No Single Thing Abides by: Lucretius (c. 99-55 B.C.) translated by W. H. Mallock I No single thing abides; but all things flow. Fragment to fragment clings--the things thus grow Until we know and name them. By degrees They melt, and are no more the things we know. II Globed from the atoms falling slow or swift I see the suns, I see the systems lift Their forms; and even the systems and the suns Shall go back slowly to the eternal drift. III Thou soo, oh earth--thine empires, lands, and seas-- Least, with thy stars, of all the galaxies, Globed from the drift like these, like these thou too Shalt go. Thou art going, hour by hour, like these. IV Nothing abides. The seas in delicate haze Go off; those moonéd sands forsake their place; And where they are, shall other seas in turn Mow with their scythes of whiteness other bays. V Lo, how the terraced towers, and monstrous round Of league-long ramparts rise from out the ground, With gardens in the clouds. Then all is gone, And Babylon is a memory and a mound. VI Observe this dew-drenched rose of Tyrian grain-- A rose today. But you will ask in vain Tomorrow what it is; and yesterday It was the dust, the sunshine and the rain. VII This bowl of milk, the pitch on yonder jar, Are strange and far-bound travelers come from far THis is a snow-flake that was once a flame-- The flame was once the fragment of a star. VIII Round, angular, soft, brittle, dry, cold, warm, Things are their qualities: things are their form-- And these in combination, even as bees, Not singly but combined, make up the swarm: IX And when the qualities like bees on wing, Having a moment clustered, cease to cling, As the thing dies without its qualities, So die the qualities without the thing. X Where is the coolness when no cool winds blow? Where is the music when the lute lies low? Are not the redness and the red rose one, And the snows whiteness one thing with the snow? XI Even so, now mark me, here we reach the goal Of Science, and in little have the whole-- Even as the redness and the rose are one, So with the body one thing is the soul. XII For, as our limbs and organs all unite to make our sum of suffering and delight, And without eyes and ears and touch and tongue, Were no such things as taste and sound and sight. XIII So without these we all in vain shall try To find the things that gives them unity-- The thing to which each whispers, Thou art thou-- The soul which answers each, And I am I. XIV What! shall the dateless worlds in dust be blown Back to the unremembered and unknown, And this frail Thou--this flame of yesterday-- Burn on, forlorn, immortal, and alone? XV Did Nature, in the nurseries of the night Tend it for this--Nature whose heedless might, Casts, like some shipwrecked sailor, the poor babe, Naked and bleating on the shores of light? XVI What is it there? A cry is all it is. It knows not if its limbs be yours or his. Less than that cry the babe was yesterday. The man tomorrow shall be less than this. XVII Tissue by tissue to a soul he grows, As leaf by leaf the rose becomes the rose. Tissue from tissue rots; and, as the Sun Goes from the bubbles when they burst, he goes. XVIII Ah, mark those pearls of Sunrise! Fast and free Upon the waves they are dancing. Souls shall be Things that outlast their bodies, when each spark Outlasts its wave, each wave outlasts the sea. XIX The seeds that once were we take flight and fly, Winnowed to earth, or whirled along the sky, Not lost but disunited. Life lives on. It is the lives, the lives, the lives, that die. XX They go beyond recapture and recall, Lost in the all-indissoluble All:-- Gone like the rainbow from the fountains foam, Gone like the spindrift shuddering down the squall. XXI Flakes of the water, on the waters cease! Soul of the body, melt and sleep like these. Atoms to atoms--weariness to rest-- Ashes to ashes--hopes and fears to peace! XXII Oh Science, lift aloud thy voice that stills The pulse of fear, and through the conscience thrills-- Thrills through the conscience the news of peace-- How beautiful thy feet are on the hills!
Posted on: Sat, 27 Dec 2014 16:23:54 +0000
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