De Rerum Natura

Lucretius

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

  1. Now learn of what remains! More keenly hear!
  2. And for myself, my mind is not deceived
  3. How dark it is: But the large hope of praise
  4. Hath strook with pointed thyrsus through my heart;
  5. On the same hour hath strook into my breast
  6. Sweet love of the Muses, wherewith now instinct,
  7. I wander afield, thriving in sturdy thought,
  8. Through unpathed haunts of the Pierides,
  9. Trodden by step of none before. I joy
  10. To come on undefiled fountains there,
  11. To drain them deep; I joy to pluck new flowers,
  12. To seek for this my head a signal crown
  13. From regions where the Muses never yet
  14. Have garlanded the temples of a man:
  15. First, since I teach concerning mighty things,
  16. And go right on to loose from round the mind
  17. The tightened coils of dread religion;
  18. Next, since, concerning themes so dark, I frame
  19. Songs so pellucid, touching all throughout
  20. Even with the Muses' charm- which, as 'twould seem,
  21. Is not without a reasonable ground:
  22. But as physicians, when they seek to give
  23. Young boys the nauseous wormwood, first do touch
  24. The brim around the cup with the sweet juice
  25. And yellow of the honey, in order that
  26. The thoughtless age of boyhood be cajoled
  27. As far as the lips, and meanwhile swallow down
  28. The wormwood's bitter draught, and, though befooled,
  29. Be yet not merely duped, but rather thus
  30. Grow strong again with recreated health:
  31. So now I too (since this my doctrine seems
  32. In general somewhat woeful unto those
  33. Who've had it not in hand, and since the crowd
  34. Starts back from it in horror) have desired
  35. To expound our doctrine unto thee in song
  36. Soft-speaking and Pierian, and, as 'twere,
  37. To touch it with sweet honey of the Muse-
  38. If by such method haply I might hold
  39. The mind of thee upon these lines of ours,
  40. Till thou see through the nature of all things,
  41. And how exists the interwoven frame.
  1. But since I've taught that bodies of matter, made
  2. Completely solid, hither and thither fly
  3. Forevermore unconquered through all time,
  4. Now come, and whether to the sum of them
  5. There be a limit or be none, for thee
  6. Let us unfold; likewise what has been found
  7. To be the wide inane, or room, or space
  8. Wherein all things soever do go on,
  9. Let us examine if it finite be
  10. All and entire, or reach unmeasured round
  11. And downward an illimitable profound.
  12. Thus, then, the All that is is limited
  13. In no one region of its onward paths,
  14. For then 'tmust have forever its beyond.
  15. And a beyond 'tis seen can never be
  16. For aught, unless still further on there be
  17. A somewhat somewhere that may bound the same-
  18. So that the thing be seen still on to where
  19. The nature of sensation of that thing
  20. Can follow it no longer. Now because
  21. Confess we must there's naught beside the sum,
  22. There's no beyond, and so it lacks all end.
  23. It matters nothing where thou post thyself,
  24. In whatsoever regions of the same;
  25. Even any place a man has set him down
  26. Still leaves about him the unbounded all
  27. Outward in all directions; or, supposing
  28. A moment the all of space finite to be,
  29. If some one farthest traveller runs forth
  30. Unto the extreme coasts and throws ahead
  31. A flying spear, is't then thy wish to think
  32. It goes, hurled off amain, to where 'twas sent
  33. And shoots afar, or that some object there
  34. Can thwart and stop it? For the one or other
  35. Thou must admit and take. Either of which
  36. Shuts off escape for thee, and does compel
  37. That thou concede the all spreads everywhere,
  38. Owning no confines. Since whether there be
  39. Aught that may block and check it so it comes
  40. Not where 'twas sent, nor lodges in its goal,
  41. Or whether borne along, in either view
  42. 'Thas started not from any end. And so
  43. I'll follow on, and whereso'er thou set
  44. The extreme coasts, I'll query, "what becomes
  45. Thereafter of thy spear?" 'Twill come to pass
  46. That nowhere can a world's-end be, and that
  47. The chance for further flight prolongs forever
  48. The flight itself. Besides, were all the space
  49. Of the totality and sum shut in
  50. With fixed coasts, and bounded everywhere,
  51. Then would the abundance of world's matter flow
  52. Together by solid weight from everywhere
  53. Still downward to the bottom of the world,
  54. Nor aught could happen under cope of sky,
  55. Nor could there be a sky at all or sun-
  56. Indeed, where matter all one heap would lie,
  57. By having settled during infinite time.
  58. But in reality, repose is given
  59. Unto no bodies 'mongst the elements,
  60. Because there is no bottom whereunto
  61. They might, as 'twere, together flow, and where
  62. They might take up their undisturbed abodes.
  63. In endless motion everything goes on
  64. Forevermore; out of all regions, even
  65. Out of the pit below, from forth the vast,
  66. Are hurtled bodies evermore supplied.