PARMENIDES ON THE NATURE OF THINGS.

 

I. The Journey

 

And so, behind that team of sapient steeds,

On the illustrious road divine that leads

The wise world-wanderer to his heart’s desire,

The straining car that bears me onward speeds ;

 

On, ever on, its forerunners a band

Of Maids. The axle-tree even as a brand

Smouldered, and shrilled a music as of pipes

To the twin wheels that rac’d on either hand,

 

When, once again from the dim house of night

Hastening upwards to the realms of light,

The Daughters of the Sun-God cast away

Their sable kerchiefs and their heads undight.

 

Here stands the portal where the paths divide

Of night and day ; stony the threshold, wide

The lintel ; filled with mighty doors it is,

By which the great Avenger doth abide, –

 

Justice, who grasps the ever-changing key.

Her did the Maids pursuade with honey’d plea

To slip the pin and smite the bolt away ;

And the doors sprang asunder instantly,

 

As one by one the posts of knotted brass

Back on the hinges rolled their thick-wrought mass,

Yawning to let the Maids and steeds and car

On through the gulph and up the highway pass.

 

And me the Goddess greeted, and with look

Benign my right hand in her right hand took,

And “Hail!” she said “O Youth, for thou art sped

Divinely hither ; hail !” and thus bespoke :

 

” Tis no ill doom hath led thee on this road

Far from the common track of mortals trod,

But, tended by those deathless Charioteers,

Justice and Right bring thee to my abode.

 

“Thine be it now the steadfast heart to know

Of Truth well-rounded, and the ebb and flow

Of Semblance in men’s minds ; no sure belief

Is in it; thou must learn it even so,

 

“That, testing all things, so thou may’st declare

The Things that Seem, how men should judge they Are ;

Yet must thou set a curb upon thy thought,

And ever of illusion’s path beware,

 

“Lest, poring all too closely on that maze,

The force of use and wont distract thy gaze,

And, droning in thine ear an idle din,

Hurry thee babbling down deceitful ways.

 

“But hold to Reason when dispute is rife,

And thou shalt know there is not any strife

Can shake this much-tried argument of mine :

This is the proof, this is the Way of Life.”

 

II. The Way of Truth

 

“See how thought makes the far thing near! ‘Tis

plain

Thou canst not cleave the All that Is in twain;

‘Tis not a thing of parcels that may be

Scattered abroad, nor yet heaped up again.

 

“Come, ponder deeply these two Ways of Thought

By which alone all knowledge must be sought, –

The Way of Truth and Suasion hand in hand, –

That What Is Is and Not to Be is Naught, –

 

“And then the Way of those who take for true

What neither tongue can tell nor thought pursue,?

That something Is Not and must needs Not Be:

That path as wholly blind thou shalt eschew.

 

“For how can what Is Not be ever known,

Since to be thought on and to be are one?

For everything may be, nay needs must be,

Which speech can name or the mind think upon ;

 

“But what Is Not in Being hath no part.

Lay deeply, then, these precepts to thy heart,

That from the snare of false opinion’s Way

Thy firm-set feet may evermore depart;

 

“Much more from that which witless mortals stray,

Double-faced fools who know not what they say,

But sightless, shiftless, lacking pilotage,

Palsied and deaf, they hither and thither sway ;

 

“Dull herds, to whom the Thing that Is doth seem

The same as what Is Not ; and then they deem

The same is not the same, and all the world

Whelm in an ever backward-flowing stream.

 

“Of this be sure, there is no argument

Shall prove What Is Not Is ; be thou content

To curb thy wit from searching out that way,

On the one Way of Being wholly bent:

 

“Whereon is set full many a sign to tell

That All that Is is indestructible,

Nor ever was created; for complete,

And endless is it, and immovable.

 

“It never was nor will be; it Is now,

Whole, one, continuous. Its sources how

Wilt thou search out ? Or whence draw its increase ?

‘From that which was before it,’ sayest thou?

 

“But Nothing was before. From Nothing, then ?

But this may not be uttere’d of men,

Nay, nor conceived, that Nothing ever was.

And if from Nothing, what should choose the when,

 

“What fix the soon or late, by what decree,

When that which Is should start to grow and be?

Wherefore hold fast this Truth : the Thing which Is

Or all in all or not at all must be.

 

“Nor will the force of true belief allow

Out of what Is Not aught save Naught to grow;

Therefore things neither perish nor become ;

Justice hath fettered them nor lets them go.

 

“Is it, or Is it Not? All must abide

That test. Let stern Necessity decide,

Who saith ‘It Is’ is true, and casts “Is Not’

As nameless and unthinkable aside

 

“How then could That which Is ever arise?

For if it was, it Is Not; and likewise

It can not be some day about to be ;

Who saith “It will be’ that It Is denies.

 

“And thus becoming, like a flickering flame,

Is quite extinguished, and that other name,

Destruction, is an empty sound; What Is

Hath nor an end nor source from which it came.

 

“And how divide it where no difference is,

Nor more of it in that place than in this

To hold its unity apart? Thus all

Is full of it. What Is cleaves to What Is.

 

“And therefore, as in mighty bonds comprest,

Without beginning, in an endless rest

Is that Which Is, since we have spurned afar

Birth and destruction at the truth’s behest.

 

“Ever the same and ever in one stay

(For strong Necessity hath every way

Fastened the limit round It) It abides,

And changes not, wrapt in Itself alway.

 

“And straitly bound in limits, as is fit,

The All that Is can not be infinite;

Else It would lack all things ; but, lo, It lacks

Nothing; Naught can be added unto It.

 

“Thought and the goal of thought, these two are one.

For never shalt thou find beneath the sun

A thought exprest without the Thing that Is ;

Since no things are, nor shall be, no not one,

 

“Save those which into the one perfect round

Of moveless being fate hath strictly bound.

Wherefore those names that mortals in their speech

Fix, and believe them true, are empty sound,

 

“Telling of birth and of destruction,

Of how things change their places and are gone,

How now they are, and now forsooth are not,

And how fair colors fade that brightly shone.

 

“But since What Is hath an extremest bound,

‘Tis like a massy sphere’s unbroken round,

Which, from the center pois’d equally,

Complete and equal every way is found.

 

“There is no Nothing anywhere to break

Its even unity, or greater make

Its plenitude in this place than in that ;

It can not here be strong and there be weak;

 

“For not in any wise can That which Is

Be present more in that place than in this;

Out from the center to the utmost verge

All equal is and all inviolate is.”

 

III. The Way of Opinion

 

“Thus far the Truth with reasons sure and clear

Have I declar’d, and next what Shows appear

To mortal men must be in order told :

Do thou to my deceitful song give ear.

 

“Two Forms there are that mortals have in mind

To name, and naming one they wander blind;

They part the twain as opposite in shape,

And to each opposite are marks assigned.

 

“To one they give the Heaven’s ethereal flame,

Gentle, exceeding light, ever the same,

Itself like to itself; contrariwise

To another Form they give another name, –

 

“The heavy body of darkness, solid night,

Set over against the influence of light.

(I tell thee all as all most likely seems,

That no man’s subtlety may pass thee quite.)

 

“And then, their names being given to night and light

And to whate’er belongs to either’s might,

Since neither in the other hath a share

All things are filled with equal light and night.

 

* * *

 

“The substance of the Heavens shalt thou know,

And all the high fixed signs that in them glow,

And those effulgent labors of the Sun –

Whence come his cleansing fires and whither go ;

 

“The wandering Moon too, with her pale round face,

Her works and substance shall thy cunning trace ;

And how the Heavens were born, by what dread

law

They bind the world and hold the stars in place.

 

“And thou shalt know how Sun and Moon and Earth

And uttermost Olympus sprang to birth,

And all-embracing Ether, and the might

Of burning Stars, and the Heaven’s milky girth.

 

* * *

 

“With unmixed fire are fill’d the inmost rings;

The next with darkness ; and the appointed springs

Of flame gush in between ; and in the midst

The Goddess is who sways and steers all Things,

 

“Urging all creatures on the sweets to prove

Of mating and the painful fruits thereof,

Male unto female, female unto male ;

For of all Gods the first she fashioned Love.”