Nature of Things | Page 9

naught can be crushed, it seems, Nor broken, nor severed
by a cut in twain, Nor can it take the damp, or seeping cold Or piercing
fire, those old destroyers three; But the more void within a thing, the
more Entirely it totters at their sure assault. Thus if first bodies be, as I
have taught, Solid, without a void, they must be then Eternal; and, if
matter ne'er had been Eternal, long ere now had all things gone Back
into nothing utterly, and all We see around from nothing had been

born- But since I taught above that naught can be From naught created,
nor the once begotten To naught be summoned back, these primal
germs Must have an immortality of frame. And into these must each
thing be resolved, When comes its supreme hour, that thus there be At
hand the stuff for plenishing the world. . . . . . . So primal germs have
solid singleness Nor otherwise could they have been conserved
Through aeons and infinity of time For the replenishment of wasted
worlds. Once more, if nature had given a scope for things To be forever
broken more and more, By now the bodies of matter would have been
So far reduced by breakings in old days That from them nothing could,
at season fixed, Be born, and arrive its prime and top of life. For, lo,
each thing is quicker marred than made; And so whate'er the long
infinitude Of days and all fore-passed time would now By this have
broken and ruined and dissolved, That same could ne'er in all
remaining time Be builded up for plenishing the world. But mark:
infallibly a fixed bound Remaineth stablished 'gainst their breaking
down; Since we behold each thing soever renewed, And unto all, their
seasons, after their kind, Wherein they arrive the flower of their age.
Again, if bounds have not been set against The breaking down of this
corporeal world, Yet must all bodies of whatever things Have still
endured from everlasting time Unto this present, as not yet assailed By
shocks of peril. But because the same Are, to thy thinking, of a nature
frail, It ill accords that thus they could remain (As thus they do)
through everlasting time, Vexed through the ages (as indeed they are)
By the innumerable blows of chance. So in our programme of creation,
mark How 'tis that, though the bodies of all stuff Are solid to the core,
we yet explain The ways whereby some things are fashioned soft- Air,
water, earth, and fiery exhalations- And by what force they function
and go on: The fact is founded in the void of things. But if the primal
germs themselves be soft, Reason cannot be brought to bear to show
The ways whereby may be created these Great crags of basalt and the
during iron; For their whole nature will profoundly lack The first
foundations of a solid frame. But powerful in old simplicity, Abide the
solid, the primeval germs; And by their combinations more condensed,
All objects can be tightly knit and bound And made to show
unconquerable strength. Again, since all things kind by kind obtain
Fixed bounds of growing and conserving life; Since Nature hath

inviolably decreed What each can do, what each can never do; Since
naught is changed, but all things so abide That ever the variegated birds
reveal The spots or stripes peculiar to their kind, Spring after spring:
thus surely all that is Must be composed of matter immutable. For if the
primal germs in any wise Were open to conquest and to change,
'twould be Uncertain also what could come to birth And what could not,
and by what law to each Its scope prescribed, its boundary stone that
clings So deep in Time. Nor could the generations Kind after kind so
often reproduce The nature, habits, motions, ways of life, Of their
progenitors. And then again, Since there is ever an extreme bounding
point . . . . . . Of that first body which our senses now Cannot perceive:
That bounding point indeed Exists without all parts, a minimum Of
nature, nor was e'er a thing apart, As of itself,- nor shall hereafter be,
Since 'tis itself still parcel of another, A first and single part, whence
other parts And others similar in order lie In a packed phalanx, filling
to the full The nature of first body: being thus Not self-existent, they
must cleave to that From which in nowise they can sundered be. So
primal germs have solid singleness, Which tightly packed and closely
joined cohere By virtue of their minim particles- No compound by
mere union of the same; But strong in their eternal singleness, Nature,
reserving them as seeds for things, Permitteth naught of