Nature of Things | Page 8

acted on; Naught but the inane can furnish room. And thus, Beside
the inane and bodies, is no third Nature amid the number of all things-
Remainder none to fall at any time Under our senses, nor be seized and
seen By any man through reasonings of mind. Name o'er creation with
what names thou wilt, Thou'lt find but properties of those first twain,
Or see but accidents those twain produce. A property is that which not
at all Can be disjoined and severed from a thing Without a fatal
dissolution: such, Weight to the rocks, heat to the fire, and flow To the
wide waters, touch to corporal things, Intangibility to the viewless void.
But state of slavery, pauperhood, and wealth, Freedom, and war, and
concord, and all else Which come and go whilst nature stands the same,
We're wont, and rightly, to call accidents. Even time exists not of itself;
but sense Reads out of things what happened long ago, What presses
now, and what shall follow after: No man, we must admit, feels time
itself, Disjoined from motion and repose of things. Thus, when they say
there "is" the ravishment Of Princess Helen, "is" the siege and sack Of
Trojan Town, look out, they force us not To admit these acts existent
by themselves, Merely because those races of mankind (Of whom these
acts were accidents) long since Irrevocable age has borne away: For all
past actions may be said to be But accidents, in one way, of mankind,-
In other, of some region of the world. Add, too, had been no matter,
and no room Wherein all things go on, the fire of love Upblown by that
fair form, the glowing coal Under the Phrygian Alexander's breast, Had
ne'er enkindled that renowned strife Of savage war, nor had the wooden
horse Involved in flames old Pergama, by a birth At midnight of a
brood of the Hellenes. And thus thou canst remark that every act At
bottom exists not of itself, nor is As body is, nor has like name with
void; But rather of sort more fitly to be called An accident of body, and
of place Wherein all things go on.
CHARACTER OF THE ATOMS
Bodies, again, Are partly primal germs of things, and partly Unions
deriving from the primal germs. And those which are the primal germs
of things No power can quench; for in the end they conquer By their
own solidness; though hard it be To think that aught in things has solid

frame; For lightnings pass, no less than voice and shout, Through
hedging walls of houses, and the iron White-dazzles in the fire, and
rocks will burn With exhalations fierce and burst asunder. Totters the
rigid gold dissolved in heat; The ice of bronze melts conquered in the
flame; Warmth and the piercing cold through silver seep, Since, with
the cups held rightly in the hand, We oft feel both, as from above is
poured The dew of waters between their shining sides: So true it is no
solid form is found. But yet because true reason and nature of things
Constrain us, come, whilst in few verses now I disentangle how there
still exist Bodies of solid, everlasting frame- The seeds of things, the
primal germs we teach, Whence all creation around us came to be. First
since we know a twofold nature exists, Of things, both twain and
utterly unlike- Body, and place in which an things go on- Then each
must be both for and through itself, And all unmixed: where'er be
empty space, There body's not; and so where body bides, There not at
all exists the void inane. Thus primal bodies are solid, without a void.
But since there's void in all begotten things, All solid matter must be
round the same; Nor, by true reason canst thou prove aught hides And
holds a void within its body, unless Thou grant what holds it be a solid.
Know, That which can hold a void of things within Can be naught else
than matter in union knit. Thus matter, consisting of a solid frame, Hath
power to be eternal, though all else, Though all creation, be dissolved
away. Again, were naught of empty and inane, The world were then a
solid; as, without Some certain bodies to fill the places held, The world
that is were but a vacant void. And so, infallibly, alternate-wise Body
and void are still distinguished, Since nature knows no wholly full nor
void. There are, then, certain bodies, possessed of power To vary
forever the empty and the full; And these can nor be sundered from
without By beats and blows, nor from within be torn By penetration,
nor be overthrown By any assault soever through the world- For
without void,