De Rerum Natura

Lucretius

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

  1. Now, of diseases what the law, and whence
  2. The Influence of bane upgathering can
  3. Upon the race of man and herds of cattle
  4. Kindle a devastation fraught with death,
  5. I will unfold. And, first, I've taught above
  6. That seeds there be of many things to us
  7. Life-giving, and that, contrariwise, there must
  8. Fly many round bringing disease and death.
  9. When these have, haply, chanced to collect
  10. And to derange the atmosphere of earth,
  11. The air becometh baneful. And, lo, all
  12. That Influence of bane, that pestilence,
  13. Or from Beyond down through our atmosphere,
  14. Like clouds and mists, descends, or else collects
  15. From earth herself and rises, when, a-soak
  16. And beat by rains unseasonable and suns,
  17. Our earth hath then contracted stench and rot.
  18. Seest thou not, also, that whoso arrive
  19. In region far from fatherland and home
  20. Are by the strangeness of the clime and waters
  21. Distempered?- since conditions vary much.
  22. For in what else may we suppose the clime
  23. Among the Britons to differ from Aegypt's own
  24. (Where totters awry the axis of the world),
  25. Or in what else to differ Pontic clime
  26. From Gades' and from climes adown the south,
  27. On to black generations of strong men
  28. With sun-baked skins? Even as we thus do see
  29. Four climes diverse under the four main-winds
  30. And under the four main-regions of the sky,
  31. So, too, are seen the colour and face of men
  32. Vastly to disagree, and fixed diseases
  33. To seize the generations, kind by kind:
  34. There is the elephant-disease which down
  35. In midmost Aegypt, hard by streams of Nile,
  36. Engendered is- and never otherwhere.
  37. In Attica the feet are oft attacked,
  38. And in Achaean lands the eyes. And so
  39. The divers spots to divers parts and limbs
  40. Are noxious; 'tis a variable air
  41. That causes this. Thus when an atmosphere,
  42. Alien by chance to us, begins to heave,
  43. And noxious airs begin to crawl along,
  44. They creep and wind like unto mist and cloud,
  45. Slowly, and everything upon their way
  46. They disarrange and force to change its state.
  47. It happens, too, that when they've come at last
  48. Into this atmosphere of ours, they taint
  49. And make it like themselves and alien.
  50. Therefore, asudden this devastation strange,
  51. This pestilence, upon the waters falls,
  52. Or settles on the very crops of grain
  53. Or other meat of men and feed of flocks.
  54. Or it remains a subtle force, suspense
  55. In the atmosphere itself; and when therefrom
  56. We draw our inhalations of mixed air,
  57. Into our body equally its bane
  58. Also we must suck in. In manner like,
  59. Oft comes the pestilence upon the kine,
  60. And sickness, too, upon the sluggish sheep.
  61. Nor aught it matters whether journey we
  62. To regions adverse to ourselves and change
  63. The atmospheric cloak, or whether nature
  64. Herself import a tainted atmosphere
  65. To us or something strange to our own use
  66. Which can attack us soon as ever it come.