The race of man and all the wild are fed;
  Hence joyful cities thrive with boys and girls;
  And leafy woodlands echo with new birds;
  Hence cattle, fat and drowsy, lay their bulk
  Along the joyous pastures whilst the drops
  Of white ooze trickle from distended bags;
  Hence the young scamper on their weakling joints
  Along the tender herbs, fresh hearts afrisk
  With warm new milk. Thus naught of what so seems
  Perishes utterly, since Nature ever
  Upbuilds one thing from other, suffering naught
  To come to birth but through some other's death.

  And now, since I have taught that things cannot
  Be born from nothing, nor the same, when born,
  To nothing be recalled, doubt not my words,
  Because our eyes no primal germs perceive;
  For mark those bodies which, though known to be
  In this our world, are yet invisible:
  The winds infuriate lash our face and frame,
  Unseen, and swamp huge ships and rend the clouds,
  Or, eddying wildly down, bestrew the plains
  With mighty trees, or scour the mountain tops
  With forest-crackling blasts. Thus on they rave
  With uproar shrill and ominous moan. The winds,
  'Tis clear, are sightless bodies sweeping through
  The sea, the lands, the clouds along the sky,
  Vexing and whirling and seizing all amain;
  And forth they flow and pile destruction round,
  Even as the water's soft and supple bulk
  Becoming a river of abounding floods,
  Which a wide downpour from the lofty hills
  Swells with big showers, dashes headlong down
  Fragments of woodland and whole branching trees;
  Nor can the solid bridges bide the shock
  As on the waters whelm: the turbulent stream,
  Strong with a hundred rains, beats round the piers,
  Crashes with havoc, and rolls beneath its waves
  Down-toppled masonry and ponderous stone,
  Hurling away whatever would oppose.
  Even so must move the blasts of all the winds,
  Which, when they spread, like to a mighty flood,
  Hither or thither, drive things on before
  And hurl to ground with still renewed assault,
  Or sometimes in their circling vortex seize
  And bear in cones of whirlwind down the world:
  The winds are sightless bodies and naught else-
  Since both in works and ways they rival well
  The mighty rivers, the visible in form.
  Then too we know the varied smells of things
  Yet never to our nostrils see them come;
  With eyes we view not burning heats, nor cold,
  Nor are we wont men's voices to behold.
  Yet these must be corporeal at the base,
  Since thus they smite the senses: naught there is
  Save body, having property of touch.
  And raiment, hung by surf-beat shore, grows moist,
  The same, spread out before the sun, will dry;
  Yet no one saw how sank the moisture in,
  Nor how by heat off-driven. Thus we know,
  That moisture is dispersed about in bits
  Too small for eyes to see. Another case:
  A ring upon the finger thins away
  Along the under side, with years and suns;
  The drippings from the eaves will scoop the stone;
  The hooked ploughshare, though of iron, wastes
  Amid the fields insidiously. We view
  The rock-paved highways worn by many feet;
  And at the gates the brazen statues show
  Their right hands leaner from the frequent touch
  Of wayfarers innumerable who greet.
  We see how wearing-down hath minished these,
  But just what motes depart at any time,
  The envious nature of vision bars our sight.
  Lastly whatever days and nature add
  Little by little, constraining things to grow
  In due proportion, no gaze however keen
  Of these our eyes hath watched and known. No more
  Can we observe what's lost at any time,
  When things wax old with eld and foul decay,
  Or when salt seas eat under beetling crags.
  Thus Nature ever by unseen bodies works.
                       THE VOID

    But yet creation's neither crammed nor blocked
  About by body: there's in things a void-
  Which to have known will serve thee many a turn,
  Nor will not leave thee wandering in doubt,
  Forever searching in the sum of all,
  And losing faith in these pronouncements mine.
  There's place intangible, a void and room.
  For were it not, things could in nowise move;
  Since body's property to block and check
  Would work on all and at an times the same.
  Thus naught could evermore push forth and go,
  Since naught elsewhere would yield a starting place.
  But now through oceans, lands, and heights of heaven
  By divers causes and in divers modes,
  Before our eyes we mark how much may move,
  Which, finding not a void, would fail deprived