第16章

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 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;