There not at an exists the void inane.
  Thus primal bodies are solid, without a void.
  But since there's void in all begotten things,
  All solid matter must be round the same;
  Nor, by true reason canst thou prove aught hides
  And holds a void within its body, unless
  Thou grant what holds it be a solid. Know,
  That which can hold a void of things within
  Can be naught else than matter in union knit.
  Thus matter, consisting of a solid frame,
  Hath power to be eternal, though all else,
  Though all creation, be dissolved away.
  Again, were naught of empty and inane,
  The world were then a solid; as, without
  Some certain bodies to fill the places held,
  The world that is were but a vacant void.
  And so, infallibly, alternate-wise
  Body and void are still distinguished,
  Since nature knows no wholly full nor void.
  There are, then, certain bodies, possessed of power
  To vary forever the empty and the full;
  And these can nor be sundered from without
  By beats and blows, nor from within be torn
  By penetration, nor be overthrown
  By any assault soever through the world-
  For without void, naught can be crushed, it seems,
  Nor broken, nor severed by a cut in twain,
  Nor can it take the damp, or seeping cold
  Or piercing fire, those old destroyers three;
  But the more void within a thing, the more
  Entirely it totters at their sure assault.
  Thus if first bodies be, as I have taught,
  Solid, without a void, they must be then
  Eternal; and, if matter ne'er had been
  Eternal, long ere now had all things gone
  Back into nothing utterly, and all
  We see around from nothing had been born-
  But since I taught above that naught can be
  From naught created, nor the once begotten
  To naught be summoned back, these primal germs
  Must have an immortality of frame.
  And into these must each thing be resolved,
  When comes its supreme hour, that thus there be
  At hand the stuff for plenishing the world.

  So primal germs have solid singleness
  Nor otherwise could they have been conserved
  Through aeons and infinity of time
  For the replenishment of wasted worlds.

    Once more, if Nature had given a scope for things
  To be forever broken more and more,
  By now the bodies of matter would have been
  So far reduced by breakings in old days
  That from them nothing could, at season fixed,
  Be born, and arrive its prime and of life.
  For, lo, each thing is quicker marred than made;
  And so what'er the long infinitude
  Of days and all fore-passed time would now
  By this have broken and ruined and dissolved,
  That same could ne'er in all remaining time
  Be builded up for plenishing the world.
  But mark: infallibly a fixed bound
  Remaineth stablished 'gainst their breaking down;
  Since we behold each thing soever renewed,
  And unto all, their seasons, after their kind,
  Wherein they arrive the flower of their age.

    Again, if bounds have not been set against
  The breaking down of this corporeal world,
  Yet must all bodies of whatever things
  Have still endured from everlasting time
  Unto this present, as not yet assailed
  By shocks of peril. But because the same
  Are, to thy thinking, of a nature frail,
  It ill accords that thus they could remain
  (As thus they do) through everlasting time,
  Vexed through the ages (as indeed they are)
  By the innumerable blows of chance.

    So in our programme of creation, mark
  How 'tis that, though the bodies of all stuff
  The ways whereby some things are fashioned soft-
  Air, water, earth, and fiery exhalations-
  And by what force they function and go on:
  The fact is founded in the void of things.
  But if the primal germs themselves be soft,
  Reason cannot be brought to bear to show
  The ways whereby may be created these
  Great crags of basalt and the during iron;
  For their whole nature will profoundly lack
  The first foundations of a solid frame.
  But powerful in old simplicity,
  Abide the solid, the primeval germs;
  And by their combinations more condensed,
  All objects can be tightly knit and bound
  And made to show unconquerable strength.
  Again, since all things kind by kind obtain
  Fixed bounds of growing and conserving life;
  Since Nature hath inviolably decreed