De Rerum Natura

The everlasting, why, ere Theban war

And obsequies of Troy, have other bards

Not also chanted other high affairs?

Whither have sunk so oft so many deeds

Of heroes? Why do those deeds live no more,

Ingrafted in eternal monuments

Of glory? Verily, I guess, because

The Sum is new, and of a recent date

The nature of our universe, and had

Not long ago its own exordium.

Wherefore, even now some arts are being still

Refined, still increased: now unto ships

Is being added many a new device;

And but the other day musician-folk

Gave birth to melic sounds of organing;

And, then, this nature, this account of things

Hath been discovered latterly, and I

Myself have been discovered only now,

As first among the first, able to turn

The same into ancestral Roman speech.

Yet if, percase, thou deemest that ere this

Existed all things even the same, but that

Perished the cycles of the human race

In fiery exhalations, or cities fell

By some tremendous quaking of the world,

Or rivers in fury, after constant rains,

Had plunged forth across the lands of earth

And whelmed the towns- then, all the more must thou

Confess, defeated by the argument,

That there shall be annihilation too

Of lands and sky. For at a time when things

Were being taxed by maladies so great,

And so great perils, if some cause more fell

Had then assailed them, far and wide they would

Have gone to disaster and supreme collapse.

And by no other reasoning are we

Seen to be mortal, save that all of us

Sicken in turn with those same maladies

With which have sickened in the past those men

Whom nature hath removed from life.

Again,

Whatever abides eternal must indeed

Either repel all strokes, because 'tis made

Of solid body, and permit no entrance

Of aught with power to sunder from within

The parts compact- as are those seeds of stuff

Whose nature we've exhibited before;

Or else be able to endure through time

For this: because they are from blows exempt,

As is the void, the which abides untouched,

Unsmit by any stroke; or else because

There is no room around, whereto things can,

As 'twere, depart in dissolution all,-

Even as the sum of sums eternal is,

Without or place beyond whereto things may

Asunder fly, or bodies which can smite,

And thus dissolve them by the blows of might.

But not of solid body, as I've shown,

Exists the nature of the world, because

In things is intermingled there a void;

Nor is the world yet as the void, nor are,

Moreover, bodies lacking which, percase,

Rising from out the infinite, can fell

With fury-whirlwinds all this sum of things,

Or bring upon them other cataclysm

Of peril strange; and yonder, too, abides

The infinite space and the profound abyss-

Whereinto, lo, the ramparts of the world

Can yet be shivered. Or some other power

Can pound upon them till they perish all.

Thus is the door of doom, O nowise barred

Against the sky, against the sun and earth

And deep-sea waters, but wide open stands

And gloats upon them, monstrous and agape.

Wherefore, again, 'tis needful to confess

That these same things are born in time; for things

Which are of mortal body could indeed

Never from infinite past until to-day

Have spurned the multitudinous assaults

Of the immeasurable aeons old.

Again, since battle so fiercely one with other

The four most mighty members the world,

Aroused in an all unholy war,

Seest not that there may be for them an end

Of the long strife?- Or when the skiey sun

And all the heat have won dominion o'er

The sucked-up waters all?- And this they try

Still to accomplish, though as yet they fail,-

For so aboundingly the streams supply

New store of waters that 'tis rather they

Who menace the world with inundations vast

From forth the unplumbed chasms of the sea.

But vain- since winds (that over-sweep amain)

And skiey sun (that with his rays dissolves)

Do minish the level seas and trust their power

To dry up all, before the waters can

Arrive at the end of their endeavouring.

Breathing such vasty warfare, they contend

In balanced strife the one with other still

Concerning mighty issues,- though indeed