On the Nature of Things

Nothing can be create, we shall divine More clearly what we seek: those elements From which alone all things created are, And how accomplished by no tool of Gods. Suppose all sprang from all things: any kind Might take its origin from any thing, No fixed seed required. Men from the sea Might rise, and from the land the scaly breed, And, fowl full fledged come bursting from the sky; The horned cattle, the herds and all the wild Would haunt with varying offspring tilth and waste; Nor would the same fruits keep their olden trees, But each might grow from any stock or limb By chance and change. Indeed, and were there not For each its procreant atoms, could things have Each its unalterable mother old? But, since produced from fixed seeds are all, Each birth goes forth upon the shores of light From its own stuff, from its own primal bodies. And all from all cannot become, because In each resides a secret power its own. Again, why see we lavished o'er the lands At spring the rose, at summer heat the corn, The vines that mellow when the autumn lures, If not because the fixed seeds of things At their own season must together stream, And new creations only be revealed When the due times arrive and pregnant earth Safely may give unto the shores of light Her tender progenies? But if from naught Were their becoming, they would spring abroad Suddenly, unforeseen, in alien months, With no primordial germs, to be preserved From procreant unions at an adverse hour.…