On the Nature of Things - Тит Лукреций Кар

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Whereas if flame, already fashioned, lay

           Stored up within the forests, then the fires

           Could not for any time be kept unseen,

           But would be laying all the wildwood waste

           And burning all the boscage. Now dost see

           (Even as we said a little space above)

           How mightily it matters with what others,

           In what positions these same primal germs

           Are bound together? And what motions, too,

           They give and get among themselves? how, hence,

           The same, if altered 'mongst themselves, can body

           Both igneous and ligneous objects forth—

           Precisely as these words themselves are made

           By somewhat altering their elements,

           Although we mark with name indeed distinct

           The igneous from the ligneous. Once again,

           If thou suppose whatever thou beholdest,

           Among all visible objects, cannot be,

           Unless thou feign bodies of matter endowed

           With a like nature,—by thy vain device

           For thee will perish all the germs of things:

           'Twill come to pass they'll laugh aloud, like men,

           Shaken asunder by a spasm of mirth,

           Or moisten with salty tear-drops cheeks and chins.

      THE INFINITY OF THE UNIVERSE

           Now learn of what remains! More keenly hear!

           And for myself, my mind is not deceived

           How dark it is: But the large hope of praise

           Hath strook with pointed thyrsus through my heart;

           On the same hour hath strook into my breast

           Sweet love of the Muses, wherewith now instinct,

           I wander afield, thriving in sturdy thought,

           Through unpathed haunts of the Pierides,

           Trodden by step of none before. I joy

           To come on undefiled fountains there,

           To drain them deep; I joy to pluck new flowers,

           To seek for this my head a signal crown

           From regions where the Muses never yet

           Have garlanded the temples of a man:

           First, since I teach concerning mighty things,

           And go right on to loose from round the mind

           The tightened coils of dread religion;

           Next, since, concerning themes so dark, I frame

           Songs so pellucid, touching all throughout

           Even with the Muses' charm—which, as 'twould seem,

           Is not without a reasonable ground:

           But as physicians, when they seek to give

           Young boys the nauseous wormwood, first do touch

           The brim around the cup with the sweet juice

           And yellow of the honey, in order that

           The thoughtless age of boyhood be cajoled

           As far as the lips, and meanwhile swallow down

           The wormwood's bitter draught, and, though befooled,

           Be yet not merely duped, but rather thus

           Grow strong again with recreated health:

           So now I too (since this my doctrine seems

           In general somewhat woeful unto those

           Who've had it not in hand, and since the crowd

           Starts back from it in horror) have desired

           To expound our doctrine unto thee in song

           Soft-speaking and Pierian, and, as 'twere,

           To touch it with sweet honey of the Muse—

           If by such method haply I might hold

           The mind of thee upon these lines of ours,

           Till thou see through the nature of all things,

           And how exists the interwoven frame.

           But since I've taught that bodies of matter, made

           Completely solid, hither and thither fly

           Forevermore unconquered through all time,

           Now come, and whether to the sum of them

           There be a limit or be none, for thee

           Let us unfold; likewise what has been found

           To be the wide inane, or room, or space

           Wherein all things soever do go on,

           Let us examine if it finite be

           All and entire, or reach unmeasured round

           And downward an illimitable profound.

           Thus, then, the All that is is limited

           In no one region of its onward paths,

           For then 'tmust have forever its beyond.

           And a beyond 'tis seen can never be

           For aught, unless still further on there be

           A somewhat somewhere that may bound the same—

           So that the thing be seen still on to where

           The nature of sensation of that thing

           Can follow it no longer. Now because

           Confess we must there's naught beside the sum,

           There's no beyond, and so it lacks all end.

           It matters nothing where thou post thyself,

           In whatsoever regions of the same;

           Even any place a man has set him down

           Still leaves about him the unbounded all

           Outward in all directions; or, supposing

           A moment the all of space finite to be,

           If some one farthest traveller runs forth

           Unto the extreme coasts and throws ahead

           A flying spear, is't then thy wish to think

           It goes, hurled off amain, to where 'twas sent

           And shoots afar, or that some object there

           Can thwart and stop it? For the one or other

           Thou must admit and take. Either of which

           Shuts

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