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.
 

ABSENCE OF SECONDARY QUALITIES

 
     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;