← All books
Book 1
On the Nature of Things · 55 chapters- 1PROEM
- 2Kind after kind. And since 'tis thou alone
- 3With thought untroubled, nor mid such events
- 4I know how hard it is in Latian verse
- 5An impious road to realms of thought profane;
- 6To break from us. Ah, many a dream even now
- 7Then be it ours with steady mind to clasp
- 8And how accomplished by no tool of Gods.
- 9Safely may give unto the shores of light
- 10Men of a bulk to ford the seas afoot,
- 11With seed imperishable, Nature allows
- 12Now more, now less. A touch might be enough
- 13Perishes utterly, since Nature ever
- 14Nor can the solid bridges bide the shock
- 15Nor how by heat off-driven. Thus we know,
- 16About by body: there's in things a void--
- 17Even from the deepest roots, through trunks and boughs;
- 18Of the swift scaly creatures somehow give,
- 19Nor can air be condensed in such a wise;
- 20Hath put within thine ears the stores of proofs
- 21On any side, 'twill be naught else but that
- 22Even time exists not of itself; but sense
- 23As body is, nor has like name with void;
- 24I disentangle how there still exist
- 25The world that is were but a vacant void.
- 26Must have an immortality of frame.
- 27Wherein they arrive the flower of their age.
- 28But powerful in old simplicity,
- 29*****
- 30None: for however infinite the sum,
- 31Who search for truth. For dolts are ever prone
- 32Swiftly from out itself not anything--
- 33Would still in any case be only fire.
- 34The fire and still allow all else to be?--
- 35As with its force anew to vomit fires,
- 36As air, dew, fire, earth, animals, and grains,
- 37Of things, more than all things themselves be thought,
- 38The moisture first, then air thereafter heat--
- 39Under the soak of bulking thunderheads,
- 40Can bring about by change of order alone.
- 41And travail and perish equally with those,
- 42Transfer the argument, and thou may'st use
- 43But since fact teaches this is not the case,
- 44By somewhat altering their elements,
- 45Have garlanded the temples of a man:
- 46The mind of thee upon these lines of ours,
- 47It matters nothing where thou post thyself,
- 48The flight itself. Besides, were all the space
- 49Such huge abundance spreads for things around--
- 50Neither by counsel did the primal germs
- 51Losing its body, when deprived of food:
- 52Have always inward to the centre pressed
- 53Must both through centre and non-centre yield
- 54For each were nutriment...
- 55To hinder thy gaze on nature's Farthest-forth.