So in our programme of creation, mark How 'tis that, though the bodies of all stuff Are solid to the core, we yet explain The ways whereby some things are fashioned soft-- Air, water, earth, and fiery exhalations-- And by what force they function and go on: The fact is founded in the void of things. But if the primal germs themselves be soft, Reason cannot be brought to bear to show The ways whereby may be created these Great crags of basalt and the during iron; For their whole nature will profoundly lack The first foundations of a solid frame. But powerful in old simplicity, Abide the solid, the primeval germs; And by their combinations more condensed, All objects can be tightly knit and bound And made to show unconquerable strength. Again, since all things kind by kind obtain Fixed bounds of growing and conserving life; Since Nature hath inviolably decreed What each can do, what each can never do; Since naught is changed, but all things so abide That ever the variegated birds reveal The spots or stripes peculiar to their kind, Spring after spring: thus surely all that is Must be composed of matter immutable. For if the primal germs in any wise Were open to conquest and to change, 'twould be Uncertain also what could come to birth And what could not, and by what law to each Its scope prescribed, its boundary stone that clings So deep in Time. Nor could the generations Kind after kind so often reproduce The nature, habits, motions, ways of life, Of their progenitors. And then again, Since there is ever an extreme bounding point ***** Of that first body which our senses now Cannot perceive: That bounding point indeed Exists without all parts, a minimum Of nature, nor was e'er a thing apart, As of itself,--nor shall hereafter be, Since 'tis itself still parcel of another, A first and single part, whence other parts And others similar in order lie In a packed phalanx, filling to the full The nature of first body: being thus Not self-existent, they must cleave to that From which in nowise they can sundered be. So primal germs have solid singleness, Which tightly packed and closely joined cohere By virtue of their minim particles-- No compound by mere union of the same; But strong in their eternal singleness, Nature, reserving them as seeds for things, Permitteth naught of rupture or decrease.