De Rerum Natura

Lucretius

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

  1. And since the mind is of a man one part,
  2. Which in one fixed place remains, like ears,
  3. And eyes, and every sense which pilots life;
  4. And just as hand, or eye, or nose, apart,
  5. Severed from us, can neither feel nor be,
  6. But in the least of time is left to rot,
  7. Thus mind alone can never be, without
  8. The body and the man himself, which seems,
  9. As 'twere the vessel of the same- or aught
  10. Whate'er thou'lt feign as yet more closely joined:
  11. Since body cleaves to mind by surest bonds.
  12. Again, the body's and the mind's live powers
  13. Only in union prosper and enjoy;
  14. For neither can nature of mind, alone of self
  15. Sans body, give the vital motions forth;
  16. Nor, then, can body, wanting soul, endure
  17. And use the senses. Verily, as the eye,
  18. Alone, up-rended from its roots, apart
  19. From all the body, can peer about at naught,
  20. So soul and mind it seems are nothing able,
  21. When by themselves. No marvel, because, commixed
  22. Through veins and inwards, and through bones and thews,
  23. Their elements primordial are confined
  24. By all the body, and own no power free
  25. To bound around through interspaces big,
  26. Thus, shut within these confines, they take on
  27. Motions of sense, which, after death, thrown out
  28. Beyond the body to the winds of air,
  29. Take on they cannot- and on this account,
  30. Because no more in such a way confined.
  31. For air will be a body, be alive,
  32. If in that air the soul can keep itself,
  33. And in that air enclose those motions all
  34. Which in the thews and in the body itself
  35. A while ago 'twas making. So for this,
  36. Again, again, I say confess we must,
  37. That, when the body's wrappings are unwound,
  38. And when the vital breath is forced without,
  39. The soul, the senses of the mind dissolve,-
  40. Since for the twain the cause and ground of life
  41. Is in the fact of their conjoined estate.
  42. Once more, since body's unable to sustain
  43. Division from the soul, without decay
  44. And obscene stench, how canst thou doubt but that
  45. The soul, uprisen from the body's deeps,
  46. Has filtered away, wide-drifted like a smoke,
  47. Or that the changed body crumbling fell
  48. With ruin so entire, because, indeed,
  49. Its deep foundations have been moved from place,
  50. The soul out-filtering even through the frame,
  51. And through the body's every winding way
  52. And orifice? And so by many means
  53. Thou'rt free to learn that nature of the soul
  54. Hath passed in fragments out along the frame,
  55. And that 'twas shivered in the very body
  56. Ere ever it slipped abroad and swam away
  57. Into the winds of air.
  1. For never a man
  2. Dying appears to feel the soul go forth
  3. As one sure whole from all his body at once,
  4. Nor first come up the throat and into mouth;
  5. But feels it failing in a certain spot,
  6. Even as he knows the senses too dissolve
  7. Each in its own location in the frame.
  8. But were this mind of ours immortal mind,
  9. Dying 'twould scarce bewail a dissolution,
  10. But rather the going, the leaving of its coat,
  11. Like to a snake. Wherefore, when once the body
  12. Hath passed away, admit we must that soul,
  13. Shivered in all that body, perished too.
  14. Nay, even when moving in the bounds of life,
  15. Often the soul, now tottering from some cause,
  16. Craves to go out, and from the frame entire
  17. Loosened to be; the countenance becomes
  18. Flaccid, as if the supreme hour were there;
  19. And flabbily collapse the members all
  20. Against the bloodless trunk- the kind of case
  21. We see when we remark in common phrase,
  22. "That man's quite gone," or "fainted dead away";
  23. And where there's now a bustle of alarm,
  24. And all are eager to get some hold upon
  25. The man's last link of life. For then the mind
  26. And all the power of soul are shook so sore,
  27. And these so totter along with all the frame,
  28. That any cause a little stronger might
  29. Dissolve them altogether.- Why, then, doubt
  30. That soul, when once without the body thrust,
  31. There in the open, an enfeebled thing,
  32. Its wrappings stripped away, cannot endure
  33. Not only through no everlasting age,
  34. But even, indeed, through not the least of time?
  35. Then, too, why never is the intellect,
  36. The counselling mind, begotten in the head,
  37. The feet, the hands, instead of cleaving still
  38. To one sole seat, to one fixed haunt, the breast,
  39. If not that fixed places be assigned
  40. For each thing's birth, where each, when 'tis create,
  41. Is able to endure, and that our frames
  42. Have such complex adjustments that no shift
  43. In order of our members may appear?
  44. To that degree effect succeeds to cause,
  45. Nor is the flame once wont to be create
  46. In flowing streams, nor cold begot in fire.