De Rerum Natura

Yet formed with equal function, equal force

In every bodily part- a fact thou mayst,

However dull thy wits, well learn from this:

The horse, when his three years have rolled away,

Flowers in his prime of vigour; but the boy

Not so, for oft even then he gropes in sleep

After the milky nipples of the breasts,

An infant still. And later, when at last

The lusty powers of horses and stout limbs,

Now weak through lapsing life, do fail with age,

Lo, only then doth youth with flowering years

Begin for boys, and clothe their ruddy cheeks

With the soft down. So never deem, percase,

That from a man and from the seed of horse,

The beast of draft, can Centaurs be composed

Or e'er exist alive, nor Scyllas be-

The half-fish bodies girdled with mad dogs-

Nor others of this sort, in whom we mark

Members discordant each with each; for ne'er

At one same time they reach their flower of age

Or gain and lose full vigour of their frame,

And never burn with one same lust of love,

And never in their habits they agree,

Nor find the same foods equally delightsome-

Sooth, as one oft may see the bearded goats

Batten upon the hemlock which to man

Is violent poison. Once again, since flame

Is wont to scorch and burn the tawny bulks

Of the great lions as much as other kinds

Of flesh and blood existing in the lands,

How could it be that she, Chimaera lone,

With triple body- fore, a lion she;

And aft, a dragon; and betwixt, a goat-

Might at the mouth from out the body belch

Infuriate flame? Wherefore, the man who feigns

Such beings could have been engendered

When earth was new and the young sky was fresh

(Basing his empty argument on new)

May babble with like reason many whims

Into our ears: he'll say, perhaps, that then

Rivers of gold through every landscape flowed,

That trees were wont with precious stones to flower,

Or that in those far aeons man was born

With such gigantic length and lift of limbs

As to be able, based upon his feet,

Deep oceans to bestride or with his hands

To whirl the firmament around his head.

For though in earth were many seeds of things

In the old time when this telluric world

First poured the breeds of animals abroad,

Still that is nothing of a sign that then

Such hybrid creatures could have been begot

And limbs of all beasts heterogeneous

Have been together knit; because, indeed,

The divers kinds of grasses and the grains

And the delightsome trees- which even now

Spring up abounding from within the earth-

Can still ne'er be begotten with their stems

Begrafted into one; but each sole thing

Proceeds according to its proper wont

And all conserve their own distinctions based

In nature's fixed decree.

But mortal man

Was then far hardier in the old champaign,

As well he should be, since a hardier earth

Had him begotten; builded too was he

Of bigger and more solid bones within,

And knit with stalwart sinews through the flesh,

Nor easily seized by either heat or cold,

Or alien food or any ail or irk.

And whilst so many lustrums of the sun

Rolled on across the sky, men led a life

After the roving habit of wild beasts.

Not then were sturdy guiders of curved ploughs,

And none knew then to work the fields with iron,

Or plant young shoots in holes of delved loam,

Or lop with hooked knives from off high trees

The boughs of yester-year. What sun and rains

To them had given, what earth of own accord

Created then, was boon enough to glad

Their simple hearts. Mid acorn-laden oaks

Would they refresh their bodies for the nonce;

And the wild berries of the arbute-tree,

Which now thou seest to ripen purple-red

In winter time, the old telluric soil

Would bear then more abundant and more big.

And many coarse foods, too, in long ago

The blooming freshness of the rank young world

Produced, enough for those poor wretches there.

And rivers and springs would summon them of old

To slake the thirst, as now from the great hills

The water's down-rush calls aloud and far

The thirsty generations of the wild.

So, too, they sought the grottos of the Nymphs-

The woodland haunts discovered as they ranged-

From forth of which they knew that gliding rills

With gush and splash abounding laved the rocks,

The dripping rocks, and trickled from above

Over the verdant moss; and here and there

Welled up and burst across the open flats.