/ Research / Empedocles / The Fragments of Empedocles: On Nature /

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Table of Contents

Scent.

  1. Sniffing with nostrils mites from wild beasts’ limbs, Left by their feet along the tender grass. . .

  2. Thus got all things share of breath and smells.

On the Psychic Life.

  1. Thus all things think their though[t] by will of Chance.

  2. In so far the lightest at their fall Do str ike together….

  3. In the blood-streams, back-leaping unto it,

The heart is nourished, where prevails the power

That men call thought; for lo the blood that stirs

About the heart is man’s controlling thought.

  1. For unto men their thrift of reason grows,

According to the body’s thrift and state.

  1. For as of these commingled all things are,

Even so through these men think, rejoice, or grieve.

  1. As far as mortals change by day, so far By night their thinking changes…

  2. For ’tis through Earth that Earth we do behold, Through Ether, divine Ether luminous, Through Water, Water, through Fire, devouring Fire, And Love through Love, and Hate through doleful Hate.

  3. For if reliant on a spirit firm, With inclination and endeavor pure, Thou wilt behold them, all these things shall be Forever thine, for service, and besides Thereof full many another shalt thou gain; For of themselves into that core they grow Of each man’s nature, where his essence lies. But if for others thou wilt look and reach— Such empty treasures, myriad and vile, As men be after, which forevermore Blunt soul and keen desire—O then shall these Most swiftly leave thee as the seasons roll; For all their yearning is a quick return Unto their own primeval stock. For know: All things have fixed intent and share of thought.

Dominion.

  1. You shalt master every drug that e’er Was made defense ‘gainst sickness and old age— For thee alone all this I will fulfil— And thou shalt calm the might of tireless winds, That burst on earth and ruin seedlands; aye, And if thou wilt, shalt thou arouse the blasts, And watch them take their vengeance, wild and shrill, For that before thou cowedst them. Thou shalt change Black rain to drought, at seasons good for men, And the long drought of summer shalt thou change To torrents, nourishing the mountain trees, As down they stream from ether. And thou shalt From Hades beckon the might of perished men.

THE PURIFICATIONS

The Healer and Prophet.

Ye friends, who in the mighty city dwell Along the yellow Acragas hard by The Acropolis, ye stewards of good works, The stranger’s refuge venerable and kind, All hail, O friends! But unto ye I walk As god immortal now, no more as man, On all sides honored fittingly and well, Crowned both with fillets and with flowering wreaths. When with my throngs of men and women I come To thriving cities, I am sought by prayers, And thousands follow me that they may ask The path to weal and vantage, craving some For oracles, whilst others seek to hear A healing word ‘gainst many a foul disease That all too long hath pierced with grievous pains.

Yet why urge more, as if forsooth I wrought Some big affair—do I not far excel The mortals round me, doomed to many deaths!

O friends, I know indeed in these the words Which I will speak that very truth abides; But greatly troublous unto men alway Hath been the emulous struggle of Belief To reach their bosoms.

Expiation and Metempsychosis.

  1. There is a word of Fate, an old decree and everlasting of the gods, made fast With amplest oaths, that whosoe’er of those Far spirits, with their lot of age-long life, Do foul their limbs with slaughter in offense, Or swear forsworn, as failing of their pledge, Shall wander thrice ten thousand weary years Far from the Blessed, and be born through time In various shapes of mortal kind, which change Ever and ever troublous paths of life: For now Air hunts them onward to the Sea; Now the wild Sea disgorges them on Land; Now Earth will spue toward beams of radiant Sun; Whence he will toss them back to whirling Air— Each gets from other what they all abhor. And in that brood I too am numbered now, A fugitive and vagabond from heaven, As one obedient unto raving Strife.

Charis abhors intolerable Fate.

For I was once already boy and girl, Thicket and bird, and mute fish in the waves.

This Earth of Ours.

I wept and wailed, beholding the strange place.

From what large honor and what height of bliss Am I here fallen to move with mortal kind!

This Sky-Roofed World.

And then we came unto a roofed cave.

This Vale of Tears.

  1.                        A joyless land,

Where Slaughter and Grudge, and troops of Dooms besides, Where shriveled Diseases and obscene Decays, And Labors, burdened with the water-jars, Do wander down the dismal meads of Bane.

  1.                   There was Earth-mother,

There the far-peering Virgin of the Sun, And bloody Quarrel and grave-eyed Harmony, And there was Fair and Foul and Speed and Late, Black-haired Confusion and sweet maiden Sure.

Growth and Decay, and Sleep and Roused-from-sleep, Action and Rest, and Glory many-crowned, And Filth, and Silence and prevailing Voice.

O mortal kind! O ye poor sons of grief! From such contentions and such sighings sprung!

The Changing Forms.

For from the living he the dead did make, Their forms exchanging…

All things doth Nature change, enwrapping souls In unfamiliar tunics of the flesh.

The worthiest dwellings for the souls of men, When ’tis their lot to live in forms of brutes, Are tawny lions, those great beasts that sleep Couched on the black earth up the mountain side; But, when in forms of beautiful plumed trees They live, the bays are worthiest for souls.

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