De Rerum Natura

Lucretius

Lucretius. De Rerum Natura. William Ellery Leonard. E. P. Dutton. 1916.

  1. I fear perhaps thou deemest that we fare
  2. An impious road to realms of thought profane;
  3. But 'tis that same religion oftener far
  4. Hath bred the foul impieties of men:
  5. As once at Aulis, the elected chiefs,
  6. Foremost of heroes, Danaan counsellors,
  7. Defiled Diana's altar, virgin queen,
  8. With Agamemnon's daughter, foully slain.
  9. She felt the chaplet round her maiden locks
  10. And fillets, fluttering down on either cheek,
  11. And at the altar marked her grieving sire,
  12. The priests beside him who concealed the knife,
  13. And all the folk in tears at sight of her.
  14. With a dumb terror and a sinking knee
  15. She dropped; nor might avail her now that first
  16. 'Twas she who gave the king a father's name.
  17. They raised her up, they bore the trembling girl
  18. On to the altar- hither led not now
  19. With solemn rites and hymeneal choir,
  20. But sinless woman, sinfully foredone,
  21. A parent felled her on her bridal day,
  22. Making his child a sacrificial beast
  23. To give the ships auspicious winds for Troy:
  24. Such are the crimes to which Religion leads.
  1. And there shall come the time when even thou,
  2. Forced by the soothsayer's terror-tales, shalt seek
  3. To break from us. Ah, many a dream even now
  4. Can they concoct to rout thy plans of life,
  5. And trouble all thy fortunes with base fears.
  6. I own with reason: for, if men but knew
  7. Some fixed end to ills, they would be strong
  8. By some device unconquered to withstand
  9. Religions and the menacings of seers.
  10. But now nor skill nor instrument is theirs,
  11. Since men must dread eternal pains in death.
  12. For what the soul may be they do not know,
  13. Whether 'tis born, or enter in at birth,
  14. And whether, snatched by death, it die with us,
  15. Or visit the shadows and the vasty caves
  16. Of Orcus, or by some divine decree
  17. Enter the brute herds, as our Ennius sang,
  18. Who first from lovely Helicon brought down
  19. A laurel wreath of bright perennial leaves,
  20. Renowned forever among the Italian clans.
  21. Yet Ennius too in everlasting verse
  22. Proclaims those vaults of Acheron to be,
  23. Though thence, he said, nor souls nor bodies fare,
  24. But only phantom figures, strangely wan,
  25. And tells how once from out those regions rose
  26. Old Homer's ghost to him and shed salt tears
  27. And with his words unfolded Nature's source.
  28. Then be it ours with steady mind to clasp
  29. The purport of the skies- the law behind
  30. The wandering courses of the sun and moon;
  31. To scan the powers that speed all life below;
  32. But most to see with reasonable eyes
  33. Of what the mind, of what the soul is made,
  34. And what it is so terrible that breaks
  35. On us asleep, or waking in disease,
  36. Until we seem to mark and hear at hand
  37. Dead men whose bones earth bosomed long ago.
  1. I know how hard it is in Latian verse
  2. To tell the dark discoveries of the Greeks,
  3. Chiefly because our pauper-speech must find
  4. Strange terms to fit the strangeness of the thing;
  5. Yet worth of thine and the expected joy
  6. Of thy sweet friendship do persuade me on
  7. To bear all toil and wake the clear nights through,
  8. Seeking with what of words and what of song
  9. I may at last most gloriously uncloud
  10. For thee the light beyond, wherewith to view
  11. The core of being at the centre hid.