De Rerum Natura

Lucretius

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

  1. O humankind unhappy!- when it ascribed
  2. Unto divinities such awesome deeds,
  3. And coupled thereto rigours of fierce wrath!
  4. What groans did men on that sad day beget
  5. Even for themselves, and O what wounds for us,
  6. What tears for our children's children! Nor, O man,
  7. Is thy true piety in this: with head
  8. Under the veil, still to be seen to turn
  9. Fronting a stone, and ever to approach
  10. Unto all altars; nor so prone on earth
  11. Forward to fall, to spread upturned palms
  12. Before the shrines of gods, nor yet to dew
  13. Altars with profuse blood of four-foot beasts,
  14. Nor vows with vows to link. But rather this:
  15. To look on all things with a master eye
  16. And mind at peace. For when we gaze aloft
  17. Upon the skiey vaults of yon great world
  18. And ether, fixed high o'er twinkling stars,
  19. And into our thought there come the journeyings
  20. Of sun and moon, O then into our breasts,
  21. O'erburdened already with their other ills,
  22. Begins forthwith to rear its sudden head
  23. One more misgiving: lest o'er us, percase,
  24. It be the gods' immeasurable power
  25. That rolls, with varied motion, round and round
  26. The far white constellations. For the lack
  27. Of aught of reasons tries the puzzled mind:
  28. Whether was ever a birth-time of the world,
  29. And whether, likewise, any end shall be
  30. How far the ramparts of the world can still
  31. Outstand this strain of ever-roused motion,
  32. Or whether, divinely with eternal weal
  33. Endowed, they can through endless tracts of age
  34. Glide on, defying the o'er-mighty powers
  35. Of the immeasurable ages. Lo,
  36. What man is there whose mind with dread of gods
  37. Cringes not close, whose limbs with terror-spell
  38. Crouch not together, when the parched earth
  39. Quakes with the horrible thunderbolt amain,
  40. And across the mighty sky the rumblings run?
  41. Do not the peoples and the nations shake,
  42. And haughty kings do they not hug their limbs,
  43. Strook through with fear of the divinities,
  44. Lest for aught foully done or madly said
  45. The heavy time be now at hand to pay?
  46. When, too, fierce force of fury-winds at sea
  47. Sweepeth a navy's admiral down the main
  48. With his stout legions and his elephants,
  49. Doth he not seek the peace of gods with vows,
  50. And beg in prayer, a-tremble, lulled winds
  51. And friendly gales?- in vain, since, often up-caught
  52. In fury-cyclones, is he borne along,
  53. For all his mouthings, to the shoals of doom.
  54. Ah, so irrevocably some hidden power
  55. Betramples forevermore affairs of men,
  56. And visibly grindeth with its heel in mire
  57. The lictors' glorious rods and axes dire,
  58. Having them in derision! Again, when earth
  59. From end to end is rocking under foot,
  60. And shaken cities ruin down, or threaten
  61. Upon the verge, what wonder is it then
  62. That mortal generations abase themselves,
  63. And unto gods in all affairs of earth
  64. Assign as last resort almighty powers
  65. And wondrous energies to govern all?