153O race stunned by fear of icy death, why do you fear Styx, why the shades and empty names, the matter of poets, and the perils of an unreal world? 156Do not think that bodies, whether the pyre has taken them away with flame or age with decay, can suffer any ills! 158Souls are free from death, and always, leaving their former abode, they live in new homes and dwell there once received. 160I myself (for I remember) at the time of the Trojan War was Euphorbus, son of Panthous, in whose breast once stuck the heavy spear of the younger son of Atreus: I recently recognised the shield, the burden of my left arm, in the temple of Juno in Argos, city of Abas.
165All things change, nothing perishes: the spirit wanders, and comes from there to here, from here to there, and occupies whatever limbs it pleases, and passes from beasts into human bodies and from us into beasts, and never perishes at any time; 169and as pliant wax is stamped with new figures and does not remain as it was nor keep the same forms, but is still itself the same, so I teach that the soul is always the same but migrates into various shapes. 173Therefore, lest piety be overcome by the craving of the belly, refrain, I prophesy, from driving out kindred souls by unholy slaughter, and let not blood be nourished by blood!
176And since I am borne over the great sea and have given my full sails to the winds: there is nothing in the whole world that endures. 178All things flow, and every form is shaped as it wanders; 179time itself too glides on in constant motion, no differently from a river; for neither a river nor the fleeting hour can stand still, but as wave is driven by wave and, pressed by the one coming, presses the one before, so the times flee and at the same time follow, and are always new; 184for what was before is left behind, and what had not been comes to be, and every moment is renewed.
186You see too that nights, their course run, stretch towards the light, and that this shining radiance follows the black night. 188Nor is the colour of the sky the same when all things lie weary in quiet at midnight, and when bright Lucifer comes out on his white horse; and it is different again when the daughter of Pallas, forerunner of the light, stains the world that is to be handed over to Phoebus. 192The god's very shield is red in the morning when it rises from the depths of the earth, and red when it is hidden in the depths of the earth; it is white at its height, because the nature of the upper air is purer there and it escapes far from the contagion of the earth.
196Nor can the shape of Diana by night ever be equal or the same, and always today's is smaller than tomorrow's if she is waxing, larger if she is shrinking her orb. 199What? 199do you not see the year passing through four seasons, imitating the course of our life? 201For in early spring it is tender and milky and most like a child in age: then the grass, shining and lacking strength, swells, and is not firm, and delights the farmers with hope. 204Then all things blossom, and the nurturing field plays with the colours of flowers, and there is as yet no strength in the leaves. 206After spring the year, grown sturdier, passes into summer and becomes a strong young man: for no age is sturdier or more fruitful, none burns more hotly.
209Autumn follows, the heat of youth laid aside, ripe and mellow, midway in temper between youth and old age, its temples too sprinkled with grey. 212Then aged winter comes, shaggy, with trembling step, either stripped of its hair or white in what it has. 214Our own bodies too are always changing, without any rest, and what we were or are, we shall not be tomorrow; 216there was a day when we lived only as seeds and the first hopes of men in our mother's womb. 218Nature applied her skilful hands and did not wish our bodies to be cramped, shut up in the inward parts of our swollen mother, and sent them out from that home into the open air.
221Brought forth into the light, the infant lay without strength; 222soon on all fours it carried its limbs in the manner of beasts, and little by little, trembling and with knees not yet firm, it stood up, its sinews helped by some effort. 225Then it was strong and swift, and passes through the span of youth, and, the years of middle life too completed, glides down the sloping path of declining old age. 228This undermines and demolishes the strength of former years, and Milo, grown old, weeps when he sees those arms hang empty and flabby (arms which in the mass of their solid muscles had been like Hercules'!); 232The daughter of Tyndareus weeps too when she sees an old woman's wrinkles in the mirror, and asks herself why she was twice carried off.
234Time, devourer of things, and you, envious age, destroy all things, and, gradually wearing them with the teeth of time, consume all things in slow death. 237Not even these things endure that we call elements, and what changes they go through (pay attention!) I shall teach. 239The eternal universe contains four generative bodies; 240of these two are heavy and are borne downwards by their weight, earth and water, and as many lack weight and, with nothing pressing on them, seek the heights, air and fire, purer than air. 244Although these are separated in space, yet all things come from them and fall back into them; earth, dissolved, thins into flowing water, moisture, rarefied, passes off into breezes and air, and air, its weight also removed, very thin, flashes up again into the fires above.
249Then they return backwards, and the same order is unwoven; 250for fire, condensed, passes into thick air, this into water, and earth is compacted from water rolled together.