Titus Lucretius Carus

“ Again, that glowing fire and icy rime Are fanged with teeth unlike whereby to sting Our body's sense, the touch of each gives proof. For touch—by sacred majesties of Gods!— Touch is indeed the body's only sense— Be't that something in-from-outward works, Be't that something in the body born Wounds, or delighteth as it passes out Along the procreant paths of Aphrodite; Or be't the seeds by some collision whirl Disordered in the body and confound By tumult and confusion all the sense— As thou mayst find, if haply with the hand Thyself thou strike thy body's any part. ”

“ Now lies the copper low, and gold hath come Unto the loftiest honours. Thus it is That rolling ages change the times of things: What erst was of a price, becomes at last A discard of no honour; whilst another Succeeds to glory, issuing from contempt, And day by day is sought for more and more, And, when 'tis found, doth flower in men's praise, Objects of wondrous honour. Now, Memmius, How nature of iron discovered was, thou mayst Of thine own self divine. Man's ancient arms Were hands, and nails and teeth, stones too and boughs— Breakage of forest trees—and flame and fire, As soon as known. ”

“ And just as in the ages gone before We felt no touch of ill, when all sides round To battle came the Carthaginian host, And the times, shaken by tumultuous war, Under the aery coasts of arching heaven Shuddered and trembled, and all humankind Doubted to which the empery should fall By land and sea, thus when we are no more, When comes that sundering of our body and soul Through which we're fashioned to a single state, Verily naught to us, us then no more, Can come to pass, naught move our senses then— No, not if earth confounded were with sea, And sea with heaven. ”

“ Hast thou not seen, sweeping so far and high, The meteors, midnight flambeaus of the sky, How after them they draw long trails of flame Wherever Nature gives a thoroughfare? How stars and constellations drop to earth, Seest not? Nay, too, the sun from peak of heaven Sheds round to every quarter its large heat, And sows the new-ploughed intervales with light: Thus also sun's heat downward tends to earth. Athwart the rain thou seest the lightning fly; Now here, now there, bursting from out the clouds, The fires dash zig-zag—and that flaming power Falls likewise down to earth. ”

“ Rises to vision the majesty of gods, And their abodes of everlasting calm Which neither wind may shake nor rain-cloud splash, Nor snow, congealed by sharp frosts, may harm With its white downfall: ever, unclouded sky O'er roofs, and laughs with far-diffused light. And nature gives to them their all, nor aught May ever pluck their peace of mind away. But nowhere to my vision rise no more The vaults of Acheron, though the broad earth Bars me no more from gazing down o'er all Which under our feet is going on below Along the void. ”

“ As feathers and hairs and bristles are begot The first on members of the four-foot breeds And on the bodies of the strong-y-winged, Thus then the new Earth first of all put forth Grasses and shrubs, and afterward begat The mortal generations, there upsprung— Innumerable in modes innumerable— After diverging fashions. For from sky These breathing-creatures never can have dropped, Nor the land-dwellers ever have come up Out of sea-pools of salt. How true remains, How merited is that adopted name Of earth—"The Mother!"—since from out the earth Are all begotten. ”

“ An image, a type goes on before our eyes Present each moment; for behold whenever The sun's light and the rays, let in, pour down Across dark halls of houses: thou wilt see The many mites in many a manner mixed Amid a void in the very light of the rays, And battling on, as in eternal strife, And in battalions contending without halt, In meetings, partings, harried up and down. From this thou mayest conjecture of what sort The ceaseless tossing of primordial seeds Amid the mightier void—at least so far As small affair can for a vaster serve, And by example put thee on the spoor Of knowledge. ”

“ For thus When the wind beats upon us stroke by stroke And when the sharp cold streams, 'tis not our wont To feel each private particle of wind Or of that cold, but rather all at once; And so we see how blows affect our body, As if one thing were beating on the same And giving us the feel of its own body Outside of us. Again, whene'er we thump With finger-tip upon a stone, we touch But the rock's surface and the outer hue, Nor feel that hue by contact—rather feel The very hardness deep within the rock. Now come, and why beyond a looking-glass An image may be seen, perceive. ”

“ There is indeed in mind that heat it gets When seething in rage, and flashes from the eyes More swiftly fire; there is, again, that wind, Much, and so cold, companion of all dread, Which rouses the shudder in the shaken frame; There is no less that state of air composed, Making the tranquil breast, the serene face. But more of hot have they whose restive hearts, Whose minds of passion quickly seethe in rage— Of which kind chief are fierce abounding lions, Who often with roaring burst the breast o'erwrought, Unable to hold the surging wrath within ”

“ For if thy life aforetime and behind To thee was grateful, and not all thy good Was heaped as in sieve to flow away And perish unavailingly, why not, Even like a banqueter, depart the halls, Laden with life? why not with mind content Take now, thou fool, thy unafflicted rest? But if whatever thou enjoyed hath been Lavished and lost, and life is now offence, Why seekest more to add—which in its turn Will perish foully and fall out in vain? O why not rather make an end of life, Of labour? For all I may devise or find To pleasure thee is nothing: all things are The same forever. ”

“ Just so, when vanished the bouquet of wine, Or when an unguent's perfume delicate Into the winds away departs, or when From any body savour's gone, yet still The thing itself seems minished naught to eyes, Thereby, nor aught abstracted from its weight— No marvel, because seeds many and minute Produce the savours and the redolence In the whole body of the things. And so, Again, again, nature of mind and soul 'Tis thine to know created is of seeds The tiniest ever, since at flying-forth It beareth nothing of the weight away. ”

“ But he whose mind and intellect abide Himself abides in life. However much The trunk be mangled, with the limbs lopped off, The soul withdrawn and taken from the limbs, Still lives the trunk and draws the vital air. Even when deprived of all but all the soul, Yet will it linger on and cleave to life,— Just as the power of vision still is strong, If but the pupil shall abide unharmed, Even when the eye around it's sorely rent— Provided only thou destroyest not Wholly the ball, but, cutting round the pupil, Leavest that pupil by itself behind— For more would ruin sight. ”

“ With seeds so intertwined even from birth, They're dowered conjointly with a partner-life; No energy of body or mind, apart, Each of itself without the other's power, Can have sensation; but our sense, enkindled Along the vitals, to flame is blown by both With mutual motions. Besides the body alone Is nor begot nor grows, nor after death Seen to endure. For not as water at times Gives off the alien heat, nor is thereby Itself destroyed, but unimpaired remains— Not thus, I say, can the deserted frame Bear the dissevering of its joined soul, But, rent and ruined, moulders all away. ”

“ And many wrestle on And groan with pains, and fill all regions round With mighty cries and wild, as if then gnawed By fangs of panther or of lion fierce. Many amid their slumbers talk about Their mighty enterprises, and have often Enough become the proof of their own crimes. Many meet death; many, as if headlong From lofty mountains tumbling down to earth With all their frame, are frenzied in their fright; And after sleep, as if still mad in mind, They scarce come to, confounded as they are By ferment of their frame. ”

“ Beside these matters, why Doth nature feed and foster on land and sea The dreadful breed of savage beasts, the foes Of the human clan? Why do the seasons bring Distempers with them? Wherefore stalks at large Death, so untimely? Then, again, the babe, Like to the castaway of the raging surf, Lies naked on the ground, speechless, in want Of every help for life, when nature first Hath poured him forth upon the shores of light With birth-pangs from within the mother's womb, And with a plaintive wail he fills the place,— As well befitting one for whom remains In life a journey through so many ills. ”

“ But comes the violence of the bigger rains When violently the clouds are weighted down Both by their cumulated mass and by The onset of the wind. And rains are wont To endure awhile and to abide for long, When many seeds of waters are aroused, And clouds on clouds and racks on racks outstream In piled layers and are borne along From every quarter, and when all the earth Smoking exhales her moisture. At such a time When sun with beams amid the tempest-murk Hath shone against the showers of black rains, Then in the swart clouds there emerges bright The radiance of the bow. ”

“ Thus the sum Forever is replenished, and we live As mortals by eternal give and take. The nations wax, the nations wane away; In a brief space the generations pass, And like to runners hand the lamp of life One unto other. But if thou believe That the primordial germs of things can stop, And in their stopping give new motions birth, Afar thou wanderest from the road of truth. For since they wander through the void inane, All the primordial germs of things must needs Be borne along, either by weight their own, Or haply by another's blow without. ”

“ Drawing upon itself the upturned faces Of neighbouring clans, what time they saw afar The skiey vaults a-fume and sparkling all, And filled their bosoms with dread anxiety Of what new thing nature were travailing at. In these affairs it much behooveth thee To look both wide and deep, and far abroad To peer to every quarter, that thou mayst Remember how boundless is the Sum-of-Things, And mark how infinitely small a part Of the whole Sum is this one sky of ours— O not so large a part as is one man Of the whole earth. ”

“ Some would plunge those limbs On fire with bane into the icy streams, Hurling the body naked into the waves; Many would headlong fling them deeply down The water-pits, tumbling with eager mouth Already agape. The insatiable thirst That whelmed their parched bodies, lo, would make A goodly shower seem like to scanty drops. Respite of torment was there none. Their frames Forspent lay prone. With silent lips of fear Would Medicine mumble low, the while she saw So many a time men roll their eyeballs round, Staring wide-open, unvisited of sleep, The heralds of old death. ”

“ So great in any sort of herb thou wilt, So great again in any river of earth Are the distinct diversities of matter. Hence, further, every creature—any one From out them all—compounded is the same Of bones, blood, veins, heat, moisture, flesh, and thews— All differing vastly in their forms, and built Of elements dissimilar in shape. Again, all things by fire consumed ablaze, Within their frame lay up, if naught besides, At least those atoms whence derives their power To throw forth fire and send out light from under, To shoot the sparks and scatter embers wide. ”

“ For then, by such bright circumstance abashed, Religion pales and flees thy mind; O then The fears of death leave heart so free of care. But if we note how all this pomp at last Is but a drollery and a mocking sport, And of a truth man's dread, with cares at heels, Dreads not these sounds of arms, these savage swords But among kings and lords of all the world Mingles undaunted, nor is overawed By gleam of gold nor by the splendour bright Of purple robe, canst thou then doubt that this Is aught, but power of thinking?—when, besides The whole of life but labours in the dark. ”

“ Verily, as the eye, Alone, up-rended from its roots, apart From all the body, can peer about at naught, So soul and mind it seems are nothing able, When by themselves. No marvel, because, commixed Through veins and inwards, and through bones and thews, Their elements primordial are confined By all the body, and own no power free To bound around through interspaces big, Thus, shut within these confines, they take on Motions of sense, which, after death, thrown out Beyond the body to the winds of air, Take on they cannot—and on this account, Because no more in such a way confined. ”

“ But if percase Thou think'st the frame of fire and earth, the air, The dew of water can in such wise meet As not by mingling to resign their nature, From them for thee no world can be create— No thing of breath, no stock or stalk of tree: In the wild congress of this varied heap Each thing its proper nature will display, And air will palpably be seen mixed up With earth together, unquenched heat with water. But primal germs in bringing things to birth Must have a latent, unseen quality, Lest some outstanding alien element Confuse and minish in the thing create Its proper being. ”

“ Wherefore, again, again, how merited Is that adopted name of Earth—The Mother!— Since she herself begat the human race, And at one well-nigh fixed time brought forth Each breast that ranges raving round about Upon the mighty mountains and all birds Aerial with many a varied shape. But, lo, because her bearing years must end, She ceased, like to a woman worn by eld. For lapsing aeons change the nature of The whole wide world, and all things needs must take One status after other, nor aught persists Forever like itself. ”

“ But ask the mourner what's the bitterness That man should waste in an eternal grief, If, after all, the thing's but sleep and rest? For when the soul and frame together are sunk In slumber, no one then demands his self Or being. Well, this sleep may be forever, Without desire of any selfhood more, For all it matters unto us asleep. Yet not at all do those primordial germs Roam round our members, at that time, afar From their own motions that produce our senses— Since, when he's startled from his sleep, a man Collects his senses. ”

“ Nor sea, nor breakers pounding on the rocks Created them; but earth it was who bore— The same to-day who feeds them from herself. Besides, herself of own accord, she first The shining grains and vineyards of all joy Created for mortality; herself Gave the sweet fruitage and the pastures glad, Which now to-day yet scarcely wax in size, Even when aided by our toiling arms. We break the ox, and wear away the strength Of sturdy farm-hands; iron tools to-day Barely avail for tilling of the fields, So niggardly they grudge our harvestings, So much increase our labour. ”

“ Wherefore it tallies that the mind no less Partaker is of death; for pain and disease Are both artificers of death,—as well We've learned by the passing of many a man ere now. Nay, too, in diseases of body, often the mind Wanders afield; for 'tis beside itself, And crazed it speaks, or many a time it sinks, With eyelids closing and a drooping nod, In heavy drowse, on to eternal sleep; From whence nor hears it any voices more, Nor able is to know the faces here Of those about him standing with wet cheeks Who vainly call him back to light and life. ”

“ This too, O often from the soul men say, Along their couches holding of the cups, With faces shaded by fresh wreaths awry: "Brief is this fruit of joy to paltry man, Soon, soon departed, and thereafter, no, It may not be recalled."—As if, forsooth, It were their prime of evils in great death To parch, poor tongues, with thirst and arid drought, Or chafe for any lack. Once more, if Nature Should of a sudden send a voice abroad, And her own self inveigh against us so: "Mortal, what hast thou of such grave concern That thou indulgest in too sickly plaints? ”

“ Lest, after the manner of the winged flames, The ramparts of the world should flee away, Dissolved amain throughout the mighty void, And lest all else should likewise follow after, Aye, lest the thundering vaults of heaven should burst And splinter upward, and the earth forthwith Withdraw from under our feet, and all its bulk, Among its mingled wrecks and those of heaven, With slipping asunder of the primal seeds, Should pass, along the immeasurable inane, Away forever, and, that instant, naught Of wrack and remnant would be left, beside The desolate space, and germs invisible. ”

“ But most to see with reasonable eyes Of what the mind, of what the soul is made, And what it is so terrible that breaks On us asleep, or waking in disease, Until we seem to mark and hear at hand Dead men whose bones earth bosomed long ago.
SUBSTANCE IS ETERNAL This terror, then, this darkness of the mind, Not sunrise with its flaring spokes of light, Nor glittering arrows of morning can disperse, But only Nature's aspect and her law, Which, teaching us, hath this exordium: Nothing from nothing ever yet was born. ”

“ Nor need there be for men Astonishment that yonder sun so small Can yet send forth so great a light as fills Oceans and all the lands and sky aflood, And with its fiery exhalations steeps The world at large. For it may be, indeed, That one vast-flowing well-spring of the whole Wide world from here hath opened and out-gushed, And shot its light abroad; because thuswise The elements of fiery exhalations From all the world around together come, And thuswise flow into a bulk so big That from one single fountain-head may stream This heat and light. ”

“ For what a blast of wind may do up there Is manifest from facts when here on earth A blast more gentle yet uptwists tall trees And sucks them madly from their deepest roots. Besides, among the clouds are waves, and these Give, as they roughly break, a rumbling roar; As when along deep streams or the great sea Breaks the loud surf. It happens, too, whenever Out from one cloud into another falls The fiery energy of thunderbolt, That straightaway the cloud, if full of wet, Extinguishes the fire with mighty noise ”

“ For to seek after power—an empty name, Nor given at all—and ever in the search To endure a world of toil, O this it is To shove with shoulder up the hill a stone Which yet comes rolling back from off the top, And headlong makes for levels of the plain. Then to be always feeding an ingrate mind, Filling with good things, satisfying never— As do the seasons of the year for us, When they return and bring their progenies And varied charms, and we are never filled With the fruits of life—O this, I fancy, 'tis To pour, like those young virgins in the tale, Waters into a sieve, unfilled forever. ”