Of the Nature of Things. T. Lucretius Carus

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СКАЧАТЬ 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 СКАЧАТЬ