In cutting bodies down to less and less
  Nor pause established to their breaking up,
  They hold there is no minimum in things;
  Albeit we see the boundary point of aught
  Is that which to our senses seems its least,
  Whereby thou mayst conjecture, that, because
  The things thou canst not mark have boundary points,
  They surely have their minimums. Then, too,
  Since these philosophers ascribe to things
  Soft primal germs, which we behold to be
  Of birth and body mortal, thus, throughout,
  The sum of things must be returned to naught,
  And, born from naught, abundance thrive anew-
  Thou seest how far each doctrine stands from truth.
  And, next, these bodies are among themselves
  In many ways poisons and foes to each,
  Wherefore their congress will destroy them quite
  Or drive asunder as we see in storms
  Rains, winds, and lightnings all asunder fly.
    Thus too, if all things are create of four,
  And all again dissolved into the four,
  How can the four be called the primal germs
  Of things, more than all things themselves be thought,
  By retroversion, primal germs of them?
  For ever alternately are both begot,
  With interchange of nature and aspect
  From immemorial time. But if percase
  Thou think'st the frame of fire and earth, the air,
  The dew of water can in such wise meet
  As not by mingling to resign their nature,
  From them for thee no world can be create-
  No thing of breath, no stock or stalk of tree:
  In the wild congress of this varied heap
  Each thing its proper nature will display,
  And air will palpably be seen mixed up
  With earth together, unquenched heat with water.
  But primal germs in bringing things to birth
  Must have a latent, unseen quality,
  Lest some outstanding alien element
  Confuse and minish in the thing create
  Its proper being.
                       But these men begin
  From heaven, and from its fires; and first they feign
  That fire will turn into the winds of air,
  Next, that from air the rain begotten is,
  And earth created out of rain, and then
  That all, reversely, are returned from earth-
  The moisture first, then air thereafter heat-
  And that these same ne'er cease in interchange,
  To go their ways from heaven to earth, from earth
  Unto the stars of the ethereal world-
  Which in no wise at all the germs can do.
  Since an immutable somewhat still must be,
  Lest all things utterly be sped to naught;
  For change in anything from out its bounds
  Means instant death of that which was before.
  Wherefore, since those things, mentioned heretofore,
  Suffer a changed state, they must derive
  From others ever unconvertible,
  Lest an things utterly return to naught.
  Then why not rather presuppose there be
  Bodies with such a nature furnished forth
  That, if perchance they have created fire,
  Can still (by virtue of a few withdrawn,
  Or added few, and motion and order changed)
  Fashion the winds of air, and thus all things
  Forevermore be interchanged with all?
    "But facts in proof are manifest;" thou sayest,
  "That all things grow into the winds of air
  And forth from earth are nourished, and unless
  The season favour at propitious hour
  With rains enough to set the trees a-reel
  Under the soak of bulking thunderheads,
  And sun, for its share, foster and give heat,
  No grains, nor trees, nor breathing things can grow."
  True- and unless hard food and moisture soft
  Recruited man, his frame would waste away,
  And life dissolve from out his thews and bones;
  For out of doubt recruited and fed are we
  By certain things, as other things by others.
  Because in many ways the many germs
  Common to many things are mixed in things,
  No wonder 'tis that therefore divers things
  By divers things are nourished. And, again,
  Often it matters vastly with what others,
  In what positions the primordial germs
  Are bound together, and what motions, too,
  They give and get among themselves; for these
  Same germs do put together sky, sea, lands,
  Rivers, and sun, grains, trees, and breathing things,
  But yet commixed they are in divers modes
  With divers things, forever as they move.
  Nay, thou beholdest in our verses here
  Elements many, common to many worlds,
  Albeit thou must confess each verse, each word
  From one another differs both in sense
  And ring of sound- so much the elements
  Can bring about by change of order alone.
  But those which are the primal germs of things
  Have power to work more combinations still,