De Rerum Natura

Lucretius

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

  1. And, first,
  2. This do I say, as oft I've said before:
  3. In earth are atoms of things of every sort;
  4. And know, these all thus rise from out the earth-
  5. Many life-giving which be good for food,
  6. And many which can generate disease
  7. And hasten death, O many primal seeds
  8. Of many things in many modes- since earth
  9. Contains them mingled and gives forth discrete.
  10. And we have shown before that certain things
  11. Be unto certain creatures suited more
  12. For ends of life, by virtue of a nature,
  13. A texture, and primordial shapes, unlike
  14. For kinds alike. Then too 'tis thine to see
  15. How many things oppressive be and foul
  16. To man, and to sensation most malign:
  17. Many meander miserably through ears;
  18. Many in-wind athrough the nostrils too,
  19. Malign and harsh when mortal draws a breath;
  20. Of not a few must one avoid the touch;
  21. Of not a few must one escape the sight;
  22. And some there be all loathsome to the taste;
  23. And many, besides, relax the languid limbs
  24. Along the frame, and undermine the soul
  25. In its abodes within. To certain trees
  26. There hath been given so dolorous a shade
  27. That often they gender achings of the head,
  28. If one but be beneath, outstretched on the sward.
  29. There is, again, on Helicon's high hills
  30. A tree that's wont to kill a man outright
  31. By fetid odour of its very flower.
  32. And when the pungent stench of the night-lamp,
  33. Extinguished but a moment since, assails
  34. The nostrils, then and there it puts to sleep
  35. A man afflicted with the falling sickness
  36. And foamings at the mouth. A woman, too,
  37. At the heavy castor drowses back in chair,
  38. And from her delicate fingers slips away
  39. Her gaudy handiwork, if haply she
  40. Hath got the whiff at menstruation-time.
  41. Once more, if thou delayest in hot baths,
  42. When thou art over-full, how readily
  43. From stool in middle of the steaming water
  44. Thou tumblest in a fit! How readily
  45. The heavy fumes of charcoal wind their way
  46. Into the brain, unless beforehand we
  47. Of water 've drunk. But when a burning fever,
  48. O'ermastering man, hath seized upon his limbs,
  49. Then odour of wine is like a hammer-blow.
  50. And seest thou not how in the very earth
  51. Sulphur is gendered and bitumen thickens
  52. With noisome stench?- What direful stenches, too,
  53. Scaptensula out-breathes from down below,
  54. When men pursue the veins of silver and gold,
  55. With pick-axe probing round the hidden realms
  56. Deep in the earth?- Or what of deadly bane
  57. The mines of gold exhale? O what a look,
  58. And what a ghastly hue they give to men!
  59. And seest thou not, or hearest, how they're wont
  60. In little time to perish, and how fail
  61. The life-stores in those folk whom mighty power
  62. Of grim necessity confineth there
  63. In such a task? Thus, this telluric earth
  64. Out-streams with all these dread effluvia
  65. And breathes them out into the open world
  66. And into the visible regions under heaven.