Delphi Complete Works of Lucretius

by Titus Lucretius Carus

  This air is nimbler, nicer, and more strong.

  And soon as ever ‘thas filled and oped with light

  The pathways of the eyeballs, which before

  Black air had blocked, there follow straightaway

  Those films of things out-standing in the light,

  Provoking vision — what we cannot do

  From out the light with objects in the dark,

  Because that denser darkling air behind

  Followeth in, and fills each aperture

  And thus blockades the pathways of the eyes

  That there no images of any things

  Can be thrown in and agitate the eyes.

  And when from far away we do behold

  The squared towers of a city, oft

  Rounded they seem, — on this account because

  Each distant angle is perceived obtuse,

  Or rather it is not perceived at all;

  And perishes its blow nor to our gaze

  Arrives its stroke, since through such length of air

  Are borne along the idols that the air

  Makes blunt the idol of the angle’s point

  By numerous collidings. When thuswise

  The angles of the tower each and all

  Have quite escaped the sense, the stones appear

  As rubbed and rounded on a turner’s wheel —

  Yet not like objects near and truly round,

  But with a semblance to them, shadowily.

  Likewise, our shadow in the sun appears

  To move along and follow our own steps

  And imitate our carriage — if thou thinkest

  Air that is thus bereft of light can walk,

  Following the gait and motion of mankind.

  For what we use to name a shadow, sure

  Is naught but air deprived of light. No marvel:

  Because the earth from spot to spot is reft

  Progressively of light of sun, whenever

  In moving round we get within its way,

  While any spot of earth by us abandoned

  Is filled with light again, on this account

  It comes to pass that what was body’s shadow

  Seems still the same to follow after us

  In one straight course. Since, evermore pour in

  New lights of rays, and perish then the old,

  Just like the wool that’s drawn into the flame.

  Therefore the earth is easily spoiled of light

  And easily refilled and from herself

  Washeth the black shadows quite away.

  And yet in this we don’t at all concede

  That eyes be cheated. For their task it is

  To note in whatsoever place be light,

  In what be shadow: whether or no the gleams

  Be still the same, and whether the shadow which

  Just now was here is that one passing thither,

  Or whether the facts be what we said above,

  ’Tis after all the reasoning of mind

  That must decide; nor can our eyeballs know

  The nature of reality. And so

  Attach thou not this fault of mind to eyes,

  Nor lightly think our senses everywhere

  Are tottering. The ship in which we sail

  Is borne along, although it seems to stand;

  The ship that bides in roadstead is supposed

  There to be passing by. And hills and fields

  Seem fleeing fast astern, past which we urge

  The ship and fly under the bellying sails.

  The stars, each one, do seem to pause, affixed

  To the ethereal caverns, though they all

  Forever are in motion, rising out

  And thence revisiting their far descents

  When they have measured with their bodies bright

  The span of heaven. And likewise sun and moon

  Seem biding in a roadstead, — objects which,

  As plain fact proves, are really borne along.

  Between two mountains far away aloft

  From midst the whirl of waters open lies

  A gaping exit for the fleet, and yet

  They seem conjoined in a single isle.

  When boys themselves have stopped their spinning round,

  The halls still seem to whirl and posts to reel,

  Until they now must almost think the roofs

  Threaten to ruin down upon their heads.

  And now, when nature begins to lift on high

  The sun’s red splendour and the tremulous fires,

  And raise him o’er the mountain-tops, those mountains —

  O’er which he seemeth then to thee to be,

  His glowing self hard by atingeing them

  With his own fire — are yet away from us

  Scarcely two thousand arrow-shots, indeed

  Oft scarce five hundred courses of a dart;

  Although between those mountains and the sun

  Lie the huge plains of ocean spread beneath

  The vasty shores of ether, and intervene

  A thousand lands, possessed by many a folk

  And generations of wild beasts. Again,

  A pool of water of but a finger’s depth,

  Which lies between the stones along the pave,

  Offers a vision downward into earth

  As far, as from the earth o’erspread on high

  The gulfs of heaven; that thus thou seemest to view

  Clouds down below and heavenly bodies plunged

  Wondrously in heaven under earth.

  Then too, when in the middle of the stream

  Sticks fast our dashing horse, and down we gaze

  Into the river’s rapid waves, some force

  Seems then to bear the body of the horse,

  Though standing still, reversely from his course,

  And swiftly push up-stream. And wheresoe’er

  We cast our eyes across, all objects seem

  Thus to be onward borne and flow along

  In the same way as we. A portico,

  Albeit it stands well propped from end to end

  On equal columns, parallel and big,

  Contracts by stages in a narrow cone,

  When from one end the long, long whole is seen, —

  Until, conjoining ceiling with the floor,

  And the whole right side with the left, it draws

  Together to a cone’s nigh-viewless point.

  To sailors on the main the sun he seems

  From out the waves to rise, and in the waves

  To set and bury his light — because indeed

  They gaze on naught but water and the sky.

  Again, to gazers ignorant of the sea,

  Vessels in port seem, as with broken poops,

  To lean upon the water, quite agog;

  For any portion of the oars that’s raised

  Above the briny spray is straight, and straight

  The rudders from above. But other parts,

  Those sunk, immersed below the water-line,

  Seem broken all and bended and inclined

  Sloping to upwards, and turned back to float

  Almost atop the water. And when the winds

  Carry the scattered drifts along the sky

  In the night-time, then seem to glide along

  The radiant constellations ‘gainst the clouds

  And there on high to take far other course

  From that whereon in truth they’re borne. And then,

  If haply our hand be set beneath one eye

  And press below thereon, then to our gaze

  Each object which we gaze on seems to be,

  By some sensation twain — then twain the lights

  Of lampions burgeoning in flowers of flame,

  And twain the furniture in all the house,

  Two-fold the visages of fellow-men,

  And twain their bodies. And again, when sleep

  Has bound our members down in slumber softr />
  And all the body lies in deep repose,

  Yet then we seem to self to be awake

  And move our members; and in night’s blind gloom

  We think to mark the daylight and the sun;

  And, shut within a room, yet still we seem

  To change our skies, our oceans, rivers, hills,

  To cross the plains afoot, and hear new sounds,

  Though still the austere silence of the night

  Abides around us, and to speak replies,

  Though voiceless. Other cases of the sort

  Wondrously many do we see, which all

  Seek, so to say, to injure faith in sense —

  In vain, because the largest part of these

  Deceives through mere opinions of the mind,

  Which we do add ourselves, feigning to see

  What by the senses are not seen at all.

  For naught is harder than to separate

  Plain facts from dubious, which the mind forthwith

  Adds by itself.

  Again, if one suppose

  That naught is known, he knows not whether this

  Itself is able to be known, since he

  Confesses naught to know. Therefore with him

  I waive discussion — who has set his head

  Even where his feet should be. But let me grant

  That this he knows, — I question: whence he knows

  What ’tis to know and not-to-know in turn,

  And what created concept of the truth,

  And what device has proved the dubious

  To differ from the certain? — since in things

  He’s heretofore seen naught of true. Thou’lt find

  That from the senses first hath been create

  Concept of truth, nor can the senses be

  Rebutted. For criterion must be found

  Worthy of greater trust, which shall defeat

  Through own authority the false by true;

  What, then, than these our senses must there be

  Worthy a greater trust? Shall reason, sprung

  From some false sense, prevail to contradict

  Those senses, sprung as reason wholly is

  From out the senses? — For lest these be true,

  All reason also then is falsified.

  Or shall the ears have power to blame the eyes,

  Or yet the touch the ears? Again, shall taste

  Accuse this touch or shall the nose confute

  Or eyes defeat it? Methinks not so it is:

  For unto each has been divided off

  Its function quite apart, its power to each;

  And thus we’re still constrained to perceive

  The soft, the cold, the hot apart, apart

  All divers hues and whatso things there be

  Conjoined with hues. Likewise the tasting tongue

  Has its own power apart, and smells apart

  And sounds apart are known. And thus it is

  That no one sense can e’er convict another.

  Nor shall one sense have power to blame itself,

  Because it always must be deemed the same,

  Worthy of equal trust. And therefore what

  At any time unto these senses showed,

  The same is true. And if the reason be

  Unable to unravel us the cause

  Why objects, which at hand were square, afar

  Seemed rounded, yet it more availeth us,

  Lacking the reason, to pretend a cause

  For each configuration, than to let

  From out our hands escape the obvious things

  And injure primal faith in sense, and wreck

  All those foundations upon which do rest

  Our life and safety. For not only reason

  Would topple down; but even our very life

  Would straightaway collapse, unless we dared

  To trust our senses and to keep away

  From headlong heights and places to be shunned

  Of a like peril, and to seek with speed

  Their opposites! Again, as in a building,

  If the first plumb-line be askew, and if

  The square deceiving swerve from lines exact,

  And if the level waver but the least

  In any part, the whole construction then

  Must turn out faulty — shelving and askew,

  Leaning to back and front, incongruous,

  That now some portions seem about to fall,

  And falls the whole ere long — betrayed indeed

  By first deceiving estimates: so too

  Thy calculations in affairs of life

  Must be askew and false, if sprung for thee

  From senses false. So all that troop of words

  Marshalled against the senses is quite vain.

  And now remains to demonstrate with ease

  How other senses each their things perceive.

  Firstly, a sound and every voice is heard,

  When, getting into ears, they strike the sense

  With their own body. For confess we must

  Even voice and sound to be corporeal,

  Because they’re able on the sense to strike.

  Besides voice often scrapes against the throat,

  And screams in going out do make more rough

  The wind-pipe — naturally enough, methinks,

  When, through the narrow exit rising up

  In larger throng, these primal germs of voice

  Have thus begun to issue forth. In sooth,

  Also the door of the mouth is scraped against

  [By air blown outward] from distended [cheeks].

  And thus no doubt there is, that voice and words

  Consist of elements corporeal,

  With power to pain. Nor art thou unaware

  Likewise how much of body’s ta’en away,

  How much from very thews and powers of men

  May be withdrawn by steady talk, prolonged

  Even from the rising splendour of the morn

  To shadows of black evening, — above all

  If ‘t be outpoured with most exceeding shouts.

  Therefore the voice must be corporeal,

  Since the long talker loses from his frame

  A part.

  Moreover, roughness in the sound

  Comes from the roughness in the primal germs,

  As a smooth sound from smooth ones is create;

  Nor have these elements a form the same

  When the trump rumbles with a hollow roar,

  As when barbaric Berecynthian pipe

  Buzzes with raucous boomings, or when swans

  By night from icy shores of Helicon

  With wailing voices raise their liquid dirge.

  Thus, when from deep within our frame we force

  These voices, and at mouth expel them forth,

  The mobile tongue, artificer of words,

  Makes them articulate, and too the lips

  By their formations share in shaping them.

  Hence when the space is short from starting-point

  To where that voice arrives, the very words

  Must too be plainly heard, distinctly marked.

  For then the voice conserves its own formation,

  Conserves its shape. But if the space between

  Be longer than is fit, the words must be

  Through the much air confounded, and the voice

  Disordered in its flight across the winds —

  And so it haps, that thou canst sound perceive,

  Yet not determine what the words may mean;

  To such degree confounded and encumbered

  The voice approaches us. Again, one word,

  Sent from the crier’s mouth, may rouse all ears

  Among the populace. And thus one voice

  Scatters asunder into many voices,

  Since it divides itself for separate ears,

  Imprinting form of word and a clear tone.

  But
whatso part of voices fails to hit

  The ears themselves perishes, borne beyond,

  Idly diffused among the winds. A part,

  Beating on solid porticoes, tossed back

  Returns a sound; and sometimes mocks the ear

  With a mere phantom of a word. When this

  Thou well hast noted, thou canst render count

  Unto thyself and others why it is

  Along the lonely places that the rocks

  Give back like shapes of words in order like,

  When search we after comrades wandering

  Among the shady mountains, and aloud

  Call unto them, the scattered. I have seen

  Spots that gave back even voices six or seven

  For one thrown forth — for so the very hills,

  Dashing them back against the hills, kept on

  With their reverberations. And these spots

  The neighbouring country-side doth feign to be

  Haunts of the goat-foot satyrs and the nymphs;

  And tells ye there be fauns, by whose night noise

  And antic revels yonder they declare

  The voiceless silences are broken oft,

  And tones of strings are made and wailings sweet

  Which the pipe, beat by players’ finger-tips,

  Pours out; and far and wide the farmer-race

  Begins to hear, when, shaking the garmentings

  Of pine upon his half-beast head, god-Pan

  With puckered lip oft runneth o’er and o’er

  The open reeds, — lest flute should cease to pour

  The woodland music! Other prodigies

  And wonders of this ilk they love to tell,

  Lest they be thought to dwell in lonely spots

  And even by gods deserted. This is why

  They boast of marvels in their story-tellings;

  Or by some other reason are led on —

  Greedy, as all mankind hath ever been,

  To prattle fables into ears.

  Again,

  One need not wonder how it comes about

  That through those places (through which eyes cannot

  View objects manifest) sounds yet may pass

  And assail the ears. For often we observe

  People conversing, though the doors be closed;

  No marvel either, since all voice unharmed

  Can wind through bended apertures of things,

  While idol-films decline to — for they’re rent,

  Unless along straight apertures they swim,

  Like those in glass, through which all images

  Do fly across. And yet this voice itself,

  In passing through shut chambers of a house,

  Is dulled, and in a jumble enters ears,

  And sound we seem to hear far more than words.

  Moreover, a voice is into all directions