De Rerum Natura

Lucretius

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

  1. Now will I seek again to bring to mind
  2. How porous a body all things have- a fact
  3. Made manifest in my first canto, too.
  4. For, truly, though to know this doth import
  5. For many things, yet for this very thing
  6. On which straightway I'm going to discourse,
  7. 'Tis needful most of all to make it sure
  8. That naught's at hand but body mixed with void.
  9. A first ensample: in grottos, rocks o'erhead
  10. Sweat moisture and distil the oozy drops;
  11. Likewise, from all our body seeps the sweat;
  12. There grows the beard, and along our members all
  13. And along our frame the hairs. Through all our veins
  14. Disseminates the foods, and gives increase
  15. And aliment down to the extreme parts,
  16. Even to the tiniest finger-nails. Likewise,
  17. Through solid bronze the cold and fiery heat
  18. We feel to pass; likewise, we feel them pass
  19. Through gold, through silver, when we clasp in hand
  20. The brimming goblets. And, again, there flit
  21. Voices through houses' hedging walls of stone;
  22. Odour seeps through, and cold, and heat of fire
  23. That's wont to penetrate even strength of iron.
  24. Again, where corselet of the sky girds round
  25. . . . . . .
  26. And at same time, some Influence of bane,
  27. When from Beyond 'thas stolen into [our world].
  28. And tempests, gathering from the earth and sky,
  29. Back to the sky and earth absorbed retire-
  30. With reason, since there's naught that's fashioned not
  31. With body porous.
  1. Furthermore, not all
  2. The particles which be from things thrown off
  3. Are furnished with same qualities for sense,
  4. Nor be for all things equally adapt.
  5. A first ensample: the sun doth bake and parch
  6. The earth; but ice he thaws, and with his beams
  7. Compels the lofty snows, up-reared white
  8. Upon the lofty hills, to waste away;
  9. Then, wax, if set beneath the heat of him,
  10. Melts to a liquid. And the fire, likewise,
  11. Will melt the copper and will fuse the gold,
  12. But hides and flesh it shrivels up and shrinks.
  13. The water hardens the iron just off the fire,
  14. But hides and flesh (made hard by heat) it softens.
  15. The oleaster-tree as much delights
  16. The bearded she-goats, verily as though
  17. 'Twere nectar-steeped and shed ambrosia;
  18. Than which is naught that burgeons into leaf
  19. More bitter food for man. A hog draws back
  20. For marjoram oil, and every unguent fears
  21. Fierce poison these unto the bristled hogs,
  22. Yet unto us from time to time they seem,
  23. As 'twere, to give new life. But, contrariwise,
  24. Though unto us the mire be filth most foul,
  25. To hogs that mire doth so delightsome seem
  26. That they with wallowing from belly to back
  27. Are never cloyed.
  1. A point remains, besides,
  2. Which best it seems to tell of, ere I go
  3. To telling of the fact at hand itself.
  4. Since to the varied things assigned be
  5. The many pores, those pores must be diverse
  6. In nature one from other, and each have
  7. Its very shape, its own direction fixed.
  8. And so, indeed, in breathing creatures be
  9. The several senses, of which each takes in
  10. Unto itself, in its own fashion ever,
  11. Its own peculiar object. For we mark
  12. How sounds do into one place penetrate,
  13. Into another flavours of all juice,
  14. And savour of smell into a third. Moreover,
  15. One sort through rocks we see to seep, and, lo,
  16. One sort to pass through wood, another still
  17. Through gold, and others to go out and off
  18. Through silver and through glass. For we do see
  19. Through some pores form-and-look of things to flow,
  20. Through others heat to go, and some things still
  21. To speedier pass than others through same pores.
  22. Of verity, the nature of these same paths,
  23. Varying in many modes (as aforesaid)
  24. Because of unlike nature and warp and woof
  25. Of cosmic things, constrains it so to be.
  26. Wherefore, since all these matters now have been
  27. Established and settled well for us
  28. As premises prepared, for what remains
  29. 'Twill not be hard to render clear account
  30. By means of these, and the whole cause reveal
  31. Whereby the magnet lures the strength of iron.