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           The which now having taught, I will go on

           To bind thereto a fact to this allied

           And drawing from this its proof: those primal germs

           Which have been fashioned all of one like shape

           Are infinite in tale; for, since the forms

           Themselves are finite in divergences,

           Then those which are alike will have to be

           Infinite, else the sum of stuff remains

           A finite—what I've proved is not the fact,

           Showing in verse how corpuscles of stuff,

           From everlasting and to-day the same,

           Uphold the sum of things, all sides around

           By old succession of unending blows.

           For though thou view'st some beasts to be more rare,

           And mark'st in them a less prolific stock,

           Yet in another region, in lands remote,

           That kind abounding may make up the count;

           Even as we mark among the four-foot kind

           Snake-handed elephants, whose thousands wall

           With ivory ramparts India about,

           That her interiors cannot entered be—

           So big her count of brutes of which we see

           Such few examples. Or suppose, besides,

           We feign some thing, one of its kind and sole

           With body born, to which is nothing like

           In all the lands: yet now unless shall be

           An infinite count of matter out of which

           Thus to conceive and bring it forth to life,

           It cannot be created and—what's more—

           It cannot take its food and get increase.

           Yea, if through all the world in finite tale

           Be tossed the procreant bodies of one thing,

           Whence, then, and where in what mode, by what power,

           Shall they to meeting come together there,

           In such vast ocean of matter and tumult strange?—

           No means they have of joining into one.

           But, just as, after mighty ship-wrecks piled,

           The mighty main is wont to scatter wide

           The rowers' banks, the ribs, the yards, the prow,

           The masts and swimming oars, so that afar

           Along all shores of lands are seen afloat

           The carven fragments of the rended poop,

           Giving a lesson to mortality

           To shun the ambush of the faithless main,

           The violence and the guile, and trust it not

           At any hour, however much may smile

           The crafty enticements of the placid deep:

           Exactly thus, if once thou holdest true

           That certain seeds are finite in their tale,

           The various tides of matter, then, must needs

           Scatter them flung throughout the ages all,

           So that not ever can they join, as driven

           Together into union, nor remain

           In union, nor with increment can grow—

           But facts in proof are manifest for each:

           Things can be both begotten and increase.

           'Tis therefore manifest that primal germs,

           Are infinite in any class thou wilt—

           From whence is furnished matter for all things.

           Nor can those motions that bring death prevail

           Forever, nor eternally entomb

           The welfare of the world; nor, further, can

           Those motions that give birth to things and growth

           Keep them forever when created there.

           Thus the long war, from everlasting waged,

           With equal strife among the elements

           Goes on and on. Now here, now there, prevail

           The vital forces of the world—or fall.

           Mixed with the funeral is the wildered wail

           Of infants coming to the shores of light:

           No night a day, no dawn a night hath followed

           That heard not, mingling with the small birth-cries,

           The wild laments, companions old of death

           And the black rites.

                                 This, too, in these affairs

           'Tis fit thou hold well sealed, and keep consigned

           With no forgetting brain: nothing there is

           Whose nature is apparent out of hand

           That of one kind of elements consists—

           Nothing there is that's not of mixed seed.

           And whatsoe'er possesses in itself

           More largely many powers and properties

           Shows thus that here within itself there are

           The largest number of kinds and differing shapes

           Of elements. And, chief of all, the earth

           Hath in herself first bodies whence the springs,

           Rolling chill waters, renew forevermore

           The unmeasured main; hath whence the fires arise—

           For burns in many a spot her flamed crust,

           Whilst the impetuous Aetna raves indeed

           From more profounder fires—and she, again,

           Hath in herself the seed whence she can raise

           The shining grains and gladsome trees for men;

           Whence, also, rivers, fronds, and gladsome pastures

           Can she supply for mountain-roaming beasts.

           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