De Rerum Natura

Lucretius

Lucretius. De Rerum Natura. William Ellery Leonard. E. P. Dutton. 1916.

  1. O who can build with puissant breast a song
  2. Worthy the majesty of these great finds?
  3. Or who in words so strong that he can frame
  4. The fit laudations for deserts of him
  5. Who left us heritors of such vast prizes,
  6. By his own breast discovered and sought out?-
  7. There shall be none, methinks, of mortal stock.
  8. For if must needs be named for him the name
  9. Demanded by the now known majesty
  10. Of these high matters, then a god was he,-
  11. Hear me, illustrious Memmius- a god;
  12. Who first and chief found out that plan of life
  13. Which now is called philosophy, and who
  14. By cunning craft, out of such mighty waves,
  15. Out of such mighty darkness, moored life
  16. In havens so serene, in light so clear.
  17. Compare those old discoveries divine
  18. Of others: lo, according to the tale,
  19. Ceres established for mortality
  20. The grain, and Bacchus juice of vine-born grape,
  21. Though life might yet without these things abide,
  22. Even as report saith now some peoples live.
  23. But man's well-being was impossible
  24. Without a breast all free. Wherefore the more
  25. That man doth justly seem to us a god,
  26. From whom sweet solaces of life, afar
  27. Distributed o'er populous domains,
  28. Now soothe the minds of men. But if thou thinkest
  29. Labours of Hercules excel the same,
  30. Much farther from true reasoning thou farest.
  31. For what could hurt us now that mighty maw
  32. Of Nemeaean Lion, or what the Boar
  33. Who bristled in Arcadia? Or, again,
  34. O what could Cretan Bull, or Hydra, pest
  35. Of Lerna, fenced with vipers venomous?
  36. Or what the triple-breasted power of her
  37. The three-fold Geryon...
  38. The sojourners in the Stymphalian fens
  39. So dreadfully offend us, or the Steeds
  40. Of Thracian Diomedes breathing fire
  41. From out their nostrils off along the zones
  42. Bistonian and Ismarian? And the Snake,
  43. The dread fierce gazer, guardian of the golden
  44. And gleaming apples of the Hesperides,
  45. Coiled round the tree-trunk with tremendous bulk,
  46. O what, again, could he inflict on us
  47. Along the Atlantic shore and wastes of sea?-
  48. Where neither one of us approacheth nigh
  49. Nor no barbarian ventures. And the rest
  50. Of all those monsters slain, even if alive,
  51. Unconquered still, what injury could they do?
  52. None, as I guess. For so the glutted earth
  53. Swarms even now with savage beasts, even now
  54. Is filled with anxious terrors through the woods
  55. And mighty mountains and the forest deeps-
  56. Quarters 'tis ours in general to avoid.
  57. But lest the breast be purged, what conflicts then,
  58. What perils, must bosom, in our own despite!
  59. O then how great and keen the cares of lust
  60. That split the man distraught! How great the fears!
  61. And lo, the pride, grim greed, and wantonness-
  62. How great the slaughters in their train! and lo,
  63. Debaucheries and every breed of sloth!
  64. Therefore that man who subjugated these,
  65. And from the mind expelled, by words indeed,
  66. Not arms, O shall it not be seemly him
  67. To dignify by ranking with the gods?-
  68. And all the more since he was wont to give,
  69. Concerning the immortal gods themselves,
  70. Many pronouncements with a tongue divine,
  71. And to unfold by his pronouncements all
  72. The nature of the world.