De Rerum Natura
Lucretius
Lucretius. De Rerum Natura. William Ellery Leonard. E. P. Dutton. 1916.
- Nor do the powers divine grudge any man
- The fruits of his seed-sowing, so that never
- He be called "father" by sweet children his,
- And end his days in sterile love forever.
- What many men suppose; and gloomily
- They sprinkle the altars with abundant blood,
- And make the high platforms odorous with burnt gifts,
- To render big by plenteous seed their wives-
- And plague in vain godheads and sacred lots.
- For sterile are these men by seed too thick,
- Or else by far too watery and thin.
- Because the thin is powerless to cleave
- Fast to the proper places, straightaway
- It trickles from them, and, returned again,
- Retires abortively. And then since seed
- More gross and solid than will suit is spent
- By some men, either it flies not forth amain
- With spurt prolonged enough, or else it fails
- To enter suitably the proper places,
- Or, having entered, the seed is weakly mixed
- With seed of the woman: harmonies of Venus
- Are seen to matter vastly here; and some
- Impregnate some more readily, and from some
- Some women conceive more readily and become
- Pregnant. And many women, sterile before
- In several marriage-beds, have yet thereafter
- Obtained the mates from whom they could conceive
- The baby-boys, and with sweet progeny
- Grow rich. And even for husbands (whose own wives,
- Although of fertile wombs, have borne for them
- No babies in the house) are also found
- Concordant natures so that they at last
- Can bulwark their old age with goodly sons.
- A matter of great moment 'tis in truth,
- That seeds may mingle readily with seeds
- Suited for procreation, and that thick
- Should mix with fluid seeds, with thick the fluid.
- And in this business 'tis of some import
- Upon what diet life is nourished:
- For some foods thicken seeds within our members,
- And others thin them out and waste away.
- And in what modes the fond delight itself
- Is carried on- this too importeth vastly.
- For commonly 'tis thought that wives conceive
- More readily in manner of wild-beasts,
- After the custom of the four-foot breeds,
- Because so postured, with the breasts beneath
- And buttocks then upreared, the seeds can take
- Their proper places. Nor is need the least
- For wives to use the motions of blandishment;
- For thus the woman hinders and resists
- Her own conception, if too joyously
- Herself she treats the Venus of the man
- With haunches heaving, and with all her bosom
- Now yielding like the billows of the sea-
- Aye, from the ploughshare's even course and track
- She throws the furrow, and from proper places
- Deflects the spurt of seed. And courtesans
- Are thuswise wont to move for their own ends,
- To keep from pregnancy and lying in,
- And all the while to render Venus more
- A pleasure for the men- the which meseems
- Our wives have never need of.