Delphi Complete Works of Lucretius

by Titus Lucretius Carus

  And followed up with maxims, they would free

  Their state of man from anguish and from fear.

  “O even as here thou art, aslumber in death,

  So shalt thou slumber down the rest of time,

  Released from every harrying pang. But we,

  We have bewept thee with insatiate woe,

  Standing beside whilst on the awful pyre

  Thou wert made ashes; and no day shall take

  For us the eternal sorrow from the breast.”

  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. Death is, then, to us

  Much less — if there can be a less than that

  Which is itself a nothing: for there comes

  Hard upon death a scattering more great

  Of the throng of matter, and no man wakes up

  On whom once falls the icy pause of 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?

  Why this bemoaning and beweeping death?

  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. Though not yet thy body

  Wrinkles with years, nor yet the frame exhausts

  Outworn, still things abide the same, even if

  Thou goest on to conquer all of time

  With length of days, yea, if thou never diest” —

  What were our answer, but that Nature here

  Urges just suit and in her words lays down

  True cause of action? Yet should one complain,

  Riper in years and elder, and lament,

  Poor devil, his death more sorely than is fit,

  Then would she not, with greater right, on him

  Cry out, inveighing with a voice more shrill:

  “Off with thy tears, and choke thy whines, buffoon!

  Thou wrinklest — after thou hast had the sum

  Of the guerdons of life; yet, since thou cravest ever

  What’s not at hand, contemning present good,

  That life has slipped away, unperfected

  And unavailing unto thee. And now,

  Or ere thou guessed it, death beside thy head

  Stands — and before thou canst be going home

  Sated and laden with the goodly feast.

  But now yield all that’s alien to thine age, —

  Up, with good grace! make room for sons: thou must.”

  Justly, I fancy, would she reason thus,

  Justly inveigh and gird: since ever the old

  Outcrowded by the new gives way, and ever

  The one thing from the others is repaired.

  Nor no man is consigned to the abyss

  Of Tartarus, the black. For stuff must be,

  That thus the after-generations grow, —

  Though these, their life completed, follow thee;

  And thus like thee are generations all —

  Already fallen, or some time to fall.

  So one thing from another rises ever;

  And in fee-simple life is given to none,

  But unto all mere usufruct.

  Look back:

  Nothing to us was all fore-passed eld

  Of time the eternal, ere we had a birth.

  And Nature holds this like a mirror up

  Of time-to-be when we are dead and gone.

  And what is there so horrible appears?

  Now what is there so sad about it all?

  Is’t not serener far than any sleep?

  And, verily, those tortures said to be

  In Acheron, the deep, they all are ours

  Here in this life. No Tantalus, benumbed

  With baseless terror, as the fables tell,

  Fears the huge boulder hanging in the air:

  But, rather, in life an empty dread of Gods

  Urges mortality, and each one fears

  Such fall of fortune as may chance to him.

  Nor eat the vultures into Tityus

  Prostrate in Acheron, nor can they find,

  Forsooth, throughout eternal ages, aught

  To pry around for in that mighty breast.

  However hugely he extend his bulk —

  Who hath for outspread limbs not acres nine,

  But the whole earth — he shall not able be

  To bear eternal pain nor furnish food

  From his own frame forever. But for us

  A Tityus is he whom vultures rend

  Prostrate in love, whom anxious anguish eats,

  Whom troubles of any unappeased desires

  Asunder rip. We have before our eyes

  Here in this life also a Sisyphus

  In him who seeketh of the populace

  The rods, the axes fell, and evermore

  Retires a beaten and a gloomy man.

  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.

  Cerberus and Furies, and that Lack of Light

  Tartarus, out-belching from his mouth the surge

  Of horrible heat — the which are nowhere, nor

  Indeed can be: but in this life is fear

  Of retributions just and expiations

  For evil acts: the dungeon and the leap

  From that dread rock of infamy, the stripes,

  The executioners, the oaken rack,

  The iron plates, bitumen
, and the torch.

  And even though these are absent, yet the mind,

  With a fore-fearing conscience, plies its goads

  And burns beneath the lash, nor sees meanwhile

  What terminus of ills, what end of pine

  Can ever be, and feareth lest the same

  But grow more heavy after death. Of truth,

  The life of fools is Acheron on earth.

  This also to thy very self sometimes

  Repeat thou mayst: “Lo, even good Ancus left

  The sunshine with his eyes, in divers things

  A better man than thou, O worthless hind;

  And many other kings and lords of rule

  Thereafter have gone under, once who swayed

  O’er mighty peoples. And he also, he —

  Who whilom paved a highway down the sea,

  And gave his legionaries thoroughfare

  Along the deep, and taught them how to cross

  The pools of brine afoot, and did contemn,

  Trampling upon it with his cavalry,

  The bellowings of ocean — poured his soul

  From dying body, as his light was ta’en.

  And Scipio’s son, the thunderbolt of war,

  Horror of Carthage, gave his bones to earth,

  Like to the lowliest villein in the house.

  Add finders-out of sciences and arts;

  Add comrades of the Heliconian dames,

  Among whom Homer, sceptered o’er them all,

  Now lies in slumber sunken with the rest.

  Then, too, Democritus, when ripened eld

  Admonished him his memory waned away,

  Of own accord offered his head to death.

  Even Epicurus went, his light of life

  Run out, the man in genius who o’er-topped

  The human race, extinguishing all others,

  As sun, in ether arisen, all the stars.

  Wilt thou, then, dally, thou complain to go? —

  For whom already life’s as good as dead,

  Whilst yet thou livest and lookest? — who in sleep

  Wastest thy life — time’s major part, and snorest

  Even when awake, and ceasest not to see

  The stuff of dreams, and bearest a mind beset

  By baseless terror, nor discoverest oft

  What’s wrong with thee, when, like a sotted wretch,

  Thou’rt jostled along by many crowding cares,

  And wanderest reeling round, with mind aswim.”

  If men, in that same way as on the mind

  They feel the load that wearies with its weight,

  Could also know the causes whence it comes,

  And why so great the heap of ill on heart,

  O not in this sort would they live their life,

  As now so much we see them, knowing not

  What ’tis they want, and seeking ever and ever

  A change of place, as if to drop the burden.

  The man who sickens of his home goes out,

  Forth from his splendid halls, and straight — returns,

  Feeling i’faith no better off abroad.

  He races, driving his Gallic ponies along,

  Down to his villa, madly, — as in haste

  To hurry help to a house afire. — At once

  He yawns, as soon as foot has touched the threshold,

  Or drowsily goes off in sleep and seeks

  Forgetfulness, or maybe bustles about

  And makes for town again. In such a way

  Each human flees himself — a self in sooth,

  As happens, he by no means can escape;

  And willy-nilly he cleaves to it and loathes,

  Sick, sick, and guessing not the cause of ail.

  Yet should he see but that, O chiefly then,

  Leaving all else, he’d study to divine

  The nature of things, since here is in debate

  Eternal time and not the single hour,

  Mortal’s estate in whatsoever remains

  After great death.

  And too, when all is said,

  What evil lust of life is this so great

  Subdues us to live, so dreadfully distraught

  In perils and alarms? one fixed end

  Of life abideth for mortality;

  Death’s not to shun, and we must go to meet.

  Besides we’re busied with the same devices,

  Ever and ever, and we are at them ever,

  And there’s no new delight that may be forged

  By living on. But whilst the thing we long for

  Is lacking, that seems good above all else;

  Thereafter, when we’ve touched it, something else

  We long for; ever one equal thirst of life

  Grips us agape. And doubtful ’tis what fortune

  The future times may carry, or what be

  That chance may bring, or what the issue next

  Awaiting us. Nor by prolonging life

  Take we the least away from death’s own time,

  Nor can we pluck one moment off, whereby

  To minish the aeons of our state of death.

  Therefore, O man, by living on, fulfil

  As many generations as thou may:

  Eternal death shall there be waiting still;

  And he who died with light of yesterday

  Shall be no briefer time in death’s No-more

  Than he who perished months or years before.

  BOOK IV

  PROEM

  I wander afield, thriving in sturdy thought,

  Through unpathed haunts of the Pierides,

  Trodden by step of none before. I joy

  To come on undefiled fountains there,

  To drain them deep; I joy to pluck new flowers,

  To seek for this my head a signal crown

  From regions where the Muses never yet

  Have garlanded the temples of a man:

  First, since I teach concerning mighty things,

  And go right on to loose from round the mind

  The tightened coils of dread religion;

  Next, since, concerning themes so dark, I frame

  Song so pellucid, touching all throughout

  Even with the Muses’ charm — which, as ’twould seem,

  Is not without a reasonable ground:

  For as physicians, when they seek to give

  Young boys the nauseous wormwood, first do touch

  The brim around the cup with the sweet juice

  And yellow of the honey, in order that

  The thoughtless age of boyhood be cajoled

  As far as the lips, and meanwhile swallow down

  The wormwood’s bitter draught, and, though befooled,

  Be yet not merely duped, but rather thus

  Grow strong again with recreated health:

  So now I too (since this my doctrine seems

  In general somewhat woeful unto those

  Who’ve had it not in hand, and since the crowd

  Starts back from it in horror) have desired

  To expound our doctrine unto thee in song

  Soft-speaking and Pierian, and, as ‘twere,

  To touch it with sweet honey of the Muse —

  If by such method haply I might hold

  The mind of thee upon these lines of ours,

  Till thou dost learn the nature of all things

  And understandest their utility.

  EXISTENCE AND CHARACTER OF THE IMAGES

  But since I’ve taught already of what sort

  The seeds of all things are, and how distinct

  In divers forms they flit of own accord,

  Stirred with a motion everlasting on,

  And in what mode things be from them create,

  And since I’ve taught what the mind’s nature is,

  And of what things ’tis with the body knit

  And thrives in strength, and by what mode uptorn

  That mind returns to its primordials,
<
br />   Now will I undertake an argument —

  One for these matters of supreme concern —

  That there exist those somewhats which we call

  The images of things: these, like to films

  Scaled off the utmost outside of the things,

  Flit hither and thither through the atmosphere,

  And the same terrify our intellects,

  Coming upon us waking or in sleep,

  When oft we peer at wonderful strange shapes

  And images of people lorn of light,

  Which oft have horribly roused us when we lay

  In slumber — that haply nevermore may we

  Suppose that souls get loose from Acheron,

  Or shades go floating in among the living,

  Or aught of us is left behind at death,

  When body and mind, destroyed together, each

  Back to its own primordials goes away.

  And thus I say that effigies of things,

  And tenuous shapes from off the things are sent,

  From off the utmost outside of the things,

  Which are like films or may be named a rind,

  Because the image bears like look and form

  With whatso body has shed it fluttering forth —

  A fact thou mayst, however dull thy wits,

  Well learn from this: mainly, because we see

  Even ‘mongst visible objects many be

  That send forth bodies, loosely some diffused —

  Like smoke from oaken logs and heat from fires —

  And some more interwoven and condensed —

  As when the locusts in the summertime

  Put off their glossy tunics, or when calves

  At birth drop membranes from their body’s surface,

  Or when, again, the slippery serpent doffs

  Its vestments ‘mongst the thorns — for oft we see

  The breres augmented with their flying spoils:

  Since such takes place, ’tis likewise certain too

  That tenuous images from things are sent,

  From off the utmost outside of the things.

  For why those kinds should drop and part from things,

  Rather than others tenuous and thin,

  No power has man to open mouth to tell;

  Especially, since on outsides of things

  Are bodies many and minute which could,

  In the same order which they had before,

  And with the figure of their form preserved,

  Be thrown abroad, and much more swiftly too,

  Being less subject to impediments,

  As few in number and placed along the front.

  For truly many things we see discharge

  Their stuff at large, not only from their cores