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.
  1. Therefore death to us
  2. Is nothing, nor concerns us in the least,
  3. Since nature of mind is mortal evermore.
  4. And just as in the ages gone before
  5. We felt no touch of ill, when all sides round
  6. To battle came the Carthaginian host,
  7. And the times, shaken by tumultuous war,
  8. Under the aery coasts of arching heaven
  9. Shuddered and trembled, and all humankind
  10. Doubted to which the empery should fall
  11. By land and sea, thus when we are no more,
  12. When comes that sundering of our body and soul
  13. Through which we're fashioned to a single state,
  14. Verily naught to us, us then no more,
  15. Can come to pass, naught move our senses then-
  16. No, not if earth confounded were with sea,
  17. And sea with heaven. But if indeed do feel
  18. The nature of mind and energy of soul,
  19. After their severance from this body of ours,
  20. Yet nothing 'tis to us who in the bonds
  21. And wedlock of the soul and body live,
  22. Through which we're fashioned to a single state.
  23. And, even if time collected after death
  24. The matter of our frames and set it all
  25. Again in place as now, and if again
  26. To us the light of life were given, O yet
  27. That process too would not concern us aught,
  28. When once the self-succession of our sense
  29. Has been asunder broken. And now and here,
  30. Little enough we're busied with the selves
  31. We were aforetime, nor, concerning them,
  32. Suffer a sore distress. For shouldst thou gaze
  33. Backwards across all yesterdays of time
  34. The immeasurable, thinking how manifold
  35. The motions of matter are, then couldst thou well
  36. Credit this too: often these very seeds
  37. (From which we are to-day) of old were set
  38. In the same order as they are to-day-
  39. Yet this we can't to consciousness recall
  40. Through the remembering mind. For there hath been
  41. An interposed pause of life, and wide
  42. Have all the motions wandered everywhere
  43. From these our senses. For if woe and ail
  44. Perchance are toward, then the man to whom
  45. The bane can happen must himself be there
  46. At that same time. But death precludeth this,
  47. Forbidding life to him on whom might crowd
  48. Such irk and care; and granted 'tis to know:
  49. Nothing for us there is to dread in death,
  50. No wretchedness for him who is no more,
  51. The same estate as if ne'er born before,
  52. When death immortal hath ta'en the mortal life.