Yet Ennius too in everlasting verse Proclaims those vaults of Acheron to be, Though thence, he said, nor souls nor bodies fare, But only phantom figures, strangely wan, And tells how once from out those regions rose Old Homer's ghost to him and shed salt tears And with his words unfolded Nature's source.
Then be it ours with steady mind to clasp The purport of the skies- the law behind The wandering courses of the sun and moon;To scan the powers that speed all life below;But most to see with reasonable eyes Of what the mind, of what the soul is made, And what it is so terrible that breaks On us asleep, or waking in disease, Until we seem to mark and hear at hand Dead men whose bones earth bosomed long ago.
SUBSTANCE IS ETERNAL
This terror, then, this darkness of the mind, Not sunrise with its flaring spokes of light, Nor glittering arrows of morning can disperse, But only Nature's aspect and her law, Which, teaching us, hath this exordium:
Nothing from nothing ever yet was born.
Fear holds dominion over mortality Only because, seeing in land and sky So much the cause whereof no wise they know, Men think Divinities are working there.
Meantime, when once we know from nothing still Nothing can be create, we shall divine More clearly what we seek: those elements From which alone all things created are, And how accomplished by no tool of Gods.
Suppose all sprang from all things: any kind Might take its origin from any thing, No fixed seed required. Men from the sea Might rise, and from the land the scaly breed, And, fowl full fledged come bursting from the sky;The horned cattle, the herds and all the wild Would haunt with varying offspring tilth and waste;Nor would the same fruits keep their olden trees, But each might grow from any stock or limb By chance and change. Indeed, and were there not For each its procreant atoms, could things have Each its unalterable mother old?
But, since produced from fixed seeds are all, Each birth goes forth upon the shores of light From its own stuff, from its own primal bodies.
And all from all cannot become, because In each resides a secret power its own.
Again, why see we lavished o'er the lands At spring the rose, at summer heat the corn, The vines that mellow when the autumn lures, If not because the fixed seeds of things At their own season must together stream, And new creations only be revealed When the due times arrive and pregnant earth Safely may give unto the shores of light Her tender progenies? But if from naught Were their becoming, they would spring abroad Suddenly, unforeseen, in alien months, With no primordial germs, to be preserved From procreant unions at an adverse hour.
Nor on the mingling of the living seeds Would space be needed for the growth of things Were life an increment of nothing: then The tiny babe forthwith would walk a man, And from the turf would leap a branching tree-Wonders unheard of; for, by Nature, each Slowly increases from its lawful seed, And through that increase shall conserve its kind.
Whence take the proof that things enlarge and feed From out their proper matter. Thus it comes That earth, without her seasons of fixed rains, Could bear no produce such as makes us glad, And whatsoever lives, if shut from food, Prolongs its kind and guards its life no more.
Thus easier 'tis to hold that many things Have primal bodies in common (as we see The single letters common to many words)Than aught exists without its origins.
Moreover, why should Nature not prepare Men of a bulk to ford the seas afoot, Or rend the mighty mountains with their hands, Or conquer Time with length of days, if not Because for all begotten things abides The changeless stuff, and what from that may spring Is fixed forevermore? Lastly we see How far the tilled surpass the fields untilled And to the labour of our hands return Their more abounding crops; there are indeed Within the earth primordial germs of things, Which, as the ploughshare turns the fruitful clods And kneads the mould, we quicken into birth.
Else would ye mark, without all toil of ours, Spontaneous generations, fairer forms.
Confess then, naught from nothing can become, Since all must have their seeds, wherefrom to grow, Wherefrom to reach the gentle fields of air.
Hence too it comes that Nature all dissolves Into their primal bodies again, and naught Perishes ever to annihilation.
For, were aught mortal in its every part, Before our eyes it might be snatched away Unto destruction; since no force were needed To sunder its members and undo its bands.
Whereas, of truth, because all things exist, With seed imperishable, Nature allows Destruction nor collapse of aught, until Some outward force may shatter by a blow, Or inward craft, entering its hollow cells, Dissolve it down. And more than this, if Time, That wastes with eld the works along the world, Destroy entire, consuming matter all, Whence then may Venus back to light of life Restore the generations kind by kind?
Or how, when thus restored, may daedal Earth Foster and plenish with her ancient food, Which, kind by kind, she offers unto each?
Whence may the water-springs, beneath the sea, Or inland rivers, far and wide away, Keep the unfathomable ocean full?
And out of what does Ether feed the stars?
For lapsed years and infinite age must else Have eat all shapes of mortal stock away:
But be it the Long Ago contained those germs, By which this sum of things recruited lives, Those same infallibly can never die, Nor nothing to nothing evermore return.
And, too, the selfsame power might end alike All things, were they not still together held By matter eternal, shackled through its parts, Now more, now less. A touch might be enough To cause destruction. For the slightest force Would loose the weft of things wherein no part Were of imperishable stock. But now Because the fastenings of primordial parts Are put together diversely and stuff Is everlasting, things abide the same Unhurt and sure, until some power comes on Strong to destroy the warp and woof of each:
