De Rerum Natura

Lucretius

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

  1. Hence it comes that we
  2. Sometimes don't feel alighting on our frames
  3. The clinging dust, or chalk that settles soft;
  4. Nor mists of night, nor spider's gossamer
  5. We feel against us, when, upon our road,
  6. Its net entangles us, nor on our head
  7. The dropping of its withered garmentings;
  8. Nor bird-feathers, nor vegetable down,
  9. Flying about, so light they barely fall;
  10. Nor feel the steps of every crawling thing,
  11. Nor each of all those footprints on our skin
  12. Of midges and the like. To that degree
  13. Must many primal germs be stirred in us
  14. Ere once the seeds of soul that through our frame
  15. Are intermingled 'gin to feel that those
  16. Primordials of the body have been strook,
  17. And ere, in pounding with such gaps between,
  18. They clash, combine and leap apart in turn.
  19. But mind is more the keeper of the gates,
  20. Hath more dominion over life than soul.
  21. For without intellect and mind there's not
  22. One part of soul can rest within our frame
  23. Least part of time; companioning, it goes
  24. With mind into the winds away, and leaves
  25. The icy members in the cold of death.
  26. But he whose mind and intellect abide
  27. Himself abides in life. However much
  28. The trunk be mangled, with the limbs lopped off,
  29. The soul withdrawn and taken from the limbs,
  30. Still lives the trunk and draws the vital air.
  31. Even when deprived of all but all the soul,
  32. Yet will it linger on and cleave to life,-
  33. Just as the power of vision still is strong,
  34. If but the pupil shall abide unharmed,
  35. Even when the eye around it's sorely rent-
  36. Provided only thou destroyest not
  37. Wholly the ball, but, cutting round the pupil,
  38. Leavest that pupil by itself behind-
  39. For more would ruin sight. But if that centre,
  40. That tiny part of eye, be eaten through,
  41. Forthwith the vision fails and darkness comes,
  42. Though in all else the unblemished ball be clear.
  43. 'Tis by like compact that the soul and mind
  44. Are each to other bound forevermore.
  1. Now come: that thou mayst able be to know
  2. That minds and the light souls of all that live
  3. Have mortal birth and death, I will go on
  4. Verses to build meet for thy rule of life,
  5. Sought after long, discovered with sweet toil.
  6. But under one name I'd have thee yoke them both;
  7. And when, for instance, I shall speak of soul,
  8. Teaching the same to be but mortal, think
  9. Thereby I'm speaking also of the mind-
  10. Since both are one, a substance inter-joined.
  11. First, then, since I have taught how soul exists
  12. A subtle fabric, of particles minute,
  13. Made up from atoms smaller much than those
  14. Of water's liquid damp, or fog, or smoke,
  15. So in mobility it far excels,
  16. More prone to move, though strook by lighter cause
  17. Even moved by images of smoke or fog-
  18. As where we view, when in our sleeps we're lulled,
  19. The altars exhaling steam and smoke aloft-
  20. For, beyond doubt, these apparitions come
  21. To us from outward. Now, then, since thou seest,
  22. Their liquids depart, their waters flow away,
  23. When jars are shivered, and since fog and smoke
  24. Depart into the winds away, believe
  25. The soul no less is shed abroad and dies
  26. More quickly far, more quickly is dissolved
  27. Back to its primal bodies, when withdrawn
  28. From out man's members it has gone away.
  29. For, sure, if body (container of the same
  30. Like as a jar), when shivered from some cause,
  31. And rarefied by loss of blood from veins,
  32. Cannot for longer hold the soul, how then
  33. Thinkst thou it can be held by any air-
  34. A stuff much rarer than our bodies be?