And many besides wander the mighty void-
Cast back from unions of existing things, Nowhere accepted in the universe, And nowise linked in motions to the rest.
And of this fact (as I record it here)
An image, a type goes on before our eyes Present each moment; for behold whenever The sun's light and the rays, let in, pour down Across dark halls of houses: thou wilt see The many mites in many a manner mixed Amid a void in the very light of the rays, And battling on, as in eternal strife, And in battalions contending without halt, In meetings, partings, harried up and down.
From this thou mayest conjecture of what sort The ceaseless tossing of primordial seeds Amid the mightier void- at least so far As small affair can for a vaster serve, And by example put thee on the spoor Of knowledge. For this reason too 'tis fit Thou turn thy mind the more unto these bodies Which here are witnessed tumbling in the light:
Namely, because such tumblings are a sign That motions also of the primal stuff Secret and viewless lurk beneath, behind.
For thou wilt mark here many a speck, impelled By viewless blows, to change its little course, And beaten backwards to return again, Hither and thither in all directions round.
Lo, all their shifting movement is of old, From the primeval atoms; for the same Primordial seeds of things first move of self, And then those bodies built of unions small And nearest, as it were, unto the powers Of the primeval atoms, are stirred up By impulse of those atoms' unseen blows, And these thereafter goad the next in size:
Thus motion ascends from the primevals on, And stage by stage emerges to our sense, Until those objects also move which we Can mark in sunbeams, though it not appears What blows do urge them.
Herein wonder not How 'tis that, while the seeds of things are all Moving forever, the sum yet seems to stand Supremely still, except in cases where A thing shows motion of its frame as whole.
For far beneath the ken of senses lies The nature of those ultimates of the world;And so, since those themselves thou canst not see, Their motion also must they veil from men-For mark, indeed, how things we can see, oft Yet hide their motions, when afar from us Along the distant landscape. Often thus, Upon a hillside will the woolly flocks Be cropping their goodly food and creeping about Whither the summons of the grass, begemmed With the fresh dew, is calling, and the lambs, Well filled, are frisking, locking horns in sport:
Yet all for us seem blurred and blent afar-A glint of white at rest on a green hill.
Again, when mighty legions, marching round, Fill all the quarters of the plains below, Rousing a mimic warfare, there the sheen Shoots up the sky, and all the fields about Glitter with brass, and from beneath, a sound Goes forth from feet of stalwart soldiery, And mountain walls, smote by the shouting, send The voices onward to the stars of heaven, And hither and thither darts the cavalry, And of a sudden down the midmost fields Charges with onset stout enough to rock The solid earth: and yet some post there is Up the high mountains, viewed from which they seem To stand- a gleam at rest along the plains.
Now what the speed to matter's atoms given Thou mayest in few, my Memmius, learn from this:
When first the dawn is sprinkling with new light The lands, and all the breed of birds abroad Flit round the trackless forests, with liquid notes Filling the regions along the mellow air, We see 'tis forthwith manifest to man How suddenly the risen sun is wont At such an hour to overspread and clothe The whole with its own splendour; but the sun's Warm exhalations and this serene light Travel not down an empty void; and thus They are compelled more slowly to advance, Whilst, as it were, they cleave the waves of air;Nor one by one travel these particles Of the warm exhalations, but are all Entangled and enmassed, whereby at once Each is restrained by each, and from without Checked, till compelled more slowly to advance.
But the primordial atoms with their old Simple solidity, when forth they travel Along the empty void, all undelayed By aught outside them there, and they, each one Being one unit from nature of its parts, Are borne to that one place on which they strive Still to lay hold, must then, beyond a doubt, Outstrip in speed, and be more swiftly borne Than light of sun, and over regions rush, Of space much vaster, in the self-same time The sun's effulgence widens round the sky.
. . . . . .
Nor to pursue the atoms one by one, To see the law whereby each thing goes on.
But some men, ignorant of matter, think, Opposing this, that not without the gods, In such adjustment to our human ways, Can nature change the seasons of the years, And bring to birth the grains and all of else To which divine Delight, the guide of life, Persuades mortality and leads it on, That, through her artful blandishments of love, It propagate the generations still, Lest humankind should perish. When they feign That gods have stablished all things but for man, They seem in all ways mightily to lapse From reason's truth: for ev'n if ne'er I knew What seeds primordial are, yet would I dare This to affirm, ev'n from deep judgment based Upon the ways and conduct of the skies-This to maintain by many a fact besides-
That in no wise the nature of the world For us was builded by a power divine-So great the faults it stands encumbered with:
The which, my Memmius, later on, for thee We will clear up. Now as to what remains Concerning motions we'll unfold our thought.
Now is the place, meseems, in these affairs To prove for thee this too: nothing corporeal Of its own force can e'er be upward borne, Or upward go- nor let the bodies of flames Deceive thee here: for they engendered are With urge to upwards, taking thus increase, Whereby grow upwards shining grains and trees, Though all the weight within them downward bears.