De Rerum Natura

The age of the young within (that sought the air

And fled earth's damps) had burst these wombs, O then

Would Nature thither turn the pores of earth

And make her spurt from open veins a juice

Like unto milk; even as a woman now

Is filled, at child-bearing, with the sweet milk,

Because all that swift stream of aliment

Is thither turned unto the mother-breasts.

There earth would furnish to the children food;

Warmth was their swaddling cloth, the grass their bed

Abounding in soft down. Earth's newness then

Would rouse no dour spells of the bitter cold,

Nor extreme heats nor winds of mighty powers-

For all things grow and gather strength through time

In like proportions; and then earth was young.

Wherefore, again, again, how merited

Is that adopted name of Earth- The Mother!-

Since she herself begat the human race,

And at one well-nigh fixed time brought forth

Each breast that ranges raving round about

Upon the mighty mountains and all birds

Aerial with many a varied shape.

But, lo, because her bearing years must end,

She ceased, like to a woman worn by eld.

For lapsing aeons change the nature of

The whole wide world, and all things needs must take

One status after other, nor aught persists

Forever like itself. All things depart;

Nature she changeth all, compelleth all

To transformation. Lo, this moulders down,

A-slack with weary eld, and that, again,

Prospers in glory, issuing from contempt.

In suchwise, then, the lapsing aeons change

The nature of the whole wide world, and earth

Taketh one status after other. And what

She bore of old, she now can bear no longer,

And what she never bore, she can to-day.

In those days also the telluric world

Strove to beget the monsters that upsprung

With their astounding visages and limbs-

The Man-woman- a thing betwixt the twain,

Yet neither, and from either sex remote-

Some gruesome Boggles orphaned of the feet,

Some widowed of the hands, dumb Horrors too

Without a mouth, or blind Ones of no eye,

Or Bulks all shackled by their legs and arms

Cleaving unto the body fore and aft,

Thuswise, that never could they do or go,

Nor shun disaster, nor take the good they would.

And other prodigies and monsters earth

Was then begetting of this sort- in vain,

Since Nature banned with horror their increase,

And powerless were they to reach unto

The coveted flower of fair maturity,

Or to find aliment, or to intertwine

In works of Venus. For we see there must

Concur in life conditions manifold,

If life is ever by begetting life

To forge the generations one by one:

First, foods must be; and, next, a path whereby

The seeds of impregnation in the frame

May ooze, released from the members all;

Last, the possession of those instruments

Whereby the male with female can unite,

The one with other in mutual ravishments.

And in the ages after monsters died,

Perforce there perished many a stock, unable

By propagation to forge a progeny.

For whatsoever creatures thou beholdest

Breathing the breath of life, the same have been

Even from their earliest age preserved alive

By cunning, or by valour, or at least

By speed of foot or wing. And many a stock

Remaineth yet, because of use to man,

And so committed to man's guardianship.

Valour hath saved alive fierce lion-breeds

And many another terrorizing race,

Cunning the foxes, flight the antlered stags.

Light-sleeping dogs with faithful heart in breast,

However, and every kind begot from seed

Of beasts of draft, as, too, the woolly flocks

And horned cattle, all, my Memmius,

Have been committed to guardianship of men.

For anxiously they fled the savage beasts,

And peace they sought and their abundant foods,

Obtained with never labours of their own,

Which we secure to them as fit rewards

For their good service. But those beasts to whom

Nature has granted naught of these same things-

Beasts quite unfit by own free will to thrive

And vain for any service unto us

In thanks for which we should permit their kind

To feed and be in our protection safe-

Those, of a truth, were wont to be exposed,

Enshackled in the gruesome bonds of doom,

As prey and booty for the rest, until

Nature reduced that stock to utter death.

But Centaurs ne'er have been, nor can there be

Creatures of twofold stock and double frame,

Compact of members alien in kind,