De Rerum Natura

Lucretius

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

  1. Again, at parturitions of the wild
  2. And at the rites of Love, that souls should stand
  3. Ready hard by seems ludicrous enough-
  4. Immortals waiting for their mortal limbs
  5. In numbers innumerable, contending madly
  6. Which shall be first and chief to enter in!-
  7. Unless perchance among the souls there be
  8. Such treaties stablished that the first to come
  9. Flying along, shall enter in the first,
  10. And that they make no rivalries of strength!
  11. Again, in ether can't exist a tree,
  12. Nor clouds in ocean deeps, nor in the fields
  13. Can fishes live, nor blood in timber be,
  14. Nor sap in boulders: fixed and arranged
  15. Where everything may grow and have its place.
  16. Thus nature of mind cannot arise alone
  17. Without the body, nor exist afar
  18. From thews and blood. But if 'twere possible,
  19. Much rather might this very power of mind
  20. Be in the head, the shoulders or the heels,
  21. And, born in any part soever, yet
  22. In the same man, in the same vessel abide.
  23. But since within this body even of ours
  24. Stands fixed and appears arranged sure
  25. Where soul and mind can each exist and grow,
  26. Deny we must the more that they can have
  27. Duration and birth, wholly outside the frame.
  28. For, verily, the mortal to conjoin
  29. With the eternal, and to feign they feel
  30. Together, and can function each with each,
  31. Is but to dote: for what can be conceived
  32. Of more unlike, discrepant, ill-assorted,
  33. Than something mortal in a union joined
  34. With an immortal and a secular
  35. To bear the outrageous tempests?
  36. Then, again,
  37. Whatever abides eternal must indeed
  38. Either repel all strokes, because 'tis made
  39. Of solid body, and permit no entrance
  40. Of aught with power to sunder from within
  41. The parts compact- as are those seeds of stuff
  42. Whose nature we've exhibited before;
  43. Or else be able to endure through time
  44. For this: because they are from blows exempt,
  45. As is the void, the which abides untouched,
  46. Unsmit by any stroke; or else because
  47. There is no room around, whereto things can,
  48. As 'twere, depart in dissolution all,-
  49. Even as the sum of sums eternal is,
  50. Without or place beyond whereto things may
  51. Asunder fly, or bodies which can smite,
  52. And thus dissolve them by the blows of might.
  1. But if perchance the soul's to be adjudged
  2. Immortal, mainly on ground 'tis kept secure
  3. In vital forces- either because there come
  4. Never at all things hostile to its weal,
  5. Or else because what come somehow retire,
  6. Repelled or ere we feel the harm they work,
  7. . . . . . .
  8. For, lo, besides that, when the frame's diseased,
  9. Soul sickens too, there cometh, many a time,
  10. That which torments it with the things to be,
  11. Keeps it in dread, and wearies it with cares;
  12. And even when evil acts are of the past,
  13. Still gnaw the old transgressions bitterly.
  14. Add, too, that frenzy, peculiar to the mind,
  15. And that oblivion of the things that were;
  16. Add its submergence in the murky waves
  17. Of drowse and torpor.