De Rerum Natura

Lucretius

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

  1. And now to what remains!- Since I've resolved
  2. By what arrangements all things come to pass
  3. Through the blue regions of the mighty world,-
  4. How we can know what energy and cause
  5. Started the various courses of the sun
  6. And the moon's goings, and by what far means
  7. They can succumb, the while with thwarted light,
  8. And veil with shade the unsuspecting lands,
  9. When, as it were, they blink, and then again
  10. With open eye survey all regions wide,
  11. Resplendent with white radiance- I do now
  12. Return unto the world's primeval age
  13. And tell what first the soft young fields of earth
  14. With earliest parturition had decreed
  15. To raise in air unto the shores of light
  16. And to entrust unto the wayward winds.
  17. In the beginning, earth gave forth, around
  18. The hills and over all the length of plains,
  19. The race of grasses and the shining green;
  20. The flowery meadows sparkled all aglow
  21. With greening colour, and thereafter, lo,
  22. Unto the divers kinds of trees was given
  23. An emulous impulse mightily to shoot,
  24. With a free rein, aloft into the air.
  25. As feathers and hairs and bristles are begot
  26. The first on members of the four-foot breeds
  27. And on the bodies of the strong-y-winged,
  28. Thus then the new Earth first of all put forth
  29. Grasses and shrubs, and afterward begat
  30. The mortal generations, there upsprung-
  31. Innumerable in modes innumerable-
  32. After diverging fashions. For from sky
  33. These breathing-creatures never can have dropped,
  34. Nor the land-dwellers ever have come up
  35. Out of sea-pools of salt. How true remains,
  36. How merited is that adopted name
  37. Of earth- "The Mother!"- since from out the earth
  38. Are all begotten. And even now arise
  39. From out the loams how many living things-
  40. Concreted by the rains and heat of the sun.
  41. Wherefore 'tis less a marvel, if they sprang
  42. In Long Ago more many, and more big,
  43. Matured of those days in the fresh young years
  44. Of earth and ether. First of all, the race
  45. Of the winged ones and parti-coloured birds,
  46. Hatched out in spring-time, left their eggs behind;
  47. As now-a-days in summer tree-crickets
  48. Do leave their shiny husks of own accord,
  49. Seeking their food and living. Then it was
  50. This earth of thine first gave unto the day
  51. The mortal generations; for prevailed
  52. Among the fields abounding hot and wet.
  53. And hence, where any fitting spot was given,
  54. There 'gan to grow womb-cavities, by roots
  55. Affixed to earth. And when in ripened time
  56. The age of the young within (that sought the air
  57. And fled earth's damps) had burst these wombs, O then
  58. Would Nature thither turn the pores of earth
  59. And make her spurt from open veins a juice
  60. Like unto milk; even as a woman now
  61. Is filled, at child-bearing, with the sweet milk,
  62. Because all that swift stream of aliment
  63. Is thither turned unto the mother-breasts.
  64. There earth would furnish to the children food;
  65. Warmth was their swaddling cloth, the grass their bed
  66. Abounding in soft down. Earth's newness then
  67. Would rouse no dour spells of the bitter cold,
  68. Nor extreme heats nor winds of mighty powers-
  69. For all things grow and gather strength through time
  70. In like proportions; and then earth was young.