Delphi Complete Works of Lucretius

by Titus Lucretius Carus

  Mounting again and on. A third attempts

  With leg dismembered to arise and stand,

  Whilst, on the ground hard by, the dying foot

  Twitches its spreading toes. And even the head,

  When from the warm and living trunk lopped off,

  Keeps on the ground the vital countenance

  And open eyes, until ‘t has rendered up

  All remnants of the soul. Nay, once again:

  If, when a serpent’s darting forth its tongue,

  And lashing its tail, thou gettest chance to hew

  With axe its length of trunk to many parts,

  Thou’lt see each severed fragment writhing round

  With its fresh wound, and spattering up the sod,

  And there the fore-part seeking with the jaws

  After the hinder, with bite to stop the pain.

  So shall we say that these be souls entire

  In all those fractions? — but from that ’twould follow

  One creature’d have in body many souls.

  Therefore, the soul, which was indeed but one,

  Has been divided with the body too:

  Each is but mortal, since alike is each

  Hewn into many parts. Again, how often

  We view our fellow going by degrees,

  And losing limb by limb the vital sense;

  First nails and fingers of the feet turn blue,

  Next die the feet and legs, then o’er the rest

  Slow crawl the certain footsteps of cold death.

  And since this nature of the soul is torn,

  Nor mounts away, as at one time, entire,

  We needs must hold it mortal. But perchance

  If thou supposest that the soul itself

  Can inward draw along the frame, and bring

  Its parts together to one place, and so

  From all the members draw the sense away,

  Why, then, that place in which such stock of soul

  Collected is, should greater seem in sense.

  But since such place is nowhere, for a fact,

  As said before, ’tis rent and scattered forth,

  And so goes under. Or again, if now

  I please to grant the false, and say that soul

  Can thus be lumped within the frames of those

  Who leave the sunshine, dying bit by bit,

  Still must the soul as mortal be confessed;

  Nor aught it matters whether to wrack it go,

  Dispersed in the winds, or, gathered in a mass

  From all its parts, sink down to brutish death,

  Since more and more in every region sense

  Fails the whole man, and less and less of life

  In every region lingers.

  And besides,

  If soul immortal is, and winds its way

  Into the body at the birth of man,

  Why can we not remember something, then,

  Of life-time spent before? why keep we not

  Some footprints of the things we did of, old?

  But if so changed hath been the power of mind,

  That every recollection of things done

  Is fallen away, at no o’erlong remove

  Is that, I trow, from what we mean by death.

  Wherefore ’tis sure that what hath been before

  Hath died, and what now is is now create.

  Moreover, if after the body hath been built

  Our mind’s live powers are wont to be put in,

  Just at the moment that we come to birth,

  And cross the sills of life, ’twould scarcely fit

  For them to live as if they seemed to grow

  Along with limbs and frame, even in the blood,

  But rather as in a cavern all alone.

  (Yet all the body duly throngs with sense.)

  But public fact declares against all this:

  For soul is so entwined through the veins,

  The flesh, the thews, the bones, that even the teeth

  Share in sensation, as proven by dull ache,

  By twinge from icy water, or grating crunch

  Upon a stone that got in mouth with bread.

  Wherefore, again, again, souls must be thought

  Nor void of birth, nor free from law of death;

  Nor, if, from outward, in they wound their way,

  Could they be thought as able so to cleave

  To these our frames, nor, since so interwove,

  Appears it that they’re able to go forth

  Unhurt and whole and loose themselves unscathed

  From all the thews, articulations, bones.

  But, if perchance thou thinkest that the soul,

  From outward winding in its way, is wont

  To seep and soak along these members ours,

  Then all the more ‘twill perish, being thus

  With body fused — for what will seep and soak

  Will be dissolved and will therefore die.

  For just as food, dispersed through all the pores

  Of body, and passed through limbs and all the frame,

  Perishes, supplying from itself the stuff

  For other nature, thus the soul and mind,

  Though whole and new into a body going,

  Are yet, by seeping in, dissolved away,

  Whilst, as through pores, to all the frame there pass

  Those particles from which created is

  This nature of mind, now ruler of our body,

  Born from that soul which perished, when divided

  Along the frame. Wherefore it seems that soul

  Hath both a natal and funeral hour.

  Besides are seeds of soul there left behind

  In the breathless body, or not? If there they are,

  It cannot justly be immortal deemed,

  Since, shorn of some parts lost, ‘thas gone away:

  But if, borne off with members uncorrupt,

  ‘Thas fled so absolutely all away

  It leaves not one remainder of itself

  Behind in body, whence do cadavers, then,

  From out their putrid flesh exhale the worms,

  And whence does such a mass of living things,

  Boneless and bloodless, o’er the bloated frame

  Bubble and swarm? But if perchance thou thinkest

  That souls from outward into worms can wind,

  And each into a separate body come,

  And reckonest not why many thousand souls

  Collect where only one has gone away,

  Here is a point, in sooth, that seems to need

  Inquiry and a putting to the test:

  Whether the souls go on a hunt for seeds

  Of worms wherewith to build their dwelling places,

  Or enter bodies ready-made, as ‘twere.

  But why themselves they thus should do and toil

  ’Tis hard to say, since, being free of body,

  They flit around, harassed by no disease,

  Nor cold nor famine; for the body labours

  By more of kinship to these flaws of life,

  And mind by contact with that body suffers

  So many ills. But grant it be for them

  However useful to construct a body

  To which to enter in, ’tis plain they can’t.

  Then, souls for self no frames nor bodies make,

  Nor is there how they once might enter in

  To bodies ready-made — for they cannot

  Be nicely interwoven with the same,

  And there’ll be formed no interplay of sense

  Common to each.

  Again, why is’t there goes

  Impetuous rage with lion’s breed morose,

  And cunning with foxes, and to deer why given

  The ancestral fear and tendency to flee,

  And why in short do all the rest of traits

  Engender from the very start of life

  In the members and mentality, if not

  Because one
certain power of mind that came

  From its own seed and breed waxes the same

  Along with all the body? But were mind

  Immortal, were it wont to change its bodies,

  How topsy-turvy would earth’s creatures act!

  The Hyrcan hound would flee the onset oft

  Of antlered stag, the scurrying hawk would quake

  Along the winds of air at the coming dove,

  And men would dote, and savage beasts be wise;

  For false the reasoning of those that say

  Immortal mind is changed by change of body —

  For what is changed dissolves, and therefore dies.

  For parts are re-disposed and leave their order;

  Wherefore they must be also capable

  Of dissolution through the frame at last,

  That they along with body perish all.

  But should some say that always souls of men

  Go into human bodies, I will ask:

  How can a wise become a dullard soul?

  And why is never a child’s a prudent soul?

  And the mare’s filly why not trained so well

  As sturdy strength of steed? We may be sure

  They’ll take their refuge in the thought that mind

  Becomes a weakling in a weakling frame.

  Yet be this so, ’tis needful to confess

  The soul but mortal, since, so altered now

  Throughout the frame, it loses the life and sense

  It had before. Or how can mind wax strong

  Coequally with body and attain

  The craved flower of life, unless it be

  The body’s colleague in its origins?

  Or what’s the purport of its going forth

  From aged limbs? — fears it, perhaps, to stay,

  Pent in a crumbled body? Or lest its house,

  Outworn by venerable length of days,

  May topple down upon it? But indeed

  For an immortal perils are there none.

  Again, at parturitions of the wild

  And at the rites of Love, that souls should stand

  Ready hard by seems ludicrous enough —

  Immortals waiting for their mortal limbs

  In numbers innumerable, contending madly

  Which shall be first and chief to enter in! —

  Unless perchance among the souls there be

  Such treaties stablished that the first to come

  Flying along, shall enter in the first,

  And that they make no rivalries of strength!

  Again, in ether can’t exist a tree,

  Nor clouds in ocean deeps, nor in the fields

  Can fishes live, nor blood in timber be,

  Nor sap in boulders: fixed and arranged

  Where everything may grow and have its place.

  Thus nature of mind cannot arise alone

  Without the body, nor exist afar

  From thews and blood. But if ‘twere possible,

  Much rather might this very power of mind

  Be in the head, the shoulders or the heels,

  And, born in any part soever, yet

  In the same man, in the same vessel abide.

  But since within this body even of ours

  Stands fixed and appears arranged sure

  Where soul and mind can each exist and grow,

  Deny we must the more that they can have

  Duration and birth, wholly outside the frame.

  For, verily, the mortal to conjoin

  With the eternal, and to feign they feel

  Together, and can function each with each,

  Is but to dote: for what can be conceived

  Of more unlike, discrepant, ill-assorted,

  Than something mortal in a union joined

  With an immortal and a secular

  To bear the outrageous tempests?

  Then, again,

  Whatever abides eternal must indeed

  Either repel all strokes, because ’tis made

  Of solid body, and permit no entrance

  Of aught with power to sunder from within

  The parts compact — as are those seeds of stuff

  Whose nature we’ve exhibited before;

  Or else be able to endure through time

  For this: because they are from blows exempt,

  As is the void, the which abides untouched,

  Unsmit by any stroke; or else because

  There is no room around, whereto things can,

  As ‘twere, depart in dissolution all, —

  Even as the sum of sums eternal is,

  Without or place beyond whereto things may

  Asunder fly, or bodies which can smite,

  And thus dissolve them by the blows of might.

  But if perchance the soul’s to be adjudged

  Immortal, mainly on ground ’tis kept secure

  In vital forces — either because there come

  Never at all things hostile to its weal,

  Or else because what come somehow retire,

  Repelled or ere we feel the harm they work,

  For, lo, besides that, when the frame’s diseased,

  Soul sickens too, there cometh, many a time,

  That which torments it with the things to be,

  Keeps it in dread, and wearies it with cares;

  And even when evil acts are of the past,

  Still gnaw the old transgressions bitterly.

  Add, too, that frenzy, peculiar to the mind,

  And that oblivion of the things that were;

  Add its submergence in the murky waves

  Of drowse and torpor.

  FOLLY OF THE FEAR OF DEATH

  Therefore death to us

  Is nothing, nor concerns us in the least,

  Since nature of mind is mortal evermore.

  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. But if indeed do feel

  The nature of mind and energy of soul,

  After their severance from this body of ours,

  Yet nothing ’tis to us who in the bonds

  And wedlock of the soul and body live,

  Through which we’re fashioned to a single state.

  And, even if time collected after death

  The matter of our frames and set it all

  Again in place as now, and if again

  To us the light of life were given, O yet

  That process too would not concern us aught,

  When once the self-succession of our sense

  Has been asunder broken. And now and here,

  Little enough we’re busied with the selves

  We were aforetime, nor, concerning them,

  Suffer a sore distress. For shouldst thou gaze

  Backwards across all yesterdays of time

  The immeasurable, thinking how manifold

  The motions of matter are, then couldst thou well

  Credit this too: often these very seeds

  (From which we are to-day) of old were set

  In the same order as they are to-day —

  Yet this we can’t to consciousness recall

  Through the remembering mind. For there hath been

  An interposed pause of life, and wide

  Have all the motions wandered everywhere

  From
these our senses. For if woe and ail

  Perchance are toward, then the man to whom

  The bane can happen must himself be there

  At that same time. But death precludeth this,

  Forbidding life to him on whom might crowd

  Such irk and care; and granted ’tis to know:

  Nothing for us there is to dread in death,

  No wretchedness for him who is no more,

  The same estate as if ne’er born before,

  When death immortal hath ta’en the mortal life.

  Hence, where thou seest a man to grieve because

  When dead he rots with body laid away,

  Or perishes in flames or jaws of beasts,

  Know well: he rings not true, and that beneath

  Still works an unseen sting upon his heart,

  However he deny that he believes.

  His shall be aught of feeling after death.

  For he, I fancy, grants not what he says,

  Nor what that presupposes, and he fails

  To pluck himself with all his roots from life

  And cast that self away, quite unawares

  Feigning that some remainder’s left behind.

  For when in life one pictures to oneself

  His body dead by beasts and vultures torn,

  He pities his state, dividing not himself

  Therefrom, removing not the self enough

  From the body flung away, imagining

  Himself that body, and projecting there

  His own sense, as he stands beside it: hence

  He grieves that he is mortal born, nor marks

  That in true death there is no second self

  Alive and able to sorrow for self destroyed,

  Or stand lamenting that the self lies there

  Mangled or burning. For if it an evil is

  Dead to be jerked about by jaw and fang

  Of the wild brutes, I see not why ‘twere not

  Bitter to lie on fires and roast in flames,

  Or suffocate in honey, and, reclined

  On the smooth oblong of an icy slab,

  Grow stiff in cold, or sink with load of earth

  Down-crushing from above.

  “Thee now no more

  The joyful house and best of wives shall welcome,

  Nor little sons run up to snatch their kisses

  And touch with silent happiness thy heart.

  Thou shalt not speed in undertakings more,

  Nor be the warder of thine own no more.

  Poor wretch,” they say, “one hostile hour hath ta’en

  Wretchedly from thee all life’s many guerdons,”

  But add not, “yet no longer unto thee

  Remains a remnant of desire for them”

  If this they only well perceived with mind