De Rerum Natura

Lucretius

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

  1. In those affairs, O awfullest of all,
  2. O pitiable most was this, was this:
  3. Whoso once saw himself in that disease
  4. Entangled, ay, as damned unto death,
  5. Would lie in wanhope, with a sullen heart,
  6. Would, in fore-vision of his funeral,
  7. Give up the ghost, O then and there. For, lo,
  8. At no time did they cease one from another
  9. To catch contagion of the greedy plague,-
  10. As though but woolly flocks and horned herds;
  11. And this in chief would heap the dead on dead:
  12. For who forbore to look to their own sick,
  13. O these (too eager of life, of death afeard)
  14. Would then, soon after, slaughtering Neglect
  15. Visit with vengeance of evil death and base-
  16. Themselves deserted and forlorn of help.
  17. But who had stayed at hand would perish there
  18. By that contagion and the toil which then
  19. A sense of honour and the pleading voice
  20. Of weary watchers, mixed with voice of wail
  21. Of dying folk, forced them to undergo.
  22. This kind of death each nobler soul would meet.
  23. The funerals, uncompanioned, forsaken,
  24. Like rivals contended to be hurried through.
  25. . . . . . .
  26. And men contending to ensepulchre
  27. Pile upon pile the throng of their own dead:
  28. And weary with woe and weeping wandered home;
  29. And then the most would take to bed from grief.
  30. Nor could be found not one, whom nor disease
  31. Nor death, nor woe had not in those dread times
  32. Attacked.