De Rerum Natura
Lucretius
Lucretius. De Rerum Natura. William Ellery Leonard. E. P. Dutton. 1916.
- In those affairs, O awfullest of all,
- O pitiable most was this, was this:
- Whoso once saw himself in that disease
- Entangled, ay, as damned unto death,
- Would lie in wanhope, with a sullen heart,
- Would, in fore-vision of his funeral,
- Give up the ghost, O then and there. For, lo,
- At no time did they cease one from another
- To catch contagion of the greedy plague,-
- As though but woolly flocks and horned herds;
- And this in chief would heap the dead on dead:
- For who forbore to look to their own sick,
- O these (too eager of life, of death afeard)
- Would then, soon after, slaughtering Neglect
- Visit with vengeance of evil death and base-
- Themselves deserted and forlorn of help.
- But who had stayed at hand would perish there
- By that contagion and the toil which then
- A sense of honour and the pleading voice
- Of weary watchers, mixed with voice of wail
- Of dying folk, forced them to undergo.
- This kind of death each nobler soul would meet.
- The funerals, uncompanioned, forsaken,
- Like rivals contended to be hurried through.
- . . . . . .
- And men contending to ensepulchre
- Pile upon pile the throng of their own dead:
- And weary with woe and weeping wandered home;
- And then the most would take to bed from grief.
- Nor could be found not one, whom nor disease
- Nor death, nor woe had not in those dread times
- Attacked.