De Rerum Natura

Lucretius

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

  1. These ills are found in prospering love and true;
  2. But in crossed love and helpless there be such
  3. As through shut eyelids thou canst still take in-
  4. Uncounted ills; so that 'tis better far
  5. To watch beforehand, in the way I've shown,
  6. And guard against enticements. For to shun
  7. A fall into the hunting-snares of love
  8. Is not so hard, as to get out again,
  9. When tangled in the very nets, and burst
  10. The stoutly-knotted cords of Aphrodite.
  11. Yet even when there enmeshed with tangled feet,
  12. Still canst thou scape the danger-lest indeed
  13. Thou standest in the way of thine own good,
  14. And overlookest first all blemishes
  15. Of mind and body of thy much preferred,
  16. Desirable dame. For so men do,
  17. Eyeless with passion, and assign to them
  18. Graces not theirs in fact. And thus we see
  19. Creatures in many a wise crooked and ugly
  20. The prosperous sweethearts in a high esteem;
  21. And lovers gird each other and advise
  22. To placate Venus, since their friends are smit
  23. With a base passion- miserable dupes
  24. Who seldom mark their own worst bane of all.
  25. The black-skinned girl is "tawny like the honey";
  26. The filthy and the fetid's "negligee";
  27. The cat-eyed she's "a little Pallas," she;
  28. The sinewy and wizened's "a gazelle";
  29. The pudgy and the pigmy is "piquant,
  30. One of the Graces sure"; the big and bulky
  31. O she's "an Admiration, imposante";
  32. The stuttering and tongue-tied "sweetly lisps";
  33. The mute girl's "modest"; and the garrulous,
  34. The spiteful spit-fire, is "a sparkling wit";
  35. And she who scarcely lives for scrawniness
  36. Becomes "a slender darling"; "delicate"
  37. Is she who's nearly dead of coughing-fit;
  38. The pursy female with protuberant breasts
  39. She is "like Ceres when the goddess gave
  40. Young Bacchus suck"; the pug-nosed lady-love
  41. "A Satyress, a feminine Silenus";
  42. The blubber-lipped is "all one luscious kiss"-
  43. A weary while it were to tell the whole.
  44. But let her face possess what charm ye will,
  45. Let Venus' glory rise from all her limbs,-
  46. Forsooth there still are others; and forsooth
  47. We lived before without her; and forsooth
  48. She does the same things- and we know she does-
  49. All, as the ugly creature, and she scents,
  50. Yes she, her wretched self with vile perfumes;
  51. Whom even her handmaids flee and giggle at
  52. Behind her back. But he, the lover, in tears
  53. Because shut out, covers her threshold o'er
  54. Often with flowers and garlands, and anoints
  55. Her haughty door-posts with the marjoram,
  56. And prints, poor fellow, kisses on the doors-
  57. Admitted at last, if haply but one whiff
  58. Got to him on approaching, he would seek
  59. Decent excuses to go out forthwith;
  60. And his lament, long pondered, then would fall
  61. Down at his heels; and there he'd damn himself
  62. For his fatuity, observing how
  63. He had assigned to that same lady more-
  64. Than it is proper to concede to mortals.
  65. And these our Venuses are 'ware of this.
  66. Wherefore the more are they at pains to hide
  67. All the-behind-the-scenes of life from those
  68. Whom they desire to keep in bonds of love-
  69. In vain, since ne'ertheless thou canst by thought
  70. Drag all the matter forth into the light
  71. And well search out the cause of all these smiles;
  72. And if of graceful mind she be and kind,
  73. Do thou, in thy turn, overlook the same,
  74. And thus allow for poor mortality.