On the Nature of Things · 24 of 30

Book V, Part 6

Now for the rest: copper and gold and iron Discovered were, and with them silver's weight And power of lead, when with prodigious heat The conflagrations burned the forest trees Among the mighty mountains, by a bolt Of lightning from the sky, or else because Men, warring in the woodlands, on their foes Had hurled fire to frighten and dismay, Or yet because, by goodness of the soil Invited, men desired to clear rich fields And turn the countryside to pasture-lands, Or slay the wild and thrive upon the spoils. (For hunting by pit-fall and by fire arose Before the art of hedging the covert round With net or stirring it with dogs of chase.) Howso the fact, and from what cause soever The flamy heat with awful crack and roar Had there devoured to their deepest roots The forest trees and baked the earth with fire, Then from the boiling veins began to ooze O rivulets of silver and of gold, Of lead and copper too, collecting soon Into the hollow places of the ground. And when men saw the cooled lumps anon To shine with splendour-sheen upon the ground, Much taken with that lustrous smooth delight, They 'gan to pry them out, and saw how each Had got a shape like to its earthy mould. Then would it enter their heads how these same lumps, If melted by heat, could into any form Or figure of things be run, and how, again, If hammered out, they could be nicely drawn To sharpest points or finest edge, and thus Yield to the forgers tools and give them power To chop the forest down, to hew the logs, To shave the beams and planks, besides to bore And punch and drill. And men began such work At first as much with tools of silver and gold As with the impetuous strength of the stout copper; But vainly- since their over-mastered power Would soon give way, unable to endure, Like copper, such hard labour. In those days Copper it was that was the thing of price; And gold lay useless, blunted with dull edge. Now lies the copper low, and gold hath come Unto the loftiest honours. Thus it is That rolling ages change the times of things: What erst was of a price, becomes at last A discard of no honour; whilst another Succeeds to glory, issuing from contempt, And day by day is sought for more and more, And, when 'tis found, doth flower in men's praise, Objects of wondrous honour. Now, Memmius, How nature of iron discovered was, thou mayst Of thine own self divine. Man's ancient arms Were hands, and nails and teeth, stones too and boughs- Breakage of forest trees- and flame and fire, As soon as known. Thereafter force of iron And copper discovered was; and copper's use Was known ere iron's, since more tractable Its nature is and its abundance more. With copper men to work the soil began, With copper to rouse the hurly waves of war, To straw the monstrous wounds, and seize away Another's flocks and fields. For unto them, Thus armed, all things naked of defence Readily yielded. Then by slow degrees The sword of iron succeeded, and the shape Of brazen sickle into scorn was turned: With iron to cleave the soil of earth they 'gan, And the contentions of uncertain war Were rendered equal. And, lo, man was wont Armed to mount upon the ribs of horse And guide him with the rein, and play about With right hand free, oft times before he tried Perils of war in yoked chariot; And yoked pairs abreast came earlier Than yokes of four, or scythed chariots Whereinto clomb the men-at-arms. And next The Punic folk did train the elephants- Those curst Lucanian oxen, hideous, The serpent-handed, with turrets on their bulks- To dure the wounds of war and panic-strike The mighty troops of Mars. Thus Discord sad Begat the one Thing after other, to be The terror of the nations under arms, And day by day to horrors of old war She added an increase. Bulls, too, they tried In war's grim business; and essayed to send Outrageous boars against the foes. And some Sent on before their ranks puissant lions With armed trainers and with masters fierce To guide and hold in chains- and yet in vain, Since fleshed with pell-mell slaughter, fierce they flew, And blindly through the squadrons havoc wrought, Shaking the frightful crests upon their heads, Now here, now there. Nor could the horsemen calm Their horses, panic-breasted at the roar, And rein them round to front the foe. With spring The infuriate she-lions would up-leap Now here, now there; and whoso came apace Against them, these they'd rend across the face; And others unwitting from behind they'd tear Down from their mounts, and twining round them, bring Tumbling to earth, o'ermastered by the wound, And with those powerful fangs and hooked claws Fasten upon them. Bulls would toss their friends, And trample under foot, and from beneath Rip flanks and bellies of horses with their horns, And with a threat'ning forehead jam the sod; And boars would gore with stout tusks their allies, Splashing in fury their own blood on spears Splintered in their own bodies, and would fell In rout and ruin infantry and horse. For there the beasts-of-saddle tried to scape The savage thrusts of tusk by shying off, Or rearing up with hoofs a-paw in air. In vain- since there thou mightest see them sink, Their sinews severed, and with heavy fall Bestrew the ground. And such of these as men Supposed well-trained long ago at home, Were in the thick of action seen to foam In fury, from the wounds, the shrieks, the flight, The panic, and the tumult; nor could men Aught of their numbers rally. For each breed And various of the wild beasts fled apart Hither or thither, as often in wars to-day Flee those Lucanian oxen, by the steel Grievously mangled, after they have wrought Upon their friends so many a dreadful doom. (If 'twas, indeed, that thus they did at all: But scarcely I'll believe that men could not With mind foreknow and see, as sure to come, Such foul and general disaster. This We, then, may hold as true in the great All, In divers worlds on divers plan create,- Somewhere afar more likely than upon One certain earth.) But men chose this to do Less in the hope of conquering than to give Their enemies a goodly cause of woe, Even though thereby they perished themselves, Since weak in numbers and since wanting arms.

Now, clothes of roughly interplaited strands Were earlier than loom-wove coverings; The loom-wove later than man's iron is, Since iron is needful in the weaving art, Nor by no other means can there be wrought Such polished tools- the treadles, spindles, shuttles, And sounding yarn-beams. And Nature forced the men, Before the woman kind, to work the wool: For all the male kind far excels in skill, And cleverer is by much- until at last The rugged farmer folk jeered at such tasks, And so were eager soon to give them o'er To women's hands, and in more hardy toil To harden arms and hands. But Nature herself, Mother of things, was the first seed-sower And primal grafter; since the berries and acorns, Dropping from off the trees, would there beneath Put forth in season swarms of little shoots; Hence too men's fondness for ingrafting slips Upon the boughs and setting out in holes The young shrubs o'er the fields. Then would they try Ever new modes of tilling their loved crofts, And mark they would how earth improved the taste Of the wild fruits by fond and fostering care. And day by day they'd force the woods to move Still higher up the mountain, and to yield The place below for tilth, that there they might, On plains and uplands, have their meadow-plats, Cisterns and runnels, crops of standing grain, And happy vineyards, and that all along O'er hillocks, intervales, and plains might run The silvery-green belt of olive-trees, Marking the plotted landscape; even as now Thou seest so marked with varied loveliness All the terrain which men adorn and plant With rows of goodly fruit-trees and hedge round With thriving shrubberies sown. But by the mouth To imitate the liquid notes of birds Was earlier far 'mongst men than power to make, By measured song, melodious verse and give Delight to ears. And whistlings of the wind Athrough the hollows of the reeds first taught The peasantry to blow into the stalks Of hollow hemlock-herb. Then bit by bit They learned sweet plainings, such as pipe out-pours, Beaten by finger-tips of singing men, When heard through unpathed groves and forest deeps And woodsy meadows, through the untrod haunts Of shepherd folk and spots divinely still. Thus time draws forward each and everything Little by little unto the midst of men, And reason uplifts it to the shores of light. These tunes would sooth and glad the minds of mortals When sated with food- for songs are welcome then. And often, lounging with friends in the soft grass Beside a river of water, underneath A big tree's branches, merrily they'd refresh Their frames, with no vast outlay- most of all If the weather were smiling and the times of the year Were painting the green of the grass around with flowers. Then jokes, then talk, then peals of jollity Would circle round; for then the rustic muse Was in her glory; then would antic Mirth Prompt them to garland head and shoulders about With chaplets of intertwined flowers and leaves, And to dance onward, out of tune, with limbs Clownishly swaying, and with clownish foot To beat our Mother Earth- from whence arose Laughter and peals of jollity, for, lo, Such frolic acts were in their glory then, Being more new and strange. And wakeful men Found solaces for their unsleeping hours In drawing forth variety of notes, In modulating melodies, in running With puckered lips along the tuned reeds, Whence, even in our day do the watchmen guard These old traditions, and have learned well To keep true measure. And yet they no whit Do get a larger fruit of gladsomeness Than got the woodland aborigines In olden times. For what we have at hand- If theretofore naught sweeter we have known- That chiefly pleases and seems best of all; But then some later, likely better, find Destroys its worth and changes our desires Regarding good of yesterday. And thus Began the loathing of the acorn; thus Abandoned were those beds with grasses strewn And with the leaves beladen. Thus, again, Fell into new contempt the pelts of beasts- Erstwhile a robe of honour, which, I guess, Aroused in those days envy so malign That the first wearer went to woeful death By ambuscades- and yet that hairy prize, Rent into rags by greedy foemen there And splashed by blood, was ruined utterly Beyond all use or vantage. Thus of old 'Twas pelts, and of to-day 'tis purple and gold That cark men's lives with cares and weary with war. Wherefore, methinks, resides the greater blame With us vain men today: for cold would rack, Without their pelts, the naked sons of earth; But us it nothing hurts to do without The purple vestment, broidered with gold And with imposing figures, if we still Make shift with some mean garment of the Plebs. So man in vain futilities toils on Forever and wastes in idle cares his years- Because, of very truth, he hath not learnt What the true end of getting is, nor yet At all how far true pleasure may increase. And 'tis desire for better and for more Hath carried by degrees mortality Out onward to the deep, and roused up From the far bottom mighty waves of war. But sun and moon, those watchmen of the world, With their own lanterns traversing around The mighty, the revolving vault, have taught Unto mankind that seasons of the years Return again, and that the Thing takes place After a fixed plan and order fixed. Already would they pass their life, hedged round By the strong towers; and cultivate an earth All portioned out and boundaried; already, Would the sea flower and sail-winged ships; Already men had, under treaty pacts, Confederates and allies, when poets began To hand heroic actions down in verse; Nor long ere this had letters been devised- Hence is our age unable to look back On what has gone before, except where reason Shows us a footprint. Sailings on the seas, Tillings of fields, walls, laws, and arms, and roads, Dress and the like, all prizes, all delights Of finer life, poems, pictures, chiselled shapes Of polished sculptures- all these arts were learned By practice and the mind's experience, As men walked forward step by eager step. Thus time draws forward each and everything Little by little into the midst of men, And reason uplifts it to the shores of light. For one thing after other did men see Grow clear by intellect, till with their arts They've now achieved the supreme pinnacle.