ON THE NATURE OF THINGS
by Lucretius

Our starting-point shall be this principle:
Nothing at all is ever born from nothing
By the gods’ will. Ah, but men's minds are frightened
Because they see, on earth and in the heaven,
Many events whose causes are to them
Impossible to fix; so, they suppose,
The gods' will is the reason. As for us,
Once we have seen that Nothing comes from nothing,
We shall perceive with greater clarity
What we are looking for, whence each thing comes,
How things are caused, and no "gods' will" about it.

Now, if things come from nothing, all things could
Produce all kinds of things; nothing would need
Seed of its own. Men would burst out of the sea,
And fish and birds from earth, and, wild or tame,
All kinds of beasts, of dubious origin,
Inhabit deserts and the greener fields.
Nor would the same trees bear, in constancy,
The same fruit always, but, as like as not,
Oranges would appear on apple-boughs.
If things were not produced after their kind,
Each from its own determined particles,
How could we trace the substance to the source?
But now, since all created things have come
From their own definite kinds of seed, they move
From their beginnings toward the shores of light
Out of their primal motes. Impossible
That all things issue everywhence; each kind
Of substance has its own inherent power,
Its own capacity. Does not the rose
Blossom in spring, the wheat come ripe in summer,
The grape burst forth at autumn's urge? There must be
A proper meeting of their seeds in time
For us to see them at maturity
Grown by their season's favor, living earth
Bringing them safely to the shores of light.
But if they came from nothing, they might spring
To birth at any unpropitious time.-
Who could predict, since there would be no seeds
Whose character rules out untimely union.
Thirdly, if things could come from nothing, time
Would not be of the essence, for their growth,
Their ripening to full maturity.
Babies would be young men, in the blink of an eye,
And full-grown forests come leaping out from the ground.
Ridiculous! We know that all things grow
Little by little, as indeed they must,
From their essential nature.

-----------------------------A further point -
At certain times of year earth needs the rain
For happy harvest, and both beasts and men
Need nature's bounty for their life’s increase,
A mutual dependence, of the sort
that words need letters for, Do not believe
In any world without its A B C's.
Moreover, why could nature not bring forth
Men huge enough to wade the deepest oceans,
Split mountains with their hands, and outlive time?
The answer is, that limits have been set
Fixing the bounds of all material,
Its character, its growth. And, finally,
Since we observe that cultivated soil
Excels untended land, gives better yield,
It must be obvious that earth contains
Life-giving particles we bring to birth
In breaking clods, in turning surface under.
If there were no such particles, our toil
Would be ridiculous, for things would grow
Better and better of their own accord,
But- nothing comes from nothing. This we must
Acknowledge, all things have to have the seed
Which gives them impulse toward the gentle air.

Our second axiom is this, nature
Resolves each object to its basic atoms
But does not ever utterly destroy it.
If anything could perish absolutely,
It might be suddenly taken from our sight,
There would be no need of force to smash it,
Disrupt and shatter all its fastenings.
But as it is, since everything coheres,
Because of its eternal seed, its essence,
Until some force is strong enough to break it
By violent impact, or to penetrate
Its void interstices, and so dissolve it,
Nature permits no visible destruction
Of anything.

Besides, if time destroys
Completely what it banishes from sight,
With the procession of the passing years,
Out of what source does Venus bring again
The race of animals, each after its kind,
To the light of life? and how, being restored,
Is each thing fed, sustained and given increase
By our miraculous contriving earth?
And what supplies the seas, the native springs,
The far-off rivers? And what feeds the stars?
By rights, if things can perish, infinite time
And ages past should have consumed them all,
But if, throughout this history, there have been
Renewals, and the sum of things can stay,
Beyond doubt, there must be stuff possessed
Of an immortal essence. Nothing can
Disintegrate entirely into nothing.

An indiscriminate common violence
Would finish everything, except for this:
Matter is indestructible; it holds
All things together, though the fastenings
Vary in tightness. Otherwise, a touch,
The merest touch, would be a cause of death,
A force sufficient to dissolve in air
Textures of mortal substance. But here's the fact-
The elements are held, are bound together
In different degrees, but the basic stuff
Is indestructible, so things remain
Intact, unharmed, until a force is found
Proportionate to their texture, to effect
Reversion to their primal elements,
But never to complete annihilation.

Finally, when the fathering air has poured
His rainfall into mother earth, the drops
Seem to have gone, but look!-bright harvests rise,
Boughs on the trees bring greenery and growth,
And are weighed down by fruit, by which, in turn,
Our race is fed, and so are animals,
And we see happy cities, flowering
with children, and we hear the music rise
As new birds sing all through the leafy woods.
Fat cows lie down to rest their weary sides
In welcome pastures, and the milk drops white
Out of distended udders; and the calves
Romp over the tender grass, or wobble, drunk
On that pure vintage, more than strong enough
For any such experience as theirs.
To sum it up: no visible object dies;
Nature from one thing brings another forth,
And out of death new life is born.

------------------------------------Now then-
I have shown that things can never be created
From nothing, and that no created thing
Can ever be called back to nothingness.
You may, perhaps, begin to doubt my lessons
Since atoms are too small to see, but listen,-
You must admit that there are other bodies
Existing but invisible.

---------------------------------------The wind
Beats ocean with its violence, overwhelms
Great ships, sends the clouds flying, or at times
Sweeps over land with a tornado's fury,
Strewing the plains with trees, and beating mountains
With forest-shattering blasts; its roaring howls
Aloud and wild, and even its mutter threatens.
Surely, most surely, the winds are unseen bodies,
Sweepers of earth and sea and sky, and whirlers
Of sudden hurricane. They flow, they flood,
They breed destruction just the way a river
Of gentle nature swells to a great deluge
By the increase of rainfall from the mountains,
Commingling in ruin broken brush and trees.
Strong bridges cannot hold the sudden fury
Of water coming on; the river, darkened
By the great rain, dashes against the piles
With mighty force, and with a mighty sound
Roars on, destroying; under its current it rolls
Tremendous rocks; it sweeps away whatever
Resists its surge. So the wind's blast must also
Be a strong river, a fall of devastation
Wherever it goes, shoving some things before it,
Attacking over and over, in eddy and whirl,
having its way, seizing and carrying things.
I tell you again and again, the winds are bodies
Invisible, they are rivals of great rivers
In what they do and are, though rivers, of course,
Are something we can see.