On The Nature Of Things

This terror, then, this darkness of the mind, Not sunrise with its flaring spokes of light, Nor glittering arrows of morning can disperse, But only Nature's aspect and her law, Which, teaching us, hath this exordium: Nothing from nothing ever yet was born. Fear holds dominion over mortality Only because, seeing in land and sky So much the cause whereof no wise they know, Men think Divinities are working there. Meantime, when once we know from nothing still Nothing can be create, we shall divine More clearly what we seek: those elements From which alone all things created are, And how accomplished by no tool of Gods. Suppose all sprang from all things: any kind Might take its origin from any thing, No fixed seed required. Men from the sea Might rise, and from the land the scaly breed, And, fowl full fledged come bursting from the sky;The horned cattle, the herds and all the wil