BOOK I

[Lucretius praises Epicurus as his inspiration.]

Whilst human kind
68Throughout the lands lay miserably crushed
69Before all eyes beneath Religion-who
70Would show her head along the region skies,
71Glowering on mortals with her hideous face-
72A Greek it was who first opposing dared
73Raised mortal eyes that terror to withstand,
74Whom nor the fame of Gods nor lightning's stroke
75Nor threatening thunder of the ominous sky
76Abashed; but rather chafed to angry zest
77His dauntless heart to be the first to rend
78The crossbars at the gates of Nature old.
79And thus his will and hardy wisdom won;
80And forward thus he fared afar, beyond
81The flaming ramparts of the world, until
82He wandered the unmeasurable All.
83Whence he to us, a conqueror, reports
84What things can rise to being, what cannot,
85And by what law to each its scope prescribed,
86Its boundary stone that clings so deep in Time.
87Wherefore Religion now is under foot,
88And us his victory now exalts to heaven.

[There is nothing to fear about death, because there is no afterlife.]

And there shall come the time when even thou,
114Forced by the soothsayer's terror-tales, shalt seek
115To break from us. Ah, many a dream even now
116Can they concoct to rout thy plans of life,
117And trouble all thy fortunes with base fears.
118I own with reason: for, if men but knew
119Some fixed end to ills, they would be strong
120By some device unconquered to withstand
121Religions and the menacings of seers.
122But now nor skill nor instrument is theirs,
123Since men must dread eternal pains in death.
124For what the soul may be they do not know,
125Whether 'tis born, or enter in at birth,
126And whether, snatched by death, it die with us . . . .
140Then be it ours with steady mind to clasp
141The purport of the skies--the law behind
142The wandering courses of the sun and moon;
143To scan the powers that speed all life below;
144But most to see with reasonable eyes
145Of what the mind, of what the soul is made,
146And what it is so terrible that breaks
147On us asleep, or waking in disease,
148Until we seem to mark and hear at hand
149Dead men whose bones earth bosomed long ago.

. . . .

[Everything is made of invisible atoms, which neither come into being nor pass out of it.]

And now, since I have taught that things cannot
306Be born from nothing, nor the same, when born,
307To nothing be recalled, doubt not my words,
308Because our eyes no primal germs perceive;
309For mark those bodies which, though known to be
310In this our world, are yet invisible . . . .

[What is not atoms is void.]

But yet creation's neither crammed nor blocked
376About by body: there's in things a void-
377Which to have known will serve thee many a turn,
378Nor will not leave thee wandering in doubt,
379Forever searching in the sum of all,
380And losing faith in these pronouncements mine.
381There's place intangible, a void and room.

[The void permits the atoms to move.]

For were it not, things could in nowise move;
383Since body's property to block and check
384Would work on all and at an times the same.
385Thus naught could evermore push forth and go,
386Since naught elsewhere would yield a starting place.
387But now through oceans, lands, and heights of heaven,
388By divers causes and in divers modes,
389Before our eyes we mark how much may move,
390Which, finding not a void, would fail deprived
391Of stir and motion; nay, would then have been
392Nowise begot at all, since matter, then,
393Had staid at rest, its parts together crammed.

[The void permits atoms to mingle.]

Then too, however solid objects seem,
395They yet are formed of matter mixed with void:
396In rocks and caves the watery moisture seeps,
397And beady drops stand out like plenteous tears;
398And food finds way through every frame that lives;
399The trees increase and yield the season's fruit
400Because their food throughout the whole is poured,
401Even from the deepest roots, through trunks and boughs;
402And voices pass the solid walls and fly
403Reverberant through shut doorways of a house;
404And stiffening frost seeps inward to our bones.
405Which but for voids for bodies to go through
406'Tis clear could happen in nowise at all.

[The void explains why things of uniform size differ in weight.]

Again, why see we among objects some
408Of heavier weight, but of no bulkier size?
409Indeed, if in a ball of wool there be
410As much of body as in lump of lead,
411The two should weigh alike, since body tends
412To load things downward, while the void abides,
413By contrary nature, the imponderable.
414Therefore, an object just as large but lighter
415Declares infallibly its more of void;
416Even as the heavier more of matter shows,
417And how much less of vacant room inside.
418That which we're seeking with sagacious quest
419Exists, infallibly, commixed with things-
420The void, the invisible inane. . . .

[Nothing exists per se except atoms and the void.]

But, now again to weave the tale begun,
480All nature, then, as self-sustained, consists
481Of twain of things: of bodies and of void
482In which they're set, and where they're moved around.

[Everything that is neither atom nor void is either a property or an accident of them.]

A property is that which not at all
517Can be disjoined and severed from a thing
518Without a fatal dissolution: such,
519Weight to the rocks, heat to the fire, and flow
520To the wide waters, touch to corporal things,
521Intangibility to the viewless void.
522But state of slavery, pauperhood, and wealth,
523Freedom, and war, and concord, and all else
524Which come and go whilst nature stands the same,
525We're wont, and rightly, to call accidents.
526Even time exists not of itself; but sense
527Reads out of things what happened long ago,
528What presses now, and what shall follow after:
529No man, we must admit, feels time itself,
530Disjoined from motion and repose of things.

[Atoms are solid and indestructible.]

Bodies, again,
557Are partly primal germs of things, and partly
558Unions deriving from the primal germs.
559And those which are the primal germs of things
560No power can quench; for in the end they conquer
561By their own solidness; though hard it be
562To think that aught in things has solid frame . . . .

[All bodies are composed of atoms--not of the traditional four elements (earth, air, fire, and water).]

Thus whosoe'er have held the stuff of things
829To be but fire, and out of fire the sum,
830And whosoever have constituted air
831As first beginning of begotten things,
832And all whoever have held that of itself
833Water alone contrives things, or that earth
834Createth all and changes things anew
835To divers natures, mightily they seem
836A long way to have wandered from the truth.

Add, too, whoever make the primal stuff
838Twofold, by joining air to fire, and earth
839To water; add who deem that things can grow
840Out of the four- fire, earth, and breath, and rain . . .

[The universe is infinite.]

But since I've taught that bodies of matter, made
1130Completely solid, hither and thither fly
1131Forevermore unconquered through all time,
1132Now come, and whether to the sum of them
1133There be a limit or be none, for thee
1134Let us unfold; likewise what has been found
1135To be the wide inane, or room, or space
1136Wherein all things soever do go on,
1137Let us examine if it finite be
1138All and entire, or reach unmeasured round
1139And downward an illimitable profound.

Thus, then, the All that is is limited
1141In no one region of its onward paths,
1142For then 'tmust have forever its beyond.
1143And a beyond 'tis seen can never be
1144For aught, unless still further on there be
1145A somewhat somewhere that may bound the same-
1146So that the thing be seen still on to where
1147The nature of sensation of that thing
1148Can follow it no longer. Now because
1149Confess we must there's naught beside the sum,
1150There's no beyond, and so it lacks all end.
1151It matters nothing where thou post thyself,
1152In whatsoever regions of the same;
1153Even any place a man has set him down
1154Still leaves about him the unbounded all
1155Outward in all directions . . . .

[Things do not press toward the center.]

And in these problems, shrink, my Memmius, far
1271From yielding faith to that notorious talk:
1272That all things inward to the center press;
1273And thus the nature of the world stands firm
1274With never blows from outward, nor can be
1275Nowhere disparted- since all height and depth
1276Have always inward to the center pressed
1277(If thou art ready to believe that aught
1278Itself can rest upon itself); or that
1279The ponderous bodies which be under earth
1280Do all press upwards and do come to rest
1281Upon the earth, in some way upside down,
1282Like to those images of things we see
1283At present through the waters. They contend,
1284With like procedure, that all breathing things
1285Head downward roam about, and yet cannot
1286Tumble from earth to realms of sky below,
1287No more than these our bodies wing away
1288Spontaneously to vaults of sky above;
1289That, when those creatures look upon the sun,
1290We view the constellations of the night;
1291And that with us the seasons of the sky
1292They thus alternately divide, and thus
1293Do pass the night coequal to our days,
1294But a vain error has given these dreams to fools,
1295Which they've embraced with reasoning perverse
1296For center none can be where world is still
1297Boundless, nor yet, if now a center were,
1298Could aught take there a fixed position more
1299Than for some other cause 'tmight be dislodged.
1300For all of room and space we call the void
1301Must both through center and non-center yield
1302Alike to weights where'er their motions tend.
1303Nor is there any place, where, when they've come,
1304Bodies can be at standstill in the void,
1305Deprived of force of weight; nor yet may void
1306Furnish support to any,- nay, it must,
1307True to its bent of nature, still give way.
1308Thus in such manner not at all can things
1309Be held in union, as if overcome
1310By craving for a center. . . .