De Rerum Natura
- 1.483.51
To vary forever the empty and the full;
- 1.483.52
And these can nor be sundered from without
- 1.483.53
By beats and blows, nor from within be torn
- 1.483.54
By penetration, nor be overthrown
- 1.483.55
By any assault soever through the world-
- 1.483.56
For without void, naught can be crushed, it seems,
- 1.483.57
Nor broken, nor severed by a cut in twain,
- 1.483.58
Nor can it take the damp, or seeping cold
- 1.483.59
Or piercing fire, those old destroyers three;
- 1.483.60
But the more void within a thing, the more
- 1.483.61
Entirely it totters at their sure assault.
- 1.483.62
Thus if first bodies be, as I have taught,
- 1.483.63
Solid, without a void, they must be then
- 1.483.64
Eternal; and, if matter ne'er had been
- 1.483.65
Eternal, long ere now had all things gone
- 1.483.66
Back into nothing utterly, and all
- 1.483.67
We see around from nothing had been born-
- 1.483.68
But since I taught above that naught can be
- 1.483.69
From naught created, nor the once begotten
- 1.483.70
To naught be summoned back, these primal germs
- 1.483.71
Must have an immortality of frame.
- 1.483.72
And into these must each thing be resolved,
- 1.483.73
When comes its supreme hour, that thus there be
- 1.483.74
At hand the stuff for plenishing the world.
- 1.483.75
. . . . . .
- 1.483.76
So primal germs have solid singleness
- 1.483.77
Nor otherwise could they have been conserved
- 1.483.78
Through aeons and infinity of time
- 1.483.79
For the replenishment of wasted worlds.
- 1.483.80
Once more, if nature had given a scope for things
- 1.483.81
To be forever broken more and more,
- 1.483.82
By now the bodies of matter would have been
- 1.483.83
So far reduced by breakings in old days
- 1.483.84
That from them nothing could, at season fixed,
- 1.483.85
Be born, and arrive its prime and top of life.
- 1.483.86
For, lo, each thing is quicker marred than made;
- 1.483.87
And so whate'er the long infinitude
- 1.483.88
Of days and all fore-passed time would now
- 1.483.89
By this have broken and ruined and dissolved,
- 1.483.90
That same could ne'er in all remaining time
- 1.483.91
Be builded up for plenishing the world.
- 1.483.92
But mark: infallibly a fixed bound
- 1.483.93
Remaineth stablished 'gainst their breaking down;
- 1.483.94
Since we behold each thing soever renewed,
- 1.483.95
And unto all, their seasons, after their kind,
- 1.483.96
Wherein they arrive the flower of their age.
- 1.551.1
Again, if bounds have not been set against
- 1.551.2
The breaking down of this corporeal world,
- 1.551.3
Yet must all bodies of whatever things
- 1.551.4
Have still endured from everlasting time
- 1.551.5
Unto this present, as not yet assailed
- 1.551.6
By shocks of peril. But because the same
- 1.551.7
Are, to thy thinking, of a nature frail,
- 1.551.8
It ill accords that thus they could remain
- 1.551.9
(As thus they do) through everlasting time,
- 1.551.10
Vexed through the ages (as indeed they are)
- 1.551.11
By the innumerable blows of chance.
- 1.551.12
So in our programme of creation, mark
- 1.551.13
How 'tis that, though the bodies of all stuff
- 1.551.14
Are solid to the core, we yet explain
- 1.551.15
The ways whereby some things are fashioned soft-
- 1.551.16
Air, water, earth, and fiery exhalations-
- 1.551.17
And by what force they function and go on:
- 1.551.18
The fact is founded in the void of things.
- 1.551.19
But if the primal germs themselves be soft,
- 1.551.20
Reason cannot be brought to bear to show
- 1.551.21
The ways whereby may be created these
- 1.551.22
Great crags of basalt and the during iron;
- 1.551.23
For their whole nature will profoundly lack
- 1.551.24
The first foundations of a solid frame.
- 1.551.25
But powerful in old simplicity,
- 1.551.26
Abide the solid, the primeval germs;
- 1.551.27
And by their combinations more condensed,
- 1.551.28
All objects can be tightly knit and bound
- 1.551.29
And made to show unconquerable strength.
- 1.551.30
Again, since all things kind by kind obtain
- 1.551.31
Fixed bounds of growing and conserving life;
- 1.551.32
Since Nature hath inviolably decreed
- 1.551.33
What each can do, what each can never do;
- 1.551.34
Since naught is changed, but all things so abide
- 1.551.35
That ever the variegated birds reveal
- 1.551.36
The spots or stripes peculiar to their kind,
- 1.551.37
Spring after spring: thus surely all that is
- 1.551.38
Must be composed of matter immutable.
- 1.551.39
For if the primal germs in any wise
- 1.551.40
Were open to conquest and to change, 'twould be
- 1.551.41
Uncertain also what could come to birth
- 1.551.42
And what could not, and by what law to each
- 1.551.43
Its scope prescribed, its boundary stone that clings
- 1.551.44
So deep in Time. Nor could the generations
- 1.551.45
Kind after kind so often reproduce
- 1.551.46
The nature, habits, motions, ways of life,
- 1.551.47
Of their progenitors.
- 1.599.1
And then again,
- 1.599.2
Since there is ever an extreme bounding point
- 1.599.3
. . . . . .
- 1.599.4
Of that first body which our senses now
- 1.599.5
Cannot perceive: That bounding point indeed
- 1.599.6
Exists without all parts, a minimum
- 1.599.7
Of nature, nor was e'er a thing apart,
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