Of the Nature of Things. T. Lucretius Carus

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ 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

СКАЧАТЬ