And on such grounds it is that those who held
     The stuff of things is fire, and out of fire
     Alone the cosmic sum is formed, are seen
     Mightily from true reason to have lapsed.
     Of whom, chief leader to do battle, comes
     That Heraclitus, famous for dark speech
     Among the silly, not the serious Greeks
     Who search for truth. For dolts are ever prone
     That to bewonder and adore which hides
     Beneath distorted words, holding that true
     Which sweetly tickles in their stupid ears,
     Or which is rouged in finely finished phrase.
     For how, I ask, can things so varied be,
     If formed of fire, single and pure? No whit
     'Twould help for fire to be condensed or thinned,
     If all the parts of fire did still preserve
     But fire's own nature, seen before in gross.
     The heat were keener with the parts compressed,
     Milder, again, when severed or dispersed—
     And more than this thou canst conceive of naught
     That from such causes could become; much less
     Might earth's variety of things be born
     From any fires soever, dense or rare.
     This too: if they suppose a void in things,
     Then fires can be condensed and still left rare;
     But since they see such opposites of thought
     Rising against them, and are loath to leave
     An unmixed void in things, they fear the steep
     And lose the road of truth. Nor do they see,
     That, if from things we take away the void,
     All things are then condensed, and out of all
     One body made, which has no power to dart
     Swiftly from out itself not anything—
     As throws the fire its light and warmth around,
     Giving thee proof its parts are not compact.
     But if perhaps they think, in other wise,
     Fires through their combinations can be quenched
     And change their substance, very well: behold,
     If fire shall spare to do so in no part,
     Then heat will perish utterly and all,
     And out of nothing would the world be formed.
     For change in anything from out its bounds
     Means instant death of that which was before;
     And thus a somewhat must persist unharmed
     Amid the world, lest all return to naught,
     And, born from naught, abundance thrive anew.
     Now since indeed there are those surest bodies
     Which keep their nature evermore the same,
     Upon whose going out and coming in
     And changed order things their nature change,
     And all corporeal substances transformed,
     'Tis thine to know those primal bodies, then,
     Are not of fire. For 'twere of no avail
     Should some depart and go away, and some
     Be added new, and some be changed in order,
     If still all kept their nature of old heat:
     For whatsoever they created then
     Would still in any case be only fire.
     The truth, I fancy, this: bodies there are
     Whose clashings, motions, order, posture, shapes
     Produce the fire and which, by order changed,
     Do change the nature of the thing produced,
     And are thereafter nothing like to fire
     Nor whatso else has power to send its bodies
     With impact touching on the senses' touch.

     Again, to say that all things are but fire
     And no true thing in number of all things
     Exists but fire, as this same fellow says,
     Seems crazed folly. For the man himself
     Against the senses by the senses fights,
     And hews at that through which is all belief,
     Through which indeed unto himself is known
     The thing he calls the fire. For, though he thinks
     The senses truly can perceive the fire,
     He thinks they cannot as regards all else,
     Which still are palpably as clear to sense—
     To me a thought inept and crazy too.
     For whither shall we make appeal? for what
     More certain than our senses can there be
     Whereby to mark asunder error and truth?
     Besides, why rather do away with all,
     And wish to allow heat only, then deny
     The fire and still allow all else to be?—
     Alike the madness either way it seems.
     Thus whosoe'er have held the stuff of things
     To be but fire, and out of fire the sum,
     And whosoever have constituted air
     As first beginning of begotten things,
     And all whoever have held that of itself
     Water alone contrives things, or that earth
     Createth all and changes things anew
     To divers natures, mightily they seem
     A long way to have wandered from the truth.

     Add, too, whoever make the primal stuff
     Twofold, by joining air to fire, and earth
     To water; add who deem that things can grow
     Out of the four—fire, earth, and breath, and rain;
     As first Empedocles of Acragas,
     Whom that three-cornered isle of all the lands
     Bore on her coasts, around which flows and flows
     In mighty bend and bay the Ionic seas,
     Splashing the brine from off their gray-green waves.
     Here, billowing onward through the narrow straits,
     Swift ocean cuts her boundaries from the shores
     Of the Italic mainland. Here the waste
     Charybdis; and here Aetna rumbles threats
     To gather anew such furies of its flames
     As with its force anew to vomit fires,
     Belched from its throat, and skyward bear anew
     Its lightnings' flash. And though for much she seem
     The mighty and the wondrous isle to men,
     Most rich in all good things, and fortified
     With generous strength of heroes, she hath ne'er
     Possessed within her aught of more renown,
     Nor aught more holy, wonderful, and dear
     Than this true man. Nay, ever so far and pure
     The lofty music of his breast divine
     Lifts up its voice and tells of glories found,
     That scarce he seems of human stock create.

     Yet he and those forementioned (known to be
     So far beneath him, less than he in all),
     Though, as discoverers of much goodly truth,
     They gave, as 'twere from out of the heart's own shrine,
     Responses holier and soundlier based
     Than ever the Pythia pronounced for men
     From out the triped and the Delphian laurel,
     Have still in matter of first-elements
     Made ruin of themselves, and, great men, great
     Indeed and heavy there for them the fall:
     First, because, banishing the void from things,
     They yet assign them motion, and allow
     Things soft and loosely textured to exist,
     As air, dew, fire, earth, animals, and grains,
     Without admixture of void amid their frame.
     Next, because, thinking there can be no end
     In cutting bodies down to less and less
     Nor pause established to their breaking up,
     They hold there is no minimum in things;
     Albeit we see the boundary point of aught
     Is that which to our senses seems its least,
     Whereby thou mayst conjecture, that, because
     The things thou canst not mark have boundary points,
     They surely have their minimums. Then, too,
     Since these philosophers ascribe to things
     Soft primal germs, which we behold to be
     Of birth and body mortal, thus, throughout,
     The sum of things must be returned to naught,
     And, born from naught, abundance thrive anew—
     Thou seest how far each doctrine stands from truth.
     And, next, these bodies are among themselves
     In many ways poisons and foes to each,
     Wherefore their congress will destroy them quite
     Or drive asunder as we see in storms
     Rains, winds, and lightnings all asunder fly.

     Thus too, if all things are create of four,
     And all again dissolved into the four,
     How can the four be called the primal germs
     Of things, more than all things themselves be thought,
     By retroversion, primal germs of them?
     For ever alternately are both begot,
     With interchange of nature and aspect
     From immemorial time. But if percase
     Thou think'st the frame of fire and earth, the air,
     The dew of water can in such wise meet
     As not by mingling to resign their nature,
     From them for thee no world can be create—
     No thing of breath, no stock or stalk of tree:
     In the wild congress of this varied heap
     Each thing its proper nature will display,
     And air will palpably be seen mixed up
     With earth together, unquenched heat with water.
     But primal germs in bringing things to birth
     Must have a latent, unseen quality,
     Lest some outstanding alien element
     Confuse and minish in the thing create
     Its proper being.

                        But these men begin
     From heaven, and from its fires; and first they feign
     That fire will turn into the winds of air,
     Next, that from air the rain begotten is,
     And earth created out of rain, and then
     That all, reversely, are returned from earth—
     The moisture first, then air thereafter heat—
     And that these same ne'er cease in interchange,
     To go their ways from heaven to earth, from earth
     Unto the stars of the aethereal world—
     Which in no wise at all the germs can do.
     Since an immutable somewhat still must be,
     Lest all things utterly be sped to naught;
     For change in anything from out its bounds
     Means instant death of that which was before.
     Wherefore, since those things, mentioned heretofore,
     Suffer a changed state, they must derive
     From others ever unconvertible,
     Lest an things utterly return to naught.
     Then why not rather presuppose there be
     Bodies with such a nature furnished forth
     That, if perchance they have created fire,
     Can still (by virtue of a few withdrawn,
     Or added few, and motion and order changed)
     Fashion the winds of air, and thus all things
     Forevermore be interchanged with all?

     "But facts in proof are manifest," thou sayest,
     "That all things grow into the winds of air
     And forth from earth are nourished, and unless
     The season favour at propitious hour
     With rains enough to set the trees a-reel
     Under the soak of bulking thunderheads,
     And sun, for its share, foster and give heat,
     No grains, nor trees, nor breathing things can grow."
     True—and unless hard food and moisture soft
     Recruited man, his frame would waste away,
     And life dissolve from out his thews and bones;
     For out of doubt recruited and fed are we
     By certain things, as other things by others.
     Because in many ways the many germs
     Common to many things are mixed in things,
     No wonder 'tis that therefore divers things
     By divers things are nourished. And, again,
     Often it matters vastly with what others,
     In what positions the primordial germs
     Are bound together, and what motions, too,
     They give and get among themselves; for these
     Same germs do put together sky, sea, lands,
     Rivers, and sun, grains, trees, and breathing things,
     But yet commixed they are in divers modes
     With divers things, forever as they move.
     Nay, thou beholdest in our verses here
     Elements many, common to many worlds,
     Albeit thou must confess each verse, each word
     From one another differs both in sense
     And ring of sound—so much the elements
     Can bring about by change of order alone.
     But those which are the primal germs of things
     Have power to work more combinations still,
     Whence divers things can be produced in turn.

     Now let us also take for scrutiny
     The homeomeria of Anaxagoras,
     So called by Greeks, for which our pauper-speech
     Yieldeth no name in the Italian tongue,
     Although the thing itself is not o'erhard
     For explanation. First, then, when he speaks
     Of this homeomeria of things, he thinks
     Bones to be sprung from littlest bones minute,
     And from minute and littlest flesh all flesh,
     And blood created out of drops of blood,
     Conceiving gold compact of grains of gold,
     And earth concreted out of bits of earth,
     Fire made of fires, and water out of waters,
     Feigning the like with all the rest of stuff.
     Yet he concedes not any void in things,
     Nor any limit to cutting bodies down.
     Wherefore to me he seems on both accounts
     To err no less than those we named before.
     Add too: these germs he feigns are far too frail—
     If they be germs primordial furnished forth
     With but same nature as the things themselves,
     And travail and perish equally with those,
     And no rein curbs them from annihilation.
     For which will last against the grip and crush
     Under the teeth of death? the fire? the moist?
     Or else the air? which then? the blood? the bones?
     No one, methinks, when every thing will be
     At bottom as mortal as whate'er we mark
     To perish by force before our gazing eyes.
     But my appeal is to the proofs above
     That things cannot fall back to naught, nor yet
     From naught increase. And now again, since food
     Augments and nourishes the human frame,
     'Tis thine to know our veins and blood and bones
     And thews are formed of particles unlike
     To them in kind; or if they say all foods
     Are of mixed substance having in themselves
     Small bodies of thews, and bones, and also veins
     And particles of blood, then every food,
     Solid or liquid, must itself be thought
     As made and mixed of things unlike in kind—
     Of bones, of thews, of ichor and of blood.
     Again, if all the bodies which upgrow
     From earth, are first within the earth, then earth
     Must be compound of alien substances.
     Which spring and bloom abroad from out the earth.
     Transfer the argument, and thou may'st use
     The selfsame words: if flame and smoke and ash
     Still lurk unseen within the wood, the wood
     Must be compound of alien substances
     Which spring from out the wood.

                               Right here remains
     A certain slender means to skulk from truth,
     Which Anaxagoras takes unto himself,
     Who holds that all things lurk commixed with all
     While that one only comes to view, of which
     The bodies exceed in number all the rest,
     And lie more close to hand and at the fore—
     A notion banished from true reason far.
     For then 'twere meet that kernels of the grains
     Should oft, when crunched between the might of stones,
     Give forth a sign of blood, or of aught else
     Which in our human frame is fed; and that
     Rock rubbed on rock should yield a gory ooze.
     Likewise the herbs ought oft to give forth drops
     Of sweet milk, flavoured like the uddered sheep's;
     Indeed we ought to find, when crumbling up
     The earthy clods, there herbs, and grains, and leaves,
     All sorts dispersed minutely in the soil;
     Lastly we ought to find in cloven wood
     Ashes and smoke and bits of fire there hid.
     But since fact teaches this is not the case,
     'Tis thine to know things are not mixed with things
     Thuswise; but seeds, common to many things,
     Commixed in many ways, must lurk in things.

     "But often it happens on skiey hills" thou sayest,
     "That neighbouring tops of lofty trees are rubbed
     One against other, smote by the blustering south,
     Till all ablaze with bursting flower of flame."
     Good sooth—yet fire is not ingraft in wood,
     But many are the seeds of heat, and when
     Rubbing together they together flow,
     They start the conflagrations in the forests.
     Whereas if flame, already fashioned, lay
     Stored up within the forests, then the fires
     Could not for any time be kept unseen,
     But would be laying all the wildwood waste
     And burning all the boscage. Now dost see
     (Even as we said a little space above)
     How mightily it matters with what others,
     In what positions these same primal germs
     Are bound together? And what motions, too,
     They give and get among themselves? how, hence,
     The same, if altered 'mongst themselves, can body
     Both igneous and ligneous objects forth—
     Precisely as these words themselves are made
     By somewhat altering their elements,
     Although we mark with name indeed distinct
     The igneous from the ligneous. Once again,
     If thou suppose whatever thou beholdest,
     Among all visible objects, cannot be,
     Unless thou feign bodies of matter endowed
     With a like nature,—by thy vain device
     For thee will perish all the germs of things:
     'Twill come to pass they'll laugh aloud, like men,
     Shaken asunder by a spasm of mirth,
     Or moisten with salty tear-drops cheeks and chins.

     Now learn of what remains! More keenly hear!
     And for myself, my mind is not deceived
     How dark it is: But the large hope of praise
     Hath strook with pointed thyrsus through my heart;
     On the same hour hath strook into my breast
     Sweet love of the Muses, wherewith now instinct,
     I wander afield, thriving in sturdy thought,
     Through unpathed haunts of the Pierides,
     Trodden by step of none before. I joy
     To come on undefiled fountains there,
     To drain them deep; I joy to pluck new flowers,
     To seek for this my head a signal crown
     From regions where the Muses never yet
     Have garlanded the temples of a man:
     First, since I teach concerning mighty things,
     And go right on to loose from round the mind
     The tightened coils of dread religion;
     Next, since, concerning themes so dark, I frame
     Songs so pellucid, touching all throughout
     Even with the Muses' charm—which, as 'twould seem,
     Is not without a reasonable ground:
     But as physicians, when they seek to give
     Young boys the nauseous wormwood, first do touch
     The brim around the cup with the sweet juice
     And yellow of the honey, in order that
     The thoughtless age of boyhood be cajoled
     As far as the lips, and meanwhile swallow down
     The wormwood's bitter draught, and, though befooled,
     Be yet not merely duped, but rather thus
     Grow strong again with recreated health:
     So now I too (since this my doctrine seems
     In general somewhat woeful unto those
     Who've had it not in hand, and since the crowd
     Starts back from it in horror) have desired
     To expound our doctrine unto thee in song
     Soft-speaking and Pierian, and, as 'twere,
     To touch it with sweet honey of the Muse—
     If by such method haply I might hold
     The mind of thee upon these lines of ours,
     Till thou see through the nature of all things,
     And how exists the interwoven frame.

     But since I've taught that bodies of matter, made
     Completely solid, hither and thither fly
     Forevermore unconquered through all time,
     Now come, and whether to the sum of them
     There be a limit or be none, for thee
     Let us unfold; likewise what has been found
     To be the wide inane, or room, or space
     Wherein all things soever do go on,
     Let us examine if it finite be
     All and entire, or reach unmeasured round
     And downward an illimitable profound.

     Thus, then, the All that is is limited
     In no one region of its onward paths,
     For then 'tmust have forever its beyond.
     And a beyond 'tis seen can never be
     For aught, unless still further on there be
     A somewhat somewhere that may bound the same—
     So that the thing be seen still on to where
     The nature of sensation of that thing
     Can follow it no longer. Now because
     Confess we must there's naught beside the sum,
     There's no beyond, and so it lacks all end.
     It matters nothing where thou post thyself,
     In whatsoever regions of the same;
     Even any place a man has set him down
     Still leaves about him the unbounded all
     Outward in all directions; or, supposing
     A moment the all of space finite to be,
     If some one farthest traveller runs forth
     Unto the extreme coasts and throws ahead
     A flying spear, is't then thy wish to think
     It goes, hurled off amain, to where 'twas sent
     And shoots afar, or that some object there
     Can thwart and stop it? For the one or other
     Thou must admit and take. Either of which
     Shuts off escape for thee, and does compel
     That thou concede the all spreads everywhere,
     Owning no confines. Since whether there be
     Aught that may block and check it so it comes
     Not where 'twas sent, nor lodges in its goal,
     Or whether borne along, in either view
     'Thas started not from any end. And so
     I'll follow on, and whereso'er thou set
     The extreme coasts, I'll query, "what becomes
     Thereafter of thy spear?" 'Twill come to pass
     That nowhere can a world's-end be, and that
     The chance for further flight prolongs forever
     The flight itself. Besides, were all the space
     Of the totality and sum shut in
     With fixed coasts, and bounded everywhere,
     Then would the abundance of world's matter flow
     Together by solid weight from everywhere
     Still downward to the bottom of the world,
     Nor aught could happen under cope of sky,
     Nor could there be a sky at all or sun—
     Indeed, where matter all one heap would lie,
     By having settled during infinite time.
     But in reality, repose is given
     Unto no bodies 'mongst the elements,
     Because there is no bottom whereunto
     They might, as 'twere, together flow, and where
     They might take up their undisturbed abodes.
     In endless motion everything goes on
     Forevermore; out of all regions, even
     Out of the pit below, from forth the vast,
     Are hurtled bodies evermore supplied.
     The nature of room, the space of the abyss
     Is such that even the flashing thunderbolts
     Can neither speed upon their courses through,
     Gliding across eternal tracts of time,
     Nor, further, bring to pass, as on they run,
     That they may bate their journeying one whit:
     Such huge abundance spreads for things around—
     Room off to every quarter, without end.
     Lastly, before our very eyes is seen
     Thing to bound thing: air hedges hill from hill,
     And mountain walls hedge air; land ends the sea,
     And sea in turn all lands; but for the All
     Truly is nothing which outside may bound.
     That, too, the sum of things itself may not
     Have power to fix a measure of its own,
     Great nature guards, she who compels the void
     To bound all body, as body all the void,
     Thus rendering by these alternates the whole
     An infinite; or else the one or other,
     Being unbounded by the other, spreads,
     Even by its single nature, ne'ertheless
     Immeasurably forth....
     Nor sea, nor earth, nor shining vaults of sky,
     Nor breed of mortals, nor holy limbs of gods
     Could keep their place least portion of an hour:
     For, driven apart from out its meetings fit,
     The stock of stuff, dissolved, would be borne
     Along the illimitable inane afar,
     Or rather, in fact, would ne'er have once combined
     And given a birth to aught, since, scattered wide,
     It could not be united. For of truth
     Neither by counsel did the primal germs
     'Stablish themselves, as by keen act of mind,
     Each in its proper place; nor did they make,
     Forsooth, a compact how each germ should move;
     But since, being many and changed in many modes
     Along the All, they're driven abroad and vexed
     By blow on blow, even from all time of old,
     They thus at last, after attempting all
     The kinds of motion and conjoining, come
     Into those great arrangements out of which
     This sum of things established is create,
     By which, moreover, through the mighty years,
     It is preserved, when once it has been thrown
     Into the proper motions, bringing to pass
     That ever the streams refresh the greedy main
     With river-waves abounding, and that earth,
     Lapped in warm exhalations of the sun,
     Renews her broods, and that the lusty race
     Of breathing creatures bears and blooms, and that
     The gliding fires of ether are alive—
     What still the primal germs nowise could do,
     Unless from out the infinite of space
     Could come supply of matter, whence in season
     They're wont whatever losses to repair.
     For as the nature of breathing creatures wastes,
     Losing its body, when deprived of food:
     So all things have to be dissolved as soon
     As matter, diverted by what means soever
     From off its course, shall fail to be on hand.
     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.

     '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, thus
     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.

     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 us
     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,
     Of space much vaster, in the self-same time
     The sun's effulgence widens round the sky.

     Nor to pursue the atoms one by one,
     To see the law whereby each thing goes on.
     But some men, ignorant of matter, think,
     Opposing this, that not without the gods,
     In such adjustment to our human ways,
     Can nature change the seasons of the years,
     And bring to birth the grains and all of else
     To which divine Delight, the guide of life,
     Persuades mortality and leads it on,
     That, through her artful blandishments of love,
     It propagate the generations still,
     Lest humankind should perish. When they feign
     That gods have stablished all things but for man,
     They seem in all ways mightily to lapse
     From reason's truth: for ev'n if ne'er I knew
     What seeds primordial are, yet would I dare
     This to affirm, ev'n from deep judgment based
     Upon the ways and conduct of the skies—
     This to maintain by many a fact besides—
     That in no wise the nature of the world
     For us was builded by a power divine—
     So great the faults it stands encumbered with:
     The which, my Memmius, later on, for thee
     We will clear up. Now as to what remains
     Concerning motions we'll unfold our thought.

     Now is the place, meseems, in these affairs
     To prove for thee this too: nothing corporeal
     Of its own force can e'er be upward borne,
     Or upward go—nor let the bodies of flames
     Deceive thee here: for they engendered are
     With urge to upwards, taking thus increase,
     Whereby grow upwards shining grains and trees,
     Though all the weight within them downward bears.
     Nor, when the fires will leap from under round
     The roofs of houses, and swift flame laps up
     Timber and beam, 'tis then to be supposed
     They act of own accord, no force beneath
     To urge them up. 'Tis thus that blood, discharged
     From out our bodies, spurts its jets aloft
     And spatters gore. And hast thou never marked
     With what a force the water will disgorge
     Timber and beam? The deeper, straight and down,
     We push them in, and, many though we be,
     The more we press with main and toil, the more
     The water vomits up and flings them back,
     That, more than half their length, they there emerge,
     Rebounding. Yet we never doubt, meseems,
     That all the weight within them downward bears
     Through empty void. Well, in like manner, flames
     Ought also to be able, when pressed out,
     Through winds of air to rise aloft, even though
     The weight within them strive to draw them down.
     Hast thou not seen, sweeping so far and high,
     The meteors, midnight flambeaus of the sky,
     How after them they draw long trails of flame
     Wherever Nature gives a thoroughfare?
     How stars and constellations drop to earth,
     Seest not? Nay, too, the sun from peak of heaven
     Sheds round to every quarter its large heat,
     And sows the new-ploughed intervales with light:
     Thus also sun's heat downward tends to earth.
     Athwart the rain thou seest the lightning fly;
     Now here, now there, bursting from out the clouds,
     The fires dash zig-zag—and that flaming power
     Falls likewise down to earth.

                                 In these affairs
     We wish thee also well aware of this:
     The atoms, as their own weight bears them down
     Plumb through the void, at scarce determined times,
     In scarce determined places, from their course
     Decline a little—call it, so to speak,
     Mere changed trend. For were it not their wont
     Thuswise to swerve, down would they fall, each one,
     Like drops of rain, through the unbottomed void;
     And then collisions ne'er could be nor blows
     Among the primal elements; and thus
     Nature would never have created aught.

     But, if perchance be any that believe
     The heavier bodies, as more swiftly borne
     Plumb down the void, are able from above
     To strike the lighter, thus engendering blows
     Able to cause those procreant motions, far
     From highways of true reason they retire.
     For whatsoever through the waters fall,
     Or through thin air, must quicken their descent,
     Each after its weight—on this account, because
     Both bulk of water and the subtle air
     By no means can retard each thing alike,
     But give more quick before the heavier weight;
     But contrariwise the empty void cannot,
     On any side, at any time, to aught
     Oppose resistance, but will ever yield,
     True to its bent of nature. Wherefore all,
     With equal speed, though equal not in weight,
     Must rush, borne downward through the still inane.
     Thus ne'er at all have heavier from above
     Been swift to strike the lighter, gendering strokes
     Which cause those divers motions, by whose means
     Nature transacts her work. And so I say,
     The atoms must a little swerve at times—
     But only the least, lest we should seem to feign
     Motions oblique, and fact refute us there.
     For this we see forthwith is manifest:
     Whatever the weight, it can't obliquely go,
     Down on its headlong journey from above,
     At least so far as thou canst mark; but who
     Is there can mark by sense that naught can swerve
     At all aside from off its road's straight line?

     Again, if ev'r all motions are co-linked,
     And from the old ever arise the new
     In fixed order, and primordial seeds
     Produce not by their swerving some new start
     Of motion to sunder the covenants of fate,
     That cause succeed not cause from everlasting,
     Whence this free will for creatures o'er the lands,
     Whence is it wrested from the fates,—this will
     Whereby we step right forward where desire
     Leads each man on, whereby the same we swerve
     In motions, not as at some fixed time,
     Nor at some fixed line of space, but where
     The mind itself has urged? For out of doubt
     In these affairs 'tis each man's will itself
     That gives the start, and hence throughout our limbs
     Incipient motions are diffused. Again,
     Dost thou not see, when, at a point of time,
     The bars are opened, how the eager strength
     Of horses cannot forward break as soon
     As pants their mind to do? For it behooves
     That all the stock of matter, through the frame,
     Be roused, in order that, through every joint,
     Aroused, it press and follow mind's desire;
     So thus thou seest initial motion's gendered
     From out the heart, aye, verily, proceeds
     First from the spirit's will, whence at the last
     'Tis given forth through joints and body entire.
     Quite otherwise it is, when forth we move,
     Impelled by a blow of another's mighty powers
     And mighty urge; for then 'tis clear enough
     All matter of our total body goes,
     Hurried along, against our own desire—
     Until the will has pulled upon the reins
     And checked it back, throughout our members all;
     At whose arbitrament indeed sometimes
     The stock of matter's forced to change its path,
     Throughout our members and throughout our joints,
     And, after being forward cast, to be
     Reined up, whereat it settles back again.
     So seest thou not, how, though external force
     Drive men before, and often make them move,
     Onward against desire, and headlong snatched,
     Yet is there something in these breasts of ours
     Strong to combat, strong to withstand the same?—
     Wherefore no less within the primal seeds
     Thou must admit, besides all blows and weight,
     Some other cause of motion, whence derives
     This power in us inborn, of some free act.—
     Since naught from nothing can become, we see.
     For weight prevents all things should come to pass
     Through blows, as 'twere, by some external force;
     But that man's mind itself in all it does
     Hath not a fixed necessity within,
     Nor is not, like a conquered thing, compelled
     To bear and suffer,—this state comes to man
     From that slight swervement of the elements
     In no fixed line of space, in no fixed time.

     Nor ever was the stock of stuff more crammed,
     Nor ever, again, sundered by bigger gaps:
     For naught gives increase and naught takes away;
     On which account, just as they move to-day,
     The elemental bodies moved of old
     And shall the same hereafter evermore.
     And what was wont to be begot of old
     Shall be begotten under selfsame terms
     And grow and thrive in power, so far as given
     To each by Nature's changeless, old decrees.
     The sum of things there is no power can change,
     For naught exists outside, to which can flee
     Out of the world matter of any kind,
     Nor forth from which a fresh supply can spring,
     Break in upon the founded world, and change
     Whole nature of things, and turn their motions about.