De Rerum Natura

Lucretius

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

  1. Many would headlong fling them deeply down
  2. The water-pits, tumbling with eager mouth
  3. Already agape. The insatiable thirst
  4. That whelmed their parched bodies, lo, would make
  5. A goodly shower seem like to scanty drops.
  6. Respite of torment was there none. Their frames
  7. Forspent lay prone. With silent lips of fear
  8. Would Medicine mumble low, the while she saw
  9. So many a time men roll their eyeballs round,
  10. Staring wide-open, unvisited of sleep,
  11. The heralds of old death. And in those months
  12. Was given many another sign of death:
  13. The intellect of mind by sorrow and dread
  14. Deranged, the sad brow, the countenance
  15. Fierce and delirious, the tormented ears
  16. Beset with ringings, the breath quick and short
  17. Or huge and intermittent, soaking sweat
  18. A-glisten on neck, the spittle in fine gouts
  19. Tainted with colour of crocus and so salt,
  20. The cough scarce wheezing through the rattling throat.
  21. Aye, and the sinews in the fingered hands
  22. Were sure to contract, and sure the jointed frame
  23. To shiver, and up from feet the cold to mount
  24. Inch after inch: and toward the supreme hour
  25. At last the pinched nostrils, nose's tip
  26. A very point, eyes sunken, temples hollow,
  27. Skin cold and hard, the shuddering grimace,
  28. The pulled and puffy flesh above the brows!-
  29. O not long after would their frames lie prone
  30. In rigid death. And by about the eighth
  31. Resplendent light of sun, or at the most
  32. On the ninth flaming of his flambeau, they
  33. Would render up the life. If any then
  34. Had 'scaped the doom of that destruction, yet
  35. Him there awaited in the after days
  36. A wasting and a death from ulcers vile
  37. And black discharges of the belly, or else
  38. Through the clogged nostrils would there ooze along
  39. Much fouled blood, oft with an aching head:
  40. Hither would stream a man's whole strength and flesh.