De Rerum Natura

Lucretius

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

  1. But Centaurs ne'er have been, nor can there be
  2. Creatures of twofold stock and double frame,
  3. Compact of members alien in kind,
  4. Yet formed with equal function, equal force
  5. In every bodily part- a fact thou mayst,
  6. However dull thy wits, well learn from this:
  7. The horse, when his three years have rolled away,
  8. Flowers in his prime of vigour; but the boy
  9. Not so, for oft even then he gropes in sleep
  10. After the milky nipples of the breasts,
  11. An infant still. And later, when at last
  12. The lusty powers of horses and stout limbs,
  13. Now weak through lapsing life, do fail with age,
  14. Lo, only then doth youth with flowering years
  15. Begin for boys, and clothe their ruddy cheeks
  16. With the soft down. So never deem, percase,
  17. That from a man and from the seed of horse,
  18. The beast of draft, can Centaurs be composed
  19. Or e'er exist alive, nor Scyllas be-
  20. The half-fish bodies girdled with mad dogs-
  21. Nor others of this sort, in whom we mark
  22. Members discordant each with each; for ne'er
  23. At one same time they reach their flower of age
  24. Or gain and lose full vigour of their frame,
  25. And never burn with one same lust of love,
  26. And never in their habits they agree,
  27. Nor find the same foods equally delightsome-
  28. Sooth, as one oft may see the bearded goats
  29. Batten upon the hemlock which to man
  30. Is violent poison. Once again, since flame
  31. Is wont to scorch and burn the tawny bulks
  32. Of the great lions as much as other kinds
  33. Of flesh and blood existing in the lands,
  34. How could it be that she, Chimaera lone,
  35. With triple body- fore, a lion she;
  36. And aft, a dragon; and betwixt, a goat-
  37. Might at the mouth from out the body belch
  38. Infuriate flame? Wherefore, the man who feigns
  39. Such beings could have been engendered
  40. When earth was new and the young sky was fresh
  41. (Basing his empty argument on new)
  42. May babble with like reason many whims
  43. Into our ears: he'll say, perhaps, that then
  44. Rivers of gold through every landscape flowed,
  45. That trees were wont with precious stones to flower,
  46. Or that in those far aeons man was born
  47. With such gigantic length and lift of limbs
  48. As to be able, based upon his feet,
  49. Deep oceans to bestride or with his hands
  50. To whirl the firmament around his head.
  51. For though in earth were many seeds of things
  52. In the old time when this telluric world
  53. First poured the breeds of animals abroad,
  54. Still that is nothing of a sign that then
  55. Such hybrid creatures could have been begot
  56. And limbs of all beasts heterogeneous
  57. Have been together knit; because, indeed,
  58. The divers kinds of grasses and the grains
  59. And the delightsome trees- which even now
  60. Spring up abounding from within the earth-
  61. Can still ne'er be begotten with their stems
  62. Begrafted into one; but each sole thing
  63. Proceeds according to its proper wont
  64. And all conserve their own distinctions based
  65. In nature's fixed decree.