Читать книгу On the Nature of Things - Тит Лукреций Кар - Страница 10

     Now come, and next hereafter apprehend

     What sorts, how vastly different in form,

     How varied in multitudinous shapes they are—

     These old beginnings of the universe;

     Not in the sense that only few are furnished

     With one like form, but rather not at all

     In general have they likeness each with each,

     No marvel: since the stock of them's so great

     That there's no end (as I have taught) nor sum,

     They must indeed not one and all be marked

     By equal outline and by shape the same.

     Moreover, humankind, and the mute flocks

     Of scaly creatures swimming in the streams,

     And joyous herds around, and all the wild,

     And all the breeds of birds—both those that teem

     In gladsome regions of the water-haunts,

     About the river-banks and springs and pools,

     And those that throng, flitting from tree to tree,

     Through trackless woods—Go, take which one thou wilt,

     In any kind: thou wilt discover still

     Each from the other still unlike in shape.

     Nor in no other wise could offspring know

     Mother, nor mother offspring—which we see

     They yet can do, distinguished one from other,

     No less than human beings, by clear signs.

     Thus oft before fair temples of the gods,

     Beside the incense-burning altars slain,

     Drops down the yearling calf, from out its breast

     Breathing warm streams of blood; the orphaned mother,

     Ranging meanwhile green woodland pastures round,

     Knows well the footprints, pressed by cloven hoofs,

     With eyes regarding every spot about,

     For sight somewhere of youngling gone from her;

     And, stopping short, filleth the leafy lanes

     With her complaints; and oft she seeks again

     Within the stall, pierced by her yearning still.

     Nor tender willows, nor dew-quickened grass,

     Nor the loved streams that glide along low banks,

     Can lure her mind and turn the sudden pain;

     Nor other shapes of calves that graze thereby

     Distract her mind or lighten pain the least—

     So keen her search for something known and hers.

     Moreover, tender kids with bleating throats

     Do know their horned dams, and butting lambs

     The flocks of sheep, and thus they patter on,

     Unfailingly each to its proper teat,

     As nature intends. Lastly, with any grain,

     Thou'lt see that no one kernel in one kind

     Is so far like another, that there still

     Is not in shapes some difference running through.

     By a like law we see how earth is pied

     With shells and conchs, where, with soft waves, the sea

     Beats on the thirsty sands of curving shores.

     Wherefore again, again, since seeds of things

     Exist by nature, nor were wrought with hands

     After a fixed pattern of one other,

     They needs must flitter to and fro with shapes

     In types dissimilar to one another.

     Easy enough by thought of mind to solve

     Why fires of lightning more can penetrate

     Than these of ours from pitch-pine born on earth.

     For thou canst say lightning's celestial fire,

     So subtle, is formed of figures finer far,

     And passes thus through holes which this our fire,

     Born from the wood, created from the pine,

     Cannot. Again, light passes through the horn

     On the lantern's side, while rain is dashed away.

     And why?—unless those bodies of light should be

     Finer than those of water's genial showers.

     We see how quickly through a colander

     The wines will flow; how, on the other hand,

     The sluggish olive-oil delays: no doubt,

     Because 'tis wrought of elements more large,

     Or else more crook'd and intertangled. Thus

     It comes that the primordials cannot be

     So suddenly sundered one from other, and seep,

     One through each several hole of anything.

     And note, besides, that liquor of honey or milk

     Yields in the mouth agreeable taste to tongue,

     Whilst nauseous wormwood, pungent centaury,

     With their foul flavour set the lips awry;

     Thus simple 'tis to see that whatsoever

     Can touch the senses pleasingly are made

     Of smooth and rounded elements, whilst those

     Which seem the bitter and the sharp, are held

     Entwined by elements more crook'd, and so

     Are wont to tear their ways into our senses,

     And rend our body as they enter in.

     In short all good to sense, all bad to touch,

     Being up-built of figures so unlike,

     Are mutually at strife—lest thou suppose

     That the shrill rasping of a squeaking saw

     Consists of elements as smooth as song

     Which, waked by nimble fingers, on the strings

     The sweet musicians fashion; or suppose

     That same-shaped atoms through men's nostrils pierce

     When foul cadavers burn, as when the stage

     Is with Cilician saffron sprinkled fresh,

     And the altar near exhales Panchaean scent;

     Or hold as of like seed the goodly hues

     Of things which feast our eyes, as those which sting

     Against the smarting pupil and draw tears,

     Or show, with gruesome aspect, grim and vile.

     For never a shape which charms our sense was made

     Without some elemental smoothness; whilst

     Whate'er is harsh and irksome has been framed

     Still with some roughness in its elements.

     Some, too, there are which justly are supposed

     To be nor smooth nor altogether hooked,

     With bended barbs, but slightly angled-out,

     To tickle rather than to wound the sense—

     And of which sort is the salt tartar of wine

     And flavours of the gummed elecampane.

     Again, that glowing fire and icy rime

     Are fanged with teeth unlike whereby to sting

     Our body's sense, the touch of each gives proof.

     For touch—by sacred majesties of Gods!—

     Touch is indeed the body's only sense—

     Be't that something in-from-outward works,

     Be't that something in the body born

     Wounds, or delighteth as it passes out

     Along the procreant paths of Aphrodite;

     Or be't the seeds by some collision whirl

     Disordered in the body and confound

     By tumult and confusion all the sense—

     As thou mayst find, if haply with the hand

     Thyself thou strike thy body's any part.

     On which account, the elemental forms

     Must differ widely, as enabled thus

     To cause diverse sensations.

                                And, again,

     What seems to us the hardened and condensed

     Must be of atoms among themselves more hooked,

     Be held compacted deep within, as 'twere

     By branch-like atoms—of which sort the chief

     Are diamond stones, despisers of all blows,

     And stalwart flint and strength of solid iron,

     And brazen bars, which, budging hard in locks,

     Do grate and scream. But what are liquid, formed

     Of fluid body, they indeed must be

     Of elements more smooth and round—because

     Their globules severally will not cohere:

     To suck the poppy-seeds from palm of hand

     Is quite as easy as drinking water down,

     And they, once struck, roll like unto the same.

     But that thou seest among the things that flow

     Some bitter, as the brine of ocean is,

     Is not the least a marvel…

     For since 'tis fluid, smooth its atoms are

     And round, with painful rough ones mixed therein;

     Yet need not these be held together hooked:

     In fact, though rough, they're globular besides,

     Able at once to roll, and rasp the sense.

     And that the more thou mayst believe me here,

     That with smooth elements are mixed the rough

     (Whence Neptune's salt astringent body comes),

     There is a means to separate the twain,

     And thereupon dividedly to see

     How the sweet water, after filtering through

     So often underground, flows freshened forth

     Into some hollow; for it leaves above

     The primal germs of nauseating brine,

     Since cling the rough more readily in earth.

     Lastly, whatso thou markest to disperse

     Upon the instant—smoke, and cloud, and flame—

     Must not (even though not all of smooth and round)

     Be yet co-linked with atoms intertwined,

     That thus they can, without together cleaving,

     So pierce our body and so bore the rocks.

     Whatever we see…

     Given to senses, that thou must perceive

     They're not from linked but pointed elements.

     The which now having taught, I will go on

     To bind thereto a fact to this allied

     And drawing from this its proof: these primal germs

     Vary, yet only with finite tale of shapes.

     For were these shapes quite infinite, some seeds

     Would have a body of infinite increase.

     For in one seed, in one small frame of any,

     The shapes can't vary from one another much.

     Assume, we'll say, that of three minim parts

     Consist the primal bodies, or add a few:

     When, now, by placing all these parts of one

     At top and bottom, changing lefts and rights,

     Thou hast with every kind of shift found out

     What the aspect of shape of its whole body

     Each new arrangement gives, for what remains,

     If thou percase wouldst vary its old shapes,

     New parts must then be added; follows next,

     If thou percase wouldst vary still its shapes,

     That by like logic each arrangement still

     Requires its increment of other parts.

     Ergo, an augmentation of its frame

     Follows upon each novelty of forms.

     Wherefore, it cannot be thou'lt undertake

     That seeds have infinite differences in form,

     Lest thus thou forcest some indeed to be

     Of an immeasurable immensity—

     Which I have taught above cannot be proved.

     And now for thee barbaric robes, and gleam

     Of Meliboean purple, touched with dye

     Of the Thessalian shell…

     The peacock's golden generations, stained

     With spotted gaieties, would lie o'erthrown

     By some new colour of new things more bright;

     The odour of myrrh and savours of honey despised;

     The swan's old lyric, and Apollo's hymns,

     Once modulated on the many chords,

     Would likewise sink o'ermastered and be mute:

     For, lo, a somewhat, finer than the rest,

     Would be arising evermore. So, too,

     Into some baser part might all retire,

     Even as we said to better might they come:

     For, lo, a somewhat, loathlier than the rest

     To nostrils, ears, and eyes, and taste of tongue,

     Would then, by reasoning reversed, be there.

     Since 'tis not so, but unto things are given

     Their fixed limitations which do bound

     Their sum on either side, 'tmust be confessed

     That matter, too, by finite tale of shapes

     Does differ. Again, from earth's midsummer heats

     Unto the icy hoar-frosts of the year

     The forward path is fixed, and by like law

     O'ertravelled backwards at the dawn of spring.

     For each degree of hot, and each of cold,

     And the half-warm, all filling up the sum

     In due progression, lie, my Memmius, there

     Betwixt the two extremes: the things create

     Must differ, therefore, by a finite change,

     Since at each end marked off they ever are

     By fixed point—on one side plagued by flames

     And on the other by congealing frosts.

     The which now having taught, I will go on

     To bind thereto a fact to this allied

     And drawing from this its proof: those primal germs

     Which have been fashioned all of one like shape

     Are infinite in tale; for, since the forms

     Themselves are finite in divergences,

     Then those which are alike will have to be

     Infinite, else the sum of stuff remains

     A finite—what I've proved is not the fact,

     Showing in verse how corpuscles of stuff,

     From everlasting and to-day the same,

     Uphold the sum of things, all sides around

     By old succession of unending blows.

     For though thou view'st some beasts to be more rare,

     And mark'st in them a less prolific stock,

     Yet in another region, in lands remote,

     That kind abounding may make up the count;

     Even as we mark among the four-foot kind

     Snake-handed elephants, whose thousands wall

     With ivory ramparts India about,

     That her interiors cannot entered be—

     So big her count of brutes of which we see

     Such few examples. Or suppose, besides,

     We feign some thing, one of its kind and sole

     With body born, to which is nothing like

     In all the lands: yet now unless shall be

     An infinite count of matter out of which

     Thus to conceive and bring it forth to life,

     It cannot be created and—what's more—

     It cannot take its food and get increase.

     Yea, if through all the world in finite tale

     Be tossed the procreant bodies of one thing,

     Whence, then, and where in what mode, by what power,

     Shall they to meeting come together there,

     In such vast ocean of matter and tumult strange?—

     No means they have of joining into one.

     But, just as, after mighty ship-wrecks piled,

     The mighty main is wont to scatter wide

     The rowers' banks, the ribs, the yards, the prow,

     The masts and swimming oars, so that afar

     Along all shores of lands are seen afloat

     The carven fragments of the rended poop,

     Giving a lesson to mortality

     To shun the ambush of the faithless main,

     The violence and the guile, and trust it not

     At any hour, however much may smile

     The crafty enticements of the placid deep:

     Exactly thus, if once thou holdest true

     That certain seeds are finite in their tale,

     The various tides of matter, then, must needs

     Scatter them flung throughout the ages all,

     So that not ever can they join, as driven

     Together into union, nor remain

     In union, nor with increment can grow—

     But facts in proof are manifest for each:

     Things can be both begotten and increase.

     'Tis therefore manifest that primal germs,

     Are infinite in any class thou wilt—

     From whence is furnished matter for all things.

     Nor can those motions that bring death prevail

     Forever, nor eternally entomb

     The welfare of the world; nor, further, can

     Those motions that give birth to things and growth

     Keep them forever when created there.

     Thus the long war, from everlasting waged,

     With equal strife among the elements

     Goes on and on. Now here, now there, prevail

     The vital forces of the world—or fall.

     Mixed with the funeral is the wildered wail

     Of infants coming to the shores of light:

     No night a day, no dawn a night hath followed

     That heard not, mingling with the small birth-cries,

     The wild laments, companions old of death

     And the black rites.

                           This, too, in these affairs

     'Tis fit thou hold well sealed, and keep consigned

     With no forgetting brain: nothing there is

     Whose nature is apparent out of hand

     That of one kind of elements consists—

     Nothing there is that's not of mixed seed.

     And whatsoe'er possesses in itself

     More largely many powers and properties

     Shows thus that here within itself there are

     The largest number of kinds and differing shapes

     Of elements. And, chief of all, the earth

     Hath in herself first bodies whence the springs,

     Rolling chill waters, renew forevermore

     The unmeasured main; hath whence the fires arise—

     For burns in many a spot her flamed crust,

     Whilst the impetuous Aetna raves indeed

     From more profounder fires—and she, again,

     Hath in herself the seed whence she can raise

     The shining grains and gladsome trees for men;

     Whence, also, rivers, fronds, and gladsome pastures

     Can she supply for mountain-roaming beasts.

     Wherefore great mother of gods, and mother of beasts,

     And parent of man hath she alone been named.

     Her hymned the old and learned bards of Greece

     Seated in chariot o'er the realms of air

     To drive her team of lions, teaching thus

     That the great earth hangs poised and cannot lie

     Resting on other earth. Unto her car

     They've yoked the wild beasts, since a progeny,

     However savage, must be tamed and chid

     By care of parents. They have girt about

     With turret-crown the summit of her head,

     Since, fortressed in her goodly strongholds high,

     'Tis she sustains the cities; now, adorned

     With that same token, to-day is carried forth,

     With solemn awe through many a mighty land,

     The image of that mother, the divine.

     Her the wide nations, after antique rite,

     Do name Idaean Mother, giving her

     Escort of Phrygian bands, since first, they say,

     From out those regions 'twas that grain began

     Through all the world. To her do they assign

     The Galli, the emasculate, since thus

     They wish to show that men who violate

     The majesty of the mother and have proved

     Ingrate to parents are to be adjudged

     Unfit to give unto the shores of light

     A living progeny. The Galli come:

     And hollow cymbals, tight-skinned tambourines

     Resound around to bangings of their hands;

     The fierce horns threaten with a raucous bray;

     The tubed pipe excites their maddened minds

     In Phrygian measures; they bear before them knives,

     Wild emblems of their frenzy, which have power

     The rabble's ingrate heads and impious hearts

     To panic with terror of the goddess' might.

     And so, when through the mighty cities borne,

     She blesses man with salutations mute,

     They strew the highway of her journeyings

     With coin of brass and silver, gifting her

     With alms and largesse, and shower her and shade

     With flowers of roses falling like the snow

     Upon the Mother and her companion-bands.

     Here is an armed troop, the which by Greeks

     Are called the Phrygian Curetes. Since

     Haply among themselves they use to play

     In games of arms and leap in measure round

     With bloody mirth and by their nodding shake

     The terrorizing crests upon their heads,

     This is the armed troop that represents

     The arm'd Dictaean Curetes, who, in Crete,

     As runs the story, whilom did out-drown

     That infant cry of Zeus, what time their band,

     Young boys, in a swift dance around the boy,

     To measured step beat with the brass on brass,

     That Saturn might not get him for his jaws,

     And give its mother an eternal wound

     Along her heart. And 'tis on this account

     That armed they escort the mighty Mother,

     Or else because they signify by this

     That she, the goddess, teaches men to be

     Eager with armed valour to defend

     Their motherland, and ready to stand forth,

     The guard and glory of their parents' years.

     A tale, however beautifully wrought,

     That's wide of reason by a long remove:

     For all the gods must of themselves enjoy

     Immortal aeons and supreme repose,

     Withdrawn from our affairs, detached, afar:

     Immune from peril and immune from pain,

     Themselves abounding in riches of their own,

     Needing not us, they are not touched by wrath

     They are not taken by service or by gift.

     Truly is earth insensate for all time;

     But, by obtaining germs of many things,

     In many a way she brings the many forth

     Into the light of sun. And here, whoso

     Decides to call the ocean Neptune, or

     The grain-crop Ceres, and prefers to abuse

     The name of Bacchus rather than pronounce

     The liquor's proper designation, him

     Let us permit to go on calling earth

     Mother of Gods, if only he will spare

     To taint his soul with foul religion.

      So, too, the wooly flocks, and horned kine,

      And brood of battle-eager horses, grazing

     Often together along one grassy plain,

     Under the cope of one blue sky, and slaking

     From out one stream of water each its thirst,

     All live their lives with face and form unlike,

     Keeping the parents' nature, parents' habits,

     Which, kind by kind, through ages they repeat.

     So great in any sort of herb thou wilt,

     So great again in any river of earth

     Are the distinct diversities of matter.

     Hence, further, every creature—any one

     From out them all—compounded is the same

     Of bones, blood, veins, heat, moisture, flesh, and thews—

     All differing vastly in their forms, and built

     Of elements dissimilar in shape.

     Again, all things by fire consumed ablaze,

     Within their frame lay up, if naught besides,

     At least those atoms whence derives their power

     To throw forth fire and send out light from under,

     To shoot the sparks and scatter embers wide.

     If, with like reasoning of mind, all else

     Thou traverse through, thou wilt discover thus

     That in their frame the seeds of many things

     They hide, and divers shapes of seeds contain.

     Further, thou markest much, to which are given

     Along together colour and flavour and smell,

     Among which, chief, are most burnt offerings.

     Thus must they be of divers shapes composed.

     A smell of scorching enters in our frame

     Where the bright colour from the dye goes not;

     And colour in one way, flavour in quite another

     Works inward to our senses—so mayst see

     They differ too in elemental shapes.

     Thus unlike forms into one mass combine,

     And things exist by intermixed seed.

     But still 'tmust not be thought that in all ways

     All things can be conjoined; for then wouldst view

     Portents begot about thee every side:

     Hulks of mankind half brute astarting up,

     At times big branches sprouting from man's trunk,

     Limbs of a sea-beast to a land-beast knit,

     And nature along the all-producing earth

     Feeding those dire Chimaeras breathing flame

     From hideous jaws—Of which 'tis simple fact

     That none have been begot; because we see

     All are from fixed seed and fixed dam

     Engendered and so function as to keep

     Throughout their growth their own ancestral type.

     This happens surely by a fixed law:

     For from all food-stuff, when once eaten down,

     Go sundered atoms, suited to each creature,

     Throughout their bodies, and, conjoining there,

     Produce the proper motions; but we see

     How, contrariwise, nature upon the ground

     Throws off those foreign to their frame; and many

     With viewless bodies from their bodies fly,

     By blows impelled—those impotent to join

     To any part, or, when inside, to accord

     And to take on the vital motions there.

     But think not, haply, living forms alone

     Are bound by these laws: they distinguished all.

     For just as all things of creation are,

     In their whole nature, each to each unlike,

     So must their atoms be in shape unlike—

     Not since few only are fashioned of like form,

     But since they all, as general rule, are not

     The same as all. Nay, here in these our verses,

     Elements many, common to many words,

     Thou seest, though yet 'tis needful to confess

     The words and verses differ, each from each,

     Compounded out of different elements—

     Not since few only, as common letters, run

     Through all the words, or no two words are made,

     One and the other, from all like elements,

     But since they all, as general rule, are not

     The same as all. Thus, too, in other things,

     Whilst many germs common to many things

     There are, yet they, combined among themselves,

     Can form new wholes to others quite unlike.

     Thus fairly one may say that humankind,

     The grains, the gladsome trees, are all made up

     Of different atoms. Further, since the seeds

     Are different, difference must there also be

     In intervening spaces, thoroughfares,

     Connections, weights, blows, clashings, motions, all

     Which not alone distinguish living forms,

     But sunder earth's whole ocean from the lands,

     And hold all heaven from the lands away.

     Now come, this wisdom by my sweet toil sought

     Look thou perceive, lest haply thou shouldst guess

     That the white objects shining to thine eyes

     Are gendered of white atoms, or the black

     Of a black seed; or yet believe that aught

     That's steeped in any hue should take its dye

     From bits of matter tinct with hue the same.

     For matter's bodies own no hue the least—

     Or like to objects or, again, unlike.

     But, if percase it seem to thee that mind

     Itself can dart no influence of its own

     Into these bodies, wide thou wand'rest off.

     For since the blind-born, who have ne'er surveyed

     The light of sun, yet recognise by touch

     Things that from birth had ne'er a hue for them,

     'Tis thine to know that bodies can be brought

     No less unto the ken of our minds too,

     Though yet those bodies with no dye be smeared.

     Again, ourselves whatever in the dark

     We touch, the same we do not find to be

     Tinctured with any colour.

                             Now that here

     I win the argument, I next will teach

     Now, every colour changes, none except,

     And every…

     Which the primordials ought nowise to do.

     Since an immutable somewhat must remain,

     Lest all things utterly be brought to naught.

     For change of anything from out its bounds

     Means instant death of that which was before.

     Wherefore be mindful not to stain with colour

     The seeds of things, lest things return for thee

     All utterly to naught.

                            But now, if seeds

     Receive no property of colour, and yet

     Be still endowed with variable forms

     From which all kinds of colours they beget

     And vary (by reason that ever it matters much

     With what seeds, and in what positions joined,

     And what the motions that they give and get),

     Forthwith most easily thou mayst devise

     Why what was black of hue an hour ago

     Can of a sudden like the marble gleam,—

     As ocean, when the high winds have upheaved

     Its level plains, is changed to hoary waves

     Of marble whiteness: for, thou mayst declare,

     That, when the thing we often see as black

     Is in its matter then commixed anew,

     Some atoms rearranged, and some withdrawn,

     And added some, 'tis seen forthwith to turn

     Glowing and white. But if of azure seeds

     Consist the level waters of the deep,

     They could in nowise whiten: for however

     Thou shakest azure seeds, the same can never

     Pass into marble hue. But, if the seeds—

     Which thus produce the ocean's one pure sheen—

     Be now with one hue, now another dyed,

     As oft from alien forms and divers shapes

     A cube's produced all uniform in shape,

     'Twould be but natural, even as in the cube

     We see the forms to be dissimilar,

     That thus we'd see in brightness of the deep

     (Or in whatever one pure sheen thou wilt)

     Colours diverse and all dissimilar.

     Besides, the unlike shapes don't thwart the least

     The whole in being externally a cube;

     But differing hues of things do block and keep

     The whole from being of one resultant hue.

     Then, too, the reason which entices us

     At times to attribute colours to the seeds

     Falls quite to pieces, since white things are not

     Create from white things, nor are black from black,

     But evermore they are create from things

     Of divers colours. Verily, the white

     Will rise more readily, is sooner born

     Out of no colour, than of black or aught

     Which stands in hostile opposition thus.

     Besides, since colours cannot be, sans light,

     And the primordials come not forth to light,

     'Tis thine to know they are not clothed with colour—

     Truly, what kind of colour could there be

     In the viewless dark? Nay, in the light itself

     A colour changes, gleaming variedly,

     When smote by vertical or slanting ray.

     Thus in the sunlight shows the down of doves

     That circles, garlanding, the nape and throat:

     Now it is ruddy with a bright gold-bronze,

     Now, by a strange sensation it becomes

     Green-emerald blended with the coral-red.

     The peacock's tail, filled with the copious light,

     Changes its colours likewise, when it turns.

     Wherefore, since by some blow of light begot,

     Without such blow these colours can't become.

     And since the pupil of the eye receives

     Within itself one kind of blow, when said

     To feel a white hue, then another kind,

     When feeling a black or any other hue,

     And since it matters nothing with what hue

     The things thou touchest be perchance endowed,

     But rather with what sort of shape equipped,

     'Tis thine to know the atoms need not colour,

     But render forth sensations, as of touch,

     That vary with their varied forms.

                                      Besides,

     Since special shapes have not a special colour,

     And all formations of the primal germs

     Can be of any sheen thou wilt, why, then,

     Are not those objects which are of them made

     Suffused, each kind with colours of every kind?

     For then 'twere meet that ravens, as they fly,

     Should dartle from white pinions a white sheen,

     Or swans turn black from seed of black, or be

     Of any single varied dye thou wilt.

     Again, the more an object's rent to bits,

     The more thou see its colour fade away

     Little by little till 'tis quite extinct;

     As happens when the gaudy linen's picked

     Shred after shred away: the purple there,

     Phoenician red, most brilliant of all dyes,

     Is lost asunder, ravelled thread by thread;

     Hence canst perceive the fragments die away

     From out their colour, long ere they depart

     Back to the old primordials of things.

     And, last, since thou concedest not all bodies

     Send out a voice or smell, it happens thus

     That not to all thou givest sounds and smells.

     So, too, since we behold not all with eyes,

     'Tis thine to know some things there are as much

     Orphaned of colour, as others without smell,

     And reft of sound; and those the mind alert

     No less can apprehend than it can mark

     The things that lack some other qualities.

     But think not haply that the primal bodies

     Remain despoiled alone of colour: so,

     Are they from warmth dissevered and from cold

     And from hot exhalations; and they move,

     Both sterile of sound and dry of juice; and throw

     Not any odour from their proper bodies.

     Just as, when undertaking to prepare

     A liquid balm of myrrh and marjoram,

     And flower of nard, which to our nostrils breathes

     Odour of nectar, first of all behooves

     Thou seek, as far as find thou may and can,

     The inodorous olive-oil (which never sends

     One whiff of scent to nostrils), that it may

     The least debauch and ruin with sharp tang

     The odorous essence with its body mixed

     And in it seethed. And on the same account

     The primal germs of things must not be thought

     To furnish colour in begetting things,

     Nor sound, since pow'rless they to send forth aught

     From out themselves, nor any flavour, too,

     Nor cold, nor exhalation hot or warm.

     The rest; yet since these things are mortal all—

     The pliant mortal, with a body soft;

     The brittle mortal, with a crumbling frame;