De Rerum Natura

Lucretius

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

  1. For as to what men sometimes will affirm:
  2. That more than Tartarus (the realm of death)
  3. They fear diseases and a life of shame,
  4. And know the substance of the soul is blood,
  5. Or rather wind (if haply thus their whim),
  6. And so need naught of this our science, then
  7. Thou well may'st note from what's to follow now
  8. That more for glory do they braggart forth
  9. Than for belief. For mark these very same:
  10. Exiles from country, fugitives afar
  11. From sight of men, with charges foul attaint,
  12. Abased with every wretchedness, they yet
  13. Live, and where'er the wretches come, they yet
  14. Make the ancestral sacrifices there,
  15. Butcher the black sheep, and to gods below
  16. Offer the honours, and in bitter case
  17. Turn much more keenly to religion.
  18. Wherefore, it's surer testing of a man
  19. In doubtful perils- mark him as he is
  20. Amid adversities; for then alone
  21. Are the true voices conjured from his breast,
  22. The mask off-stripped, reality behind.
  23. And greed, again, and the blind lust of honours
  24. Which force poor wretches past the bounds of law,
  25. And, oft allies and ministers of crime,
  26. To push through nights and days with hugest toil
  27. To rise untrammelled to the peaks of power-
  28. These wounds of life in no mean part are kept
  29. Festering and open by this fright of death.
  30. For ever we see fierce Want and foul Disgrace
  31. Dislodged afar from secure life and sweet,
  32. Like huddling Shapes before the doors of death.
  33. And whilst, from these, men wish to scape afar,
  34. Driven by false terror, and afar remove,
  35. With civic blood a fortune they amass,
  36. They double their riches, greedy, heapers-up
  37. Of corpse on corpse they have a cruel laugh
  38. For the sad burial of a brother-born,
  39. And hatred and fear of tables of their kin.
  40. Likewise, through this same terror, envy oft
  41. Makes them to peak because before their eyes
  42. That man is lordly, that man gazed upon
  43. Who walks begirt with honour glorious,
  44. Whilst they in filth and darkness roll around;
  45. Some perish away for statues and a name,
  46. And oft to that degree, from fright of death,
  47. Will hate of living and beholding light
  48. Take hold on humankind that they inflict
  49. Their own destruction with a gloomy heart-
  50. Forgetful that this fear is font of cares,
  51. This fear the plague upon their sense of shame,
  52. And this that breaks the ties of comradry
  53. And oversets all reverence and faith,
  54. Mid direst slaughter. For long ere to-day
  55. Often were traitors to country and dear parents
  56. Through quest to shun the realms of Acheron.
  57. For just as children tremble and fear all
  58. In the viewless dark, so even we at times
  59. Dread in the light so many things that be
  60. No whit more fearsome than what children feign,
  61. Shuddering, will be upon them in the dark.
  62. This terror, then, this darkness of the mind,
  63. Not sunrise with its flaring spokes of light,
  64. Nor glittering arrows of morning sun disperse,
  65. But only nature's aspect and her law.
  1. First, then, I say, the mind which oft we call
  2. The intellect, wherein is seated life's
  3. Counsel and regimen, is part no less
  4. Of man than hand and foot and eyes are parts
  5. Of one whole breathing creature. [But some hold]
  6. That sense of mind is in no fixed part seated,
  7. But is of body some one vital state,-
  8. Named "harmony" by Greeks, because thereby
  9. We live with sense, though intellect be not
  10. In any part: as oft the body is said
  11. To have good health (when health, however, 's not
  12. One part of him who has it), so they place
  13. The sense of mind in no fixed part of man.
  14. Mightily, diversly, meseems they err.
  15. Often the body palpable and seen
  16. Sickens, while yet in some invisible part
  17. We feel a pleasure; oft the other way,
  18. A miserable in mind feels pleasure still
  19. Throughout his body- quite the same as when
  20. A foot may pain without a pain in head.
  21. Besides, when these our limbs are given o'er
  22. To gentle sleep and lies the burdened frame
  23. At random void of sense, a something else
  24. Is yet within us, which upon that time
  25. Bestirs itself in many a wise, receiving
  26. All motions of joy and phantom cares of heart.
  27. Now, for to see that in man's members dwells
  28. Also the soul, and body ne'er is wont
  29. To feel sensation by a "harmony"
  30. Take this in chief: the fact that life remains
  31. Oft in our limbs, when much of body's gone;
  32. Yet that same life, when particles of heat,
  33. Though few, have scattered been, and through the mouth
  34. Air has been given forth abroad, forthwith
  35. Forever deserts the veins, and leaves the bones.
  36. Thus mayst thou know that not all particles
  37. Perform like parts, nor in like manner all
  38. Are props of weal and safety: rather those-
  39. The seeds of wind and exhalations warm-
  40. Take care that in our members life remains.
  41. Therefore a vital heat and wind there is
  42. Within the very body, which at death
  43. Deserts our frames. And so, since nature of mind
  44. And even of soul is found to be, as 'twere,
  45. A part of man, give over "harmony"-
  46. Name to musicians brought from Helicon,-
  47. Unless themselves they filched it otherwise,
  48. To serve for what was lacking name till then.
  49. Whate'er it be, they're welcome to it- thou,
  50. Hearken my other maxims.