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Book 2
On the Nature of Things · 62 chapters- 1PROEM
- 2Therefore we see that our corporeal life
- 3Save then perchance, when thou beholdest forth
- 4This terror then, this darkness of the mind,
- 5Forever is replenished, and we live
- 6Space has no bound nor measure, and extends
- 7The sun's light and the rays, let in, pour down
- 8And then those bodies built of unions small
- 9With the fresh dew, is calling, and the lambs,
- 10How suddenly the risen sun is wont
- 11To see the law whereby each thing goes on.
- 12To prove for thee this too: nothing corporeal
- 13The weight within them strive to draw them down.
- 14Nature would never have created aught.
- 15Motions oblique, and fact refute us there.
- 16Of horses cannot forward break as soon
- 17Strong to combat, strong to withstand the same?--
- 18For naught exists outside, to which can flee
- 19Through trackless woods--Go, take which one thou wilt,
- 20Do know their horned dams, and butting lambs
- 21And why?--unless those bodies of light should be
- 22Consists of elements as smooth as song
- 23Touch is indeed the body's only sense--
- 24To suck the poppy-seeds from palm of hand
- 25That thus they can, without together cleaving,
- 26Ergo, an augmentation of its frame
- 27Since 'tis not so, but unto things are given
- 28Showing in verse how corpuscles of stuff,
- 29In such vast ocean of matter and tumult strange?--
- 30Nor can those motions that bring death prevail
- 31Of elements. And, chief of all, the earth
- 32With that same token, to-day is carried forth,
- 33With coin of brass and silver, gifting her
- 34A tale, however beautifully wrought,
- 35All live their lives with face and form unlike,
- 36A smell of scorching enters in our frame
- 37How, contrariwise, nature upon the ground
- 38There are, yet they, combined among themselves,
- 39The light of sun, yet recognise by touch
- 40And vary (by reason that ever it matters much
- 41(Or in whatever one pure sheen thou wilt)
- 42Now, by a strange sensation it becomes
- 43Of any single varied dye thou wilt.
- 44Not any odour from their proper bodies.
- 45All things return to nothing utterly.
- 46But now, what is't that strikes thy sceptic mind,
- 47When soft they make them; for all sense is linked
- 48Precisely as men, and cattle, and wild beasts,
- 49In combination, and, in proper mode,
- 50Collect their powers of thought and turn again
- 51And have the cunning hardihood to say
- 52To all is that same father, from whom earth,
- 53And straightway now a ruin, inheres at rest
- 54The moon, the radiance of the splendour-sun:
- 55The very thing of itself declares aloud,
- 56Besides, when matter abundant
- 57That earth, sun, moon, and ocean, and all else,
- 58In ruins his own temples, and to rave,
- 59This is the point where life for each thing ends;
- 60Thus, fairly, all things perish, when with ebbing
- 61Besides, herself of own accord, she first
- 62untitled