De Rerum Natura

Lucretius

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

  1. But nature herself,
  2. Mother of things, was the first seed-sower
  3. And primal grafter; since the berries and acorns,
  4. Dropping from off the trees, would there beneath
  5. Put forth in season swarms of little shoots;
  6. Hence too men's fondness for ingrafting slips
  7. Upon the boughs and setting out in holes
  8. The young shrubs o'er the fields. Then would they try
  9. Ever new modes of tilling their loved crofts,
  10. And mark they would how earth improved the taste
  11. Of the wild fruits by fond and fostering care.
  12. And day by day they'd force the woods to move
  13. Still higher up the mountain, and to yield
  14. The place below for tilth, that there they might,
  15. On plains and uplands, have their meadow-plats,
  16. Cisterns and runnels, crops of standing grain,
  17. And happy vineyards, and that all along
  18. O'er hillocks, intervales, and plains might run
  19. The silvery-green belt of olive-trees,
  20. Marking the plotted landscape; even as now
  21. Thou seest so marked with varied loveliness
  22. All the terrain which men adorn and plant
  23. With rows of goodly fruit-trees and hedge round
  24. With thriving shrubberies sown.