De Rerum Natura
- 1.418.27
Or else be that wherein things move and be:
- 1.418.28
Naught, saving body, acts, is acted on;
- 1.418.29
Naught but the inane can furnish room. And thus,
- 1.418.30
Beside the inane and bodies, is no third
- 1.418.31
Nature amid the number of all things-
- 1.418.32
Remainder none to fall at any time
- 1.418.33
Under our senses, nor be seized and seen
- 1.418.34
By any man through reasonings of mind.
- 1.418.35
Name o'er creation with what names thou wilt,
- 1.418.36
Thou'lt find but properties of those first twain,
- 1.418.37
Or see but accidents those twain produce.
- 1.418.38
A property is that which not at all
- 1.418.39
Can be disjoined and severed from a thing
- 1.418.40
Without a fatal dissolution: such,
- 1.418.41
Weight to the rocks, heat to the fire, and flow
- 1.418.42
To the wide waters, touch to corporal things,
- 1.418.43
Intangibility to the viewless void.
- 1.418.44
But state of slavery, pauperhood, and wealth,
- 1.418.45
Freedom, and war, and concord, and all else
- 1.418.46
Which come and go whilst nature stands the same,
- 1.418.47
We're wont, and rightly, to call accidents.
- 1.418.48
Even time exists not of itself; but sense
- 1.418.49
Reads out of things what happened long ago,
- 1.418.50
What presses now, and what shall follow after:
- 1.418.51
No man, we must admit, feels time itself,
- 1.418.52
Disjoined from motion and repose of things.
- 1.418.53
Thus, when they say there "is" the ravishment
- 1.418.54
Of Princess Helen, "is" the siege and sack
- 1.418.55
Of Trojan Town, look out, they force us not
- 1.418.56
To admit these acts existent by themselves,
- 1.418.57
Merely because those races of mankind
- 1.418.58
(Of whom these acts were accidents) long since
- 1.418.59
Irrevocable age has borne away:
- 1.418.60
For all past actions may be said to be
- 1.418.61
But accidents, in one way, of mankind,-
- 1.418.62
In other, of some region of the world.
- 1.418.63
Add, too, had been no matter, and no room
- 1.418.64
Wherein all things go on, the fire of love
- 1.418.65
Upblown by that fair form, the glowing coal
- 1.418.66
Under the Phrygian Alexander's breast,
- 1.418.67
Had ne'er enkindled that renowned strife
- 1.418.68
Of savage war, nor had the wooden horse
- 1.418.69
Involved in flames old Pergama, by a birth
- 1.418.70
At midnight of a brood of the Hellenes.
- 1.418.71
And thus thou canst remark that every act
- 1.418.72
At bottom exists not of itself, nor is
- 1.418.73
As body is, nor has like name with void;
- 1.418.74
But rather of sort more fitly to be called
- 1.418.75
An accident of body, and of place
- 1.418.76
Wherein all things go on.
- 1.483.1
Bodies, again,
- 1.483.2
Are partly primal germs of things, and partly
- 1.483.3
Unions deriving from the primal germs.
- 1.483.4
And those which are the primal germs of things
- 1.483.5
No power can quench; for in the end they conquer
- 1.483.6
By their own solidness; though hard it be
- 1.483.7
To think that aught in things has solid frame;
- 1.483.8
For lightnings pass, no less than voice and shout,
- 1.483.9
Through hedging walls of houses, and the iron
- 1.483.10
White-dazzles in the fire, and rocks will burn
- 1.483.11
With exhalations fierce and burst asunder.
- 1.483.12
Totters the rigid gold dissolved in heat;
- 1.483.13
The ice of bronze melts conquered in the flame;
- 1.483.14
Warmth and the piercing cold through silver seep,
- 1.483.15
Since, with the cups held rightly in the hand,
- 1.483.16
We oft feel both, as from above is poured
- 1.483.17
The dew of waters between their shining sides:
- 1.483.18
So true it is no solid form is found.
- 1.483.19
But yet because true reason and nature of things
- 1.483.20
Constrain us, come, whilst in few verses now
- 1.483.21
I disentangle how there still exist
- 1.483.22
Bodies of solid, everlasting frame-
- 1.483.23
The seeds of things, the primal germs we teach,
- 1.483.24
Whence all creation around us came to be.
- 1.483.25
First since we know a twofold nature exists,
- 1.483.26
Of things, both twain and utterly unlike-
- 1.483.27
Body, and place in which an things go on-
- 1.483.28
Then each must be both for and through itself,
- 1.483.29
And all unmixed: where'er be empty space,
- 1.483.30
There body's not; and so where body bides,
- 1.483.31
There not at all exists the void inane.
- 1.483.32
Thus primal bodies are solid, without a void.
- 1.483.33
But since there's void in all begotten things,
- 1.483.34
All solid matter must be round the same;
- 1.483.35
Nor, by true reason canst thou prove aught hides
- 1.483.36
And holds a void within its body, unless
- 1.483.37
Thou grant what holds it be a solid. Know,
- 1.483.38
That which can hold a void of things within
- 1.483.39
Can be naught else than matter in union knit.
- 1.483.40
Thus matter, consisting of a solid frame,
- 1.483.41
Hath power to be eternal, though all else,
- 1.483.42
Though all creation, be dissolved away.
- 1.483.43
Again, were naught of empty and inane,
- 1.483.44
The world were then a solid; as, without
- 1.483.45
Some certain bodies to fill the places held,
- 1.483.46
The world that is were but a vacant void.
- 1.483.47
And so, infallibly, alternate-wise
- 1.483.48
Body and void are still distinguished,
- 1.483.49
Since nature knows no wholly full nor void.
- 1.483.50
There are, then, certain bodies, possessed of power
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