De Rerum Natura
- 1.238.31
To come to birth but through some other's death.
- 1.238.32
. . . . . .
- 1.238.33
And now, since I have taught that things cannot
- 1.238.34
Be born from nothing, nor the same, when born,
- 1.238.35
To nothing be recalled, doubt not my words,
- 1.238.36
Because our eyes no primal germs perceive;
- 1.238.37
For mark those bodies which, though known to be
- 1.238.38
In this our world, are yet invisible:
- 1.238.39
The winds infuriate lash our face and frame,
- 1.238.40
Unseen, and swamp huge ships and rend the clouds,
- 1.238.41
Or, eddying wildly down, bestrew the plains
- 1.238.42
With mighty trees, or scour the mountain tops
- 1.238.43
With forest-crackling blasts. Thus on they rave
- 1.238.44
With uproar shrill and ominous moan. The winds,
- 1.238.45
'Tis clear, are sightless bodies sweeping through
- 1.238.46
The sea, the lands, the clouds along the sky,
- 1.238.47
Vexing and whirling and seizing all amain;
- 1.238.48
And forth they flow and pile destruction round,
- 1.238.49
Even as the water's soft and supple bulk
- 1.238.50
Becoming a river of abounding floods,
- 1.238.51
Which a wide downpour from the lofty hills
- 1.238.52
Swells with big showers, dashes headlong down
- 1.238.53
Fragments of woodland and whole branching trees;
- 1.238.54
Nor can the solid bridges bide the shock
- 1.238.55
As on the waters whelm: the turbulent stream,
- 1.238.56
Strong with a hundred rains, beats round the piers,
- 1.238.57
Crashes with havoc, and rolls beneath its waves
- 1.238.58
Down-toppled masonry and ponderous stone,
- 1.238.59
Hurling away whatever would oppose.
- 1.238.60
Even so must move the blasts of all the winds,
- 1.238.61
Which, when they spread, like to a mighty flood,
- 1.238.62
Hither or thither, drive things on before
- 1.238.63
And hurl to ground with still renewed assault,
- 1.238.64
Or sometimes in their circling vortex seize
- 1.238.65
And bear in cones of whirlwind down the world:
- 1.238.66
The winds are sightless bodies and naught else-
- 1.238.67
Since both in works and ways they rival well
- 1.238.68
The mighty rivers, the visible in form.
- 1.238.69
Then too we know the varied smells of things
- 1.238.70
Yet never to our nostrils see them come;
- 1.238.71
With eyes we view not burning heats, nor cold,
- 1.238.72
Nor are we wont men's voices to behold.
- 1.238.73
Yet these must be corporeal at the base,
- 1.238.74
Since thus they smite the senses: naught there is
- 1.238.75
Save body, having property of touch.
- 1.238.76
And raiment, hung by surf-beat shore, grows moist,
- 1.238.77
The same, spread out before the sun, will dry;
- 1.238.78
Yet no one saw how sank the moisture in,
- 1.238.79
Nor how by heat off-driven. Thus we know,
- 1.238.80
That moisture is dispersed about in bits
- 1.238.81
Too small for eyes to see. Another case:
- 1.238.82
A ring upon the finger thins away
- 1.238.83
Along the under side, with years and suns;
- 1.238.84
The drippings from the eaves will scoop the stone;
- 1.238.85
The hooked ploughshare, though of iron, wastes
- 1.238.86
Amid the fields insidiously. We view
- 1.238.87
The rock-paved highways worn by many feet;
- 1.238.88
And at the gates the brazen statues show
- 1.238.89
Their right hands leaner from the frequent touch
- 1.238.90
Of wayfarers innumerable who greet.
- 1.238.91
We see how wearing-down hath minished these,
- 1.238.92
But just what motes depart at any time,
- 1.238.93
The envious nature of vision bars our sight.
- 1.238.94
Lastly whatever days and nature add
- 1.238.95
Little by little, constraining things to grow
- 1.238.96
In due proportion, no gaze however keen
- 1.238.97
Of these our eyes hath watched and known. No more
- 1.238.98
Can we observe what's lost at any time,
- 1.238.99
When things wax old with eld and foul decay,
- 1.238.100
Or when salt seas eat under beetling crags.
- 1.238.101
Thus Nature ever by unseen bodies works.
- 1.329.1
But yet creation's neither crammed nor blocked
- 1.329.2
About by body: there's in things a void-
- 1.329.3
Which to have known will serve thee many a turn,
- 1.329.4
Nor will not leave thee wandering in doubt,
- 1.329.5
Forever searching in the sum of all,
- 1.329.6
And losing faith in these pronouncements mine.
- 1.329.7
There's place intangible, a void and room.
- 1.329.8
For were it not, things could in nowise move;
- 1.329.9
Since body's property to block and check
- 1.329.10
Would work on all and at an times the same.
- 1.329.11
Thus naught could evermore push forth and go,
- 1.329.12
Since naught elsewhere would yield a starting place.
- 1.329.13
But now through oceans, lands, and heights of heaven,
- 1.329.14
By divers causes and in divers modes,
- 1.329.15
Before our eyes we mark how much may move,
- 1.329.16
Which, finding not a void, would fail deprived
- 1.329.17
Of stir and motion; nay, would then have been
- 1.329.18
Nowise begot at all, since matter, then,
- 1.329.19
Had staid at rest, its parts together crammed.
- 1.329.20
Then too, however solid objects seem,
- 1.329.21
They yet are formed of matter mixed with void:
- 1.329.22
In rocks and caves the watery moisture seeps,
- 1.329.23
And beady drops stand out like plenteous tears;
- 1.329.24
And food finds way through every frame that lives;
- 1.329.25
The trees increase and yield the season's fruit
- 1.329.26
Because their food throughout the whole is poured,
- 1.329.27
Even from the deepest roots, through trunks and boughs;
- 1.329.28
And voices pass the solid walls and fly
- 1.329.29
Reverberant through shut doorways of a house;
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