De Rerum Natura
Lucretius
Lucretius. De Rerum Natura. William Ellery Leonard. E. P. Dutton. 1916.
- Likewise, thou canst ne'er
- Believe the sacred seats of gods are here
- In any regions of this mundane world;
- Indeed, the nature of the gods, so subtle,
- So far removed from these our senses, scarce
- Is seen even by intelligence of mind.
- And since they've ever eluded touch and thrust
- Of human hands, they cannot reach to grasp
- Aught tangible to us. For what may not
- Itself be touched in turn can never touch.
- Wherefore, besides, also their seats must be
- Unlike these seats of ours,- even subtle too,
- As meet for subtle essence- as I'll prove
- Hereafter unto thee with large discourse.
- Further, to say that for the sake of men
- They willed to prepare this world's magnificence,
- And that 'tis therefore duty and behoof
- To praise the work of gods as worthy praise,
- And that 'tis sacrilege for men to shake
- Ever by any force from out their seats
- What hath been stablished by the Forethought old
- To everlasting for races of mankind,
- And that 'tis sacrilege to assault by words
- And overtopple all from base to beam,-
- Memmius, such notions to concoct and pile,
- Is verily- to dote. Our gratefulness,
- O what emoluments could it confer
- Upon Immortals and upon the Blessed
- That they should take a step to manage aught
- For sake of us? Or what new factor could,
- After so long a time, inveigle them-
- The hitherto reposeful- to desire
- To change their former life? For rather he
- Whom old things chafe seems likely to rejoice
- At new; but one that in fore-passed time
- Hath chanced upon no ill, through goodly years,
- O what could ever enkindle in such an one
- Passion for strange experiment? Or what
- The evil for us, if we had ne'er been born?-
- As though, forsooth, in darkling realms and woe
- Our life were lying till should dawn at last
- The day-spring of creation! Whosoever
- Hath been begotten wills perforce to stay
- In life, so long as fond delight detains;
- But whoso ne'er hath tasted love of life,
- And ne'er was in the count of living things,
- What hurts it him that he was never born?
- Whence, further, first was planted in the gods
- The archetype for gendering the world
- And the fore-notion of what man is like,
- So that they knew and pre-conceived with mind
- Just what they wished to make? Or how were known
- Ever the energies of primal germs,
- And what those germs, by interchange of place,
- Could thus produce, if nature's self had not
- Given example for creating all?
- For in such wise primordials of things,
- Many in many modes, astir by blows
- From immemorial aeons, in motion too
- By their own weights, have evermore been wont
- To be so borne along and in all modes
- To meet together and to try all sorts
- Which, by combining one with other, they
- Are powerful to create, that thus it is
- No marvel now, if they have also fallen
- Into arrangements such, and if they've passed
- Into vibrations such, as those whereby
- This sum of things is carried on to-day
- By fixed renewal.
- But knew I never what
- The seeds primordial were, yet would I dare
- This to affirm, even from deep judgments based
- Upon the ways and conduct of the skies-
- This to maintain by many a fact besides-
- That in no wise the nature of all things
- For us was fashioned by a power divine-
- So great the faults it stands encumbered with.
- First, mark all regions which are overarched
- By the prodigious reaches of the sky:
- One yawning part thereof the mountain-chains
- And forests of the beasts do have and hold;
- And cliffs, and desert fens, and wastes of sea
- (Which sunder afar the beaches of the lands)
- Possess it merely; and, again, thereof
- Well-nigh two-thirds intolerable heat
- And a perpetual fall of frost doth rob
- From mortal kind. And what is left to till,
- Even that the force of nature would o'errun
- With brambles, did not human force oppose,-
- Long wont for livelihood to groan and sweat
- Over the two-pronged mattock and to cleave
- The soil in twain by pressing on the plough.
- . . . . . .
- Unless, by the ploughshare turning the fruitful clods
- And kneading the mould, we quicken into birth,
- [The crops] spontaneously could not come up
- Into the free bright air. Even then sometimes,
- When things acquired by the sternest toil
- Are now in leaf, are now in blossom all,
- Either the skiey sun with baneful heats
- Parches, or sudden rains or chilling rime
- Destroys, or flaws of winds with furious whirl
- Torment and twist. Beside these matters, why
- Doth nature feed and foster on land and sea
- The dreadful breed of savage beasts, the foes
- Of the human clan? Why do the seasons bring
- Distempers with them? Wherefore stalks at large
- Death, so untimely? Then, again, the babe,
- Like to the castaway of the raging surf,
- Lies naked on the ground, speechless, in want
- Of every help for life, when nature first
- Hath poured him forth upon the shores of light
- With birth-pangs from within the mother's womb,
- And with a plaintive wail he fills the place,-
- As well befitting one for whom remains
- In life a journey through so many ills.
- But all the flocks and herds and all wild beasts
- Come forth and grow, nor need the little rattles,
- Nor must be treated to the humouring nurse's
- Dear, broken chatter; nor seek they divers clothes
- To suit the changing skies; nor need, in fine,
- Nor arms, nor lofty ramparts, wherewithal
- Their own to guard- because the earth herself
- And nature, artificer of the world, bring forth
- Aboundingly all things for all.
- And first,
- Since body of earth and water, air's light breath,
- And fiery exhalations (of which four
- This sum of things is seen to be compact)
- So all have birth and perishable frame,
- Thus the whole nature of the world itself
- Must be conceived as perishable too.
- For, verily, those things of which we see
- The parts and members to have birth in time
- And perishable shapes, those same we mark
- To be invariably born in time
- And born to die. And therefore when I see
- The mightiest members and the parts of this
- Our world consumed and begot again,
- 'Tis mine to know that also sky above
- And earth beneath began of old in time
- And shall in time go under to disaster.
- And lest in these affairs thou deemest me
- To have seized upon this point by sleight to serve
- My own caprice- because I have assumed
- That earth and fire are mortal things indeed,
- And have not doubted water and the air
- Both perish too and have affirmed the same
- To be again begotten and wax big-
- Mark well the argument: in first place, lo,
- Some certain parts of earth, grievously parched
- By unremitting suns, and trampled on
- By a vast throng of feet, exhale abroad
- A powdery haze and flying clouds of dust,
- Which the stout winds disperse in the whole air.
- A part, moreover, of her sod and soil
- Is summoned to inundation by the rains;
- And rivers graze and gouge the banks away.
- Besides, whatever takes a part its own
- In fostering and increasing [aught]...
- . . . . . .
- Is rendered back; and since, beyond a doubt,
- Earth, the all-mother, is beheld to be
- Likewise the common sepulchre of things,
- Therefore thou seest her minished of her plenty,
- And then again augmented with new growth.
- And for the rest, that sea, and streams, and springs
- Forever with new waters overflow,
- And that perennially the fluids well,
- Needeth no words- the mighty flux itself
- Of multitudinous waters round about
- Declareth this. But whatso water first
- Streams up is ever straightway carried off,
- And thus it comes to pass that all in all
- There is no overflow; in part because
- The burly winds (that over-sweep amain)
- And skiey sun (that with his rays dissolves)
- Do minish the level seas; in part because
- The water is diffused underground
- Through all the lands. The brine is filtered off,
- And then the liquid stuff seeps back again
- And all regathers at the river-heads,
- Whence in fresh-water currents on it flows
- Over the lands, adown the channels which
- Were cleft erstwhile and erstwhile bore along
- The liquid-footed floods.
- Now, then, of air
- I'll speak, which hour by hour in all its body
- Is changed innumerably. For whatso'er
- Streams up in dust or vapour off of things,
- The same is all and always borne along
- Into the mighty ocean of the air;
- And did not air in turn restore to things
- Bodies, and thus recruit them as they stream,
- All things by this time had resolved been
- And changed into air. Therefore it never
- Ceases to be engendered off of things
- And to return to things, since verily
- In constant flux do all things stream.
- Likewise,
- The abounding well-spring of the liquid light,
- The ethereal sun, doth flood the heaven o'er
- With constant flux of radiance ever new,
- And with fresh light supplies the place of light,
- Upon the instant. For whatever effulgence
- Hath first streamed off, no matter where it falls,
- Is lost unto the sun. And this 'tis thine
- To know from these examples: soon as clouds
- Have first begun to under-pass the sun,
- And, as it were, to rend the rays of light
- In twain, at once the lower part of them
- Is lost entire, and earth is overcast
- Where'er the thunderheads are rolled along-
- So know thou mayst that things forever need
- A fresh replenishment of gleam and glow,
- And each effulgence, foremost flashed forth,
- Perisheth one by one. Nor otherwise
- Can things be seen in sunlight, lest alway
- The fountain-head of light supply new light.
- Indeed your earthly beacons of the night,
- The hanging lampions and the torches, bright
- With darting gleams and dense with livid soot,
- Do hurry in like manner to supply
- With ministering heat new light amain;
- Are all alive to quiver with their fires,-
- Are so alive, that thus the light ne'er leaves
- The spots it shines on, as if rent in twain:
- So speedily is its destruction veiled
- By the swift birth of flame from all the fires.
- Thus, then, we must suppose that sun and moon
- And stars dart forth their light from under-births
- Ever and ever new, and whatso flames
- First rise do perish always one by one-
- Lest, haply, thou shouldst think they each endure
- Inviolable.
- Again, perceivest not
- How stones are also conquered by Time?-
- Not how the lofty towers ruin down,
- And boulders crumble?- Not how shrines of gods
- And idols crack outworn?- Nor how indeed
- The holy Influence hath yet no power
- There to postpone the Terminals of Fate,
- Or headway make 'gainst Nature's fixed decrees?
- Again, behold we not the monuments
- Of heroes, now in ruins, asking us,
- In their turn likewise, if we don't believe
- They also age with eld? Behold we not
- The rended basalt ruining amain
- Down from the lofty mountains, powerless
- To dure and dree the mighty forces there
- Of finite time?- for they would never fall
- Rended asudden, if from infinite Past
- They had prevailed against all engin'ries
- Of the assaulting aeons, with no crash.
- Again, now look at This, which round, above,
- Contains the whole earth in its one embrace:
- If from itself it procreates all things-
- As some men tell- and takes them to itself
- When once destroyed, entirely must it be
- Of mortal birth and body; for whate'er
- From out itself giveth to other things
- Increase and food, the same perforce must be
- Minished, and then recruited when it takes
- Things back into itself.
- Besides all this,
- If there had been no origin-in-birth
- Of lands and sky, and they had ever been
- The everlasting, why, ere Theban war
- And obsequies of Troy, have other bards
- Not also chanted other high affairs?
- Whither have sunk so oft so many deeds
- Of heroes? Why do those deeds live no more,
- Ingrafted in eternal monuments
- Of glory? Verily, I guess, because
- The Sum is new, and of a recent date
- The nature of our universe, and had
- Not long ago its own exordium.
- Wherefore, even now some arts are being still
- Refined, still increased: now unto ships
- Is being added many a new device;
- And but the other day musician-folk
- Gave birth to melic sounds of organing;
- And, then, this nature, this account of things
- Hath been discovered latterly, and I
- Myself have been discovered only now,
- As first among the first, able to turn
- The same into ancestral Roman speech.
- Yet if, percase, thou deemest that ere this
- Existed all things even the same, but that
- Perished the cycles of the human race
- In fiery exhalations, or cities fell
- By some tremendous quaking of the world,
- Or rivers in fury, after constant rains,
- Had plunged forth across the lands of earth
- And whelmed the towns- then, all the more must thou
- Confess, defeated by the argument,
- That there shall be annihilation too
- Of lands and sky. For at a time when things
- Were being taxed by maladies so great,
- And so great perils, if some cause more fell
- Had then assailed them, far and wide they would
- Have gone to disaster and supreme collapse.
- And by no other reasoning are we
- Seen to be mortal, save that all of us
- Sicken in turn with those same maladies
- With which have sickened in the past those men
- Whom nature hath removed from life.