De Rerum Natura
Lucretius
Lucretius. De Rerum Natura. William Ellery Leonard. E. P. Dutton. 1916.
- And walking now
- In his own footprints, I do follow through
- His reasonings, and with pronouncements teach
- The covenant whereby all things are framed,
- How under that covenant they must abide
- Nor ever prevail to abrogate the aeons'
- Inexorable decrees,- how (as we've found),
- In class of mortal objects, o'er all else,
- The mind exists of earth-born frame create
- And impotent unscathed to abide
- Across the mighty aeons, and how come
- In sleep those idol-apparitions,
- That so befool intelligence when we
- Do seem to view a man whom life has left.
- Thus far we've gone; the order of my plan
- Hath brought me now unto the point where I
- Must make report how, too, the universe
- Consists of mortal body, born in time,
- And in what modes that congregated stuff
- Established itself as earth and sky,
- Ocean, and stars, and sun, and ball of moon;
- And then what living creatures rose from out
- The old telluric places, and what ones
- Were never born at all; and in what mode
- The human race began to name its things
- And use the varied speech from man to man;
- And in what modes hath bosomed in their breasts
- That awe of gods, which halloweth in all lands
- Fanes, altars, groves, lakes, idols of the gods.
- Also I shall untangle by what power
- The steersman nature guides the sun's courses,
- And the meanderings of the moon, lest we,
- Percase, should fancy that of own free will
- They circle their perennial courses round,
- Timing their motions for increase of crops
- And living creatures, or lest we should think
- They roll along by any plan of gods.
- For even those men who have learned full well
- That godheads lead a long life free of care,
- If yet meanwhile they wonder by what plan
- Things can go on (and chiefly yon high things
- Observed o'erhead on the ethereal coasts),
- Again are hurried back unto the fears
- Of old religion and adopt again
- Harsh masters, deemed almighty,- wretched men,
- Unwitting what can be and what cannot,
- And by what law to each its scope prescribed,
- Its boundary stone that clings so deep in Time.