,

  Which best it seems to tell of, ere I go

  To telling of the fact at hand itself.

  Since to the varied things assigned be

  The many pores, those pores must be diverse

  In nature one from other, and each have

  Its very shape, its own direction fixed.

  And so, indeed, in breathing creatures be

  The several senses, of which each takes in

  Unto itself, in its own fashion ever,

  Its own peculiar object. For we mark

  How sounds do into one place penetrate,

  Into another flavours of all juice,

  And savour of smell into a third. Moreover,

  One sort through rocks we see to seep, and, lo,

  One sort to pass through wood, another still

  Through gold, and others to go out and off

  Through silver and through glass. For we do see

  Through some pores form-and-look of things to flow,

  Through others heat to go, and some things still

  To speedier pass than others through same pores.

  Of verity, the nature of these same paths,

  Varying in many modes (as aforesaid)

  Because of unlike nature and warp and woof

  Of cosmic things, constrains it so to be.

  Wherefore, since all these matters now have been

  Established and settled well for us

  As premises prepared, for what remains

  ‘Twill not be hard to render clear account

  By means of these, and the whole cause reveal

  Whereby the magnet lures the strength of iron.

  First, stream there must from off the lode-stone seeds

  Innumerable, a very tide, which smites

  By blows that air asunder lying betwixt

  The stone and iron. And when is emptied out

  This space, and a large place between the two

  Is made a void, forthwith the primal germs

  Of iron, headlong slipping, fall conjoined

  Into the vacuum, and the ring itself

  By reason thereof doth follow after and go

  Thuswise with all its body. And naught there is

  That of its own primordial elements

  More thoroughly knit or tighter linked coheres

  Than nature and cold roughness of stout iron.

  Wherefore, ’tis less a marvel what I said,

  That from such elements no bodies can

  From out the iron collect in larger throng

  And be into the vacuum borne along,

  Without the ring itself do follow after.

  And this it does, and followeth on until

  ‘Thath reached the stone itself and cleaved to it

  By links invisible. Moreover, likewise,

  The motion’s assisted by a thing of aid

  (Whereby the process easier becomes), —

  Namely, by this: as soon as rarer grows

  That air in front of the ring, and space between

  Is emptied more and made a void, forthwith

  It happens all the air that lies behind

  Conveys it onward, pushing from the rear.

  For ever doth the circumambient air

  Drub things unmoved, but here it pushes forth

  The iron, because upon one side the space

  Lies void and thus receives the iron in.

  This air, whereof I am reminding thee,

  Winding athrough the iron’s abundant pores

  So subtly into the tiny parts thereof,

  Shoves it and pushes, as wind the ship and sails.

  The same doth happen in all directions forth:

  From whatso side a space is made a void,

  Whether from crosswise or above, forthwith

  The neighbour particles are borne along

  Into the vacuum; for of verity,

  They’re set a-going by poundings from elsewhere,

  Nor by themselves of own accord can they

  Rise upwards into the air. Again, all things

  Must in their framework hold some air, because

  They
are of framework porous, and the air

  Encompasses and borders on all things.

  Thus, then, this air in iron so deeply stored

  Is tossed evermore in vexed motion,

  And therefore drubs upon the ring sans doubt

  And shakes it up inside....

  In sooth, that ring is thither borne along

  To where ‘thas once plunged headlong — thither, lo,

  Unto the void whereto it took its start.

  It happens, too, at times that nature of iron

  Shrinks from this stone away, accustomed

  By turns to flee and follow. Yea, I’ve seen

  Those Samothracian iron rings leap up,

  And iron filings in the brazen bowls

  Seethe furiously, when underneath was set

  The magnet stone. So strongly iron seems

  To crave to flee that rock. Such discord great

  Is gendered by the interposed brass,

  Because, forsooth, when first the tide of brass

  Hath seized upon and held possession of

  The iron’s open passage-ways, thereafter

  Cometh the tide of the stone, and in that iron

  Findeth all spaces full, nor now hath holes

  To swim through, as before. ’Tis thus constrained

  With its own current ‘gainst the iron’s fabric

  To dash and beat; by means whereof it spues

  Forth from itself — and through the brass stirs up —

  The things which otherwise without the brass

  It sucks into itself. In these affairs

  Marvel thou not that from this stone the tide

  Prevails not likewise other things to move

  With its own blows: for some stand firm by weight,

  As gold; and some cannot be moved forever,

  Because so porous in their framework they

  That there the tide streams through without a break,

  Of which sort stuff of wood is seen to be.

  Therefore, when iron (which lies between the two)

  Hath taken in some atoms of the brass,

  Then do the streams of that Magnesian rock

  Move iron by their smitings.

  Yet these things

  Are not so alien from others, that I

  Of this same sort am ill prepared to name

  Ensamples still of things exclusively

  To one another adapt. Thou seest, first,

  How lime alone cementeth stones: how wood

  Only by glue-of-bull with wood is joined —

  So firmly too that oftener the boards

  Crack open along the weakness of the grain

  Ere ever those taurine bonds will lax their hold.

  The vine-born juices with the water-springs