On the Nature of Things · Lucretius

Book V: The World Is Not Eternal

23 of 31 · 10 min of reading

And first,

Since body of earth and water, air's light breath,

And fiery exhalations (of which four

This sum of things is seen to be compact)

So all have birth and perishable frame,

Thus the whole nature of the world itself

Must be conceived as perishable too.

For, verily, those things of which we see

The parts and members to have birth in time

And perishable shapes, those same we mark

To be invariably born in time

And born to die. And therefore when I see

The mightiest members and the parts of this

Our world consumed and begot again,

'Tis mine to know that also sky above

And earth beneath began of old in time

And shall in time go under to disaster.

And lest in these affairs thou deemest me

To have seized upon this point by sleight to serve

My own caprice--because I have assumed

That earth and fire are mortal things indeed,

And have not doubted water and the air

Both perish too and have affirmed the same

To be again begotten and wax big--

Mark well the argument: in first place, lo,

Some certain parts of earth, grievously parched

By unremitting suns, and trampled on

By a vast throng of feet, exhale abroad

A powdery haze and flying clouds of dust,

Which the stout winds disperse in the whole air.

A part, moreover, of her sod and soil

Is summoned to inundation by the rains;

And rivers graze and gouge the banks away.

Besides, whatever takes a part its own

In fostering and increasing [aught]...

Is rendered back; and since, beyond a doubt,

Earth, the all-mother, is beheld to be

Likewise the common sepulchre of things,

Therefore thou seest her minished of her plenty,

And then again augmented with new growth.

And for the rest, that sea, and streams, and springs

Forever with new waters overflow,

And that perennially the fluids well,

Needeth no words--the mighty flux itself

Of multitudinous waters round about

Declareth this. But whatso water first

Streams up is ever straightway carried off,

And thus it comes to pass that all in all

There is no overflow; in part because

The burly winds (that over-sweep amain)

And skiey sun (that with his rays dissolves)

Do minish the level seas; in part because

The water is diffused underground

Through all the lands. The brine is filtered off,

And then the liquid stuff seeps back again

And all regathers at the river-heads,

Whence in fresh-water currents on it flows

Over the lands, adown the channels which

Were cleft erstwhile and erstwhile bore along

The liquid-footed floods.

Now, then, of air

I'll speak, which hour by hour in all its body

Is changed innumerably. For whatso'er

Streams up in dust or vapour off of things,

The same is all and always borne along

Into the mighty ocean of the air;

And did not air in turn restore to things

Bodies, and thus recruit them as they stream,

All things by this time had resolved been

And changed into air. Therefore it never

Ceases to be engendered off of things

And to return to things, since verily

In constant flux do all things stream.

Likewise,

The abounding well-spring of the liquid light,

The ethereal sun, doth flood the heaven o'er

With constant flux of radiance ever new,

And with fresh light supplies the place of light,

Upon the instant. For whatever effulgence

Hath first streamed off, no matter where it falls,

Is lost unto the sun. And this 'tis thine

To know from these examples: soon as clouds

Have first begun to under-pass the sun,

And, as it were, to rend the rays of light

In twain, at once the lower part of them

Is lost entire, and earth is overcast

Where'er the thunderheads are rolled along--

So know thou mayst that things forever need

A fresh replenishment of gleam and glow,

And each effulgence, foremost flashed forth,

Perisheth one by one. Nor otherwise

Can things be seen in sunlight, lest alway

The fountain-head of light supply new light.

Indeed your earthly beacons of the night,

The hanging lampions and the torches, bright

With darting gleams and dense with livid soot,

Do hurry in like manner to supply

With ministering heat new light amain;

Are all alive to quiver with their fires,--

Are so alive, that thus the light ne'er leaves

The spots it shines on, as if rent in twain:

So speedily is its destruction veiled

By the swift birth of flame from all the fires.

Thus, then, we must suppose that sun and moon

And stars dart forth their light from under-births

Ever and ever new, and whatso flames

First rise do perish always one by one--

Lest, haply, thou shouldst think they each endure

Inviolable.

Again, perceivest not

How stones are also conquered by Time?--

Not how the lofty towers ruin down,

And boulders crumble?--Not how shrines of gods

And idols crack outworn?--Nor how indeed

The holy Influence hath yet no power

There to postpone the Terminals of Fate,

Or headway make 'gainst Nature's fixed decrees?

Again, behold we not the monuments

Of heroes, now in ruins, asking us,

In their turn likewise, if we don't believe

They also age with eld? Behold we not

The rended basalt ruining amain

Down from the lofty mountains, powerless

To dure and dree the mighty forces there

Of finite time?--for they would never fall

Rended asudden, if from infinite Past

They had prevailed against all engin'ries

Of the assaulting aeons, with no crash.

Again, now look at This, which round, above,

Contains the whole earth in its one embrace:

If from itself it procreates all things--

As some men tell--and takes them to itself

When once destroyed, entirely must it be

Of mortal birth and body; for whate'er

From out itself giveth to other things

Increase and food, the same perforce must be

Minished, and then recruited when it takes

Things back into itself.

Besides all this,

If there had been no origin-in-birth

Of lands and sky, and they had ever been

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.

gain,

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

The fire was once the more victorious,

And once--as goes the tale--the water won

A kingdom in the fields. For fire o'ermastered

And licked up many things and burnt away,

What time the impetuous horses of the Sun

Snatched Phaethon headlong from his skiey road

Down the whole ether and over all the lands.

But the omnipotent Father in keen wrath

Then with the sudden smite of thunderbolt

Did hurl the mighty-minded hero off

Those horses to the earth. And Sol, his sire,

Meeting him as he fell, caught up in hand

The ever-blazing lampion of the world,

And drave together the pell-mell horses there

And yoked them all a-tremble, and amain,

Steering them over along their own old road,

Restored the cosmos,--as forsooth we hear

From songs of ancient poets of the Greeks--

A tale too far away from truth, meseems.

For fire can win when from the infinite

Has risen a larger throng of particles

Of fiery stuff; and then its powers succumb,

Somehow subdued again, or else at last

It shrivels in torrid atmospheres the world.

And whilom water too began to win--

As goes the story--when it overwhelmed

The lives of men with billows; and thereafter,

When all that force of water-stuff which forth

From out the infinite had risen up

Did now retire, as somehow turned aside,

The rain-storms stopped, and streams their fury checked.

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End of part 23 of 31