De Rerum Natura
Lucretius
Lucretius. De Rerum Natura. William Ellery Leonard. E. P. Dutton. 1916.
- And now the cause
- Whereby athrough the throat of Aetna's Mount
- Such vast tornado-fires out-breathe at times,
- I will unfold: for with no middling might
- Of devastation the flamy tempest rose
- And held dominion in Sicilian fields:
- Drawing upon itself the upturned faces
- Of neighbouring clans, what time they saw afar
- The skiey vaults a-fume and sparkling all,
- And filled their bosoms with dread anxiety
- Of what new thing nature were travailing at.
- In these affairs it much behooveth thee
- To look both wide and deep, and far abroad
- To peer to every quarter, that thou mayst
- Remember how boundless is the Sum-of-Things,
- And mark how infinitely small a part
- Of the whole Sum is this one sky of ours-
- O not so large a part as is one man
- Of the whole earth. And plainly if thou viewest
- This cosmic fact, placing it square in front,
- And plainly understandest, thou wilt leave
- Wondering at many things. For who of us
- Wondereth if some one gets into his joints
- A fever, gathering head with fiery heat,
- Or any other dolorous disease
- Along his members? For anon the foot
- Grows blue and bulbous; often the sharp twinge
- Seizes the teeth, attacks the very eyes;
- Out-breaks the sacred fire, and, crawling on
- Over the body, burneth every part
- It seizeth on, and works its hideous way
- Along the frame. No marvel this, since, lo,
- Of things innumerable be seeds enough,
- And this our earth and sky do bring to us
- Enough of bane from whence can grow the strength
- Of maladies uncounted. Thuswise, then,
- We must suppose to all the sky and earth
- Are ever supplied from out the infinite
- All things, O all in stores enough whereby
- The shaken earth can of a sudden move,
- And fierce typhoons can over sea and lands
- Go tearing on, and Aetna's fires o'erflow,
- And heaven become a flame-burst. For that, too,
- Happens at times, and the celestial vaults
- Glow into fire, and rainy tempests rise
- In heavier congregation, when, percase,
- The seeds of water have foregathered thus
- From out the infinite. "Aye, but passing huge
- The fiery turmoil of that conflagration!"
- So sayst thou; well, huge many a river seems
- To him that erstwhile ne'er a larger saw;
- Thus, huge seems tree or man; and everything
- Which mortal sees the biggest of each class,
- That he imagines to be "huge"; though yet
- All these, with sky and land and sea to boot,
- Are all as nothing to the sum entire
- Of the all-Sum.
- But now I will unfold
- At last how yonder suddenly angered flame
- Out-blows abroad from vasty furnaces
- Aetnaean. First, the mountain's nature is
- All under-hollow, propped about, about
- With caverns of basaltic piers. And, lo,
- In all its grottos be there wind and air-
- For wind is made when air hath been uproused
- By violent agitation. When this air
- Is heated through and through, and, raging round,
- Hath made the earth and all the rocks it touches
- Horribly hot, and hath struck off from them
- Fierce fire of swiftest flame, it lifts itself
- And hurtles thus straight upwards through its throat
- Into high heav'n, and thus bears on afar
- Its burning blasts and scattereth afar
- Its ashes, and rolls a smoke of pitchy murk
- And heaveth the while boulders of wondrous weight-
- Leaving no doubt in thee that 'tis the air's
- Tumultuous power. Besides, in mighty part,
- The sea there at the roots of that same mount
- Breaks its old billows and sucks back its surf.
- And grottos from the sea pass in below
- Even to the bottom of the mountain's throat.
- Herethrough thou must admit there go...
- . . . . . .
- And the conditions force [the water and air]
- Deeply to penetrate from the open sea,
- And to out-blow abroad, and to up-bear
- Thereby the flame, and to up-cast from deeps
- The boulders, and to rear the clouds of sand.
- For at the top be "bowls," as people there
- Are wont to name what we at Rome do call
- The throats and mouths.
- There be, besides, some thing
- Of which 'tis not enough one only cause
- To state- but rather several, whereof one
- Will be the true: lo, if thou shouldst espy
- Lying afar some fellow's lifeless corse,
- 'Twere meet to name all causes of a death,
- That cause of his death might thereby be named:
- For prove thou mayst he perished not by steel,
- By cold, nor even by poison nor disease,
- Yet somewhat of this sort hath come to him
- We know- And thus we have to say the same
- In divers cases.
- Toward the summer, Nile
- Waxeth and overfloweth the champaign,
- Unique in all the landscape, river sole
- Of the Aegyptians. In mid-season heats
- Often and oft he waters Aegypt o'er,
- Either because in summer against his mouths
- Come those northwinds which at that time of year
- Men name the Etesian blasts, and, blowing thus
- Upstream, retard, and, forcing back his waves,
- Fill him o'erfull and force his flow to stop.
- For out of doubt these blasts which driven be
- From icy constellations of the pole
- Are borne straight up the river. Comes that river
- From forth the sultry places down the south,
- Rising far up in midmost realm of day,
- Among black generations of strong men
- With sun-baked skins. 'Tis possible, besides,
- That a big bulk of piled sand may bar
- His mouths against his onward waves, when sea,
- Wild in the winds, tumbles the sand to inland;
- Whereby the river's outlet were less free,
- Likewise less headlong his descending floods.
- It may be, too, that in this season rains
- Are more abundant at its fountain head,
- Because the Etesian blasts of those northwinds
- Then urge all clouds into those inland parts.
- And, soothly, when they're thus foregathered there,
- Urged yonder into midmost realm of day,
- Then, crowded against the lofty mountain sides,
- They're massed and powerfully pressed. Again,
- Perchance, his waters wax, O far away,
- Among the Aethiopians' lofty mountains,
- When the all-beholding sun with thawing beams
- Drives the white snows to flow into the vales.
- Now come; and unto thee I will unfold,
- As to the Birdless spots and Birdless tarns,
- What sort of nature they are furnished with.
- First, as to name of "birdless,"- that derives
- From very fact, because they noxious be
- Unto all birds. For when above those spots
- In horizontal flight the birds have come,
- Forgetting to oar with wings, they furl their sails,
- And, with down-drooping of their delicate necks,
- Fall headlong into earth, if haply such
- The nature of the spots, or into water,
- If haply spreads thereunder Birdless tarn.
- Such spot's at Cumae, where the mountains smoke,
- Charged with the pungent sulphur, and increased
- With steaming springs. And such a spot there is
- Within the walls of Athens, even there
- On summit of Acropolis, beside
- Fane of Tritonian Pallas bountiful,
- Where never cawing crows can wing their course,
- Not even when smoke the altars with good gifts,-
- But evermore they flee- yet not from wrath
- Of Pallas, grieved at that espial old,
- As poets of the Greeks have sung the tale;
- But very nature of the place compels.
- In Syria also- as men say- a spot
- Is to be seen, where also four-foot kinds,
- As soon as ever they've set their steps within,
- Collapse, o'ercome by its essential power,
- As if there slaughtered to the under-gods.
- Lo, all these wonders work by natural law,
- And from what causes they are brought to pass
- The origin is manifest; so, haply,
- Let none believe that in these regions stands
- The gate of Orcus, nor us then suppose,
- Haply, that thence the under-gods draw down
- Souls to dark shores of Acheron- as stags,
- The wing-footed, are thought to draw to light,
- By sniffing nostrils, from their dusky lairs
- The wriggling generations of wild snakes.
- How far removed from true reason is this,
- Perceive thou straight; for now I'll try to say
- Somewhat about the very fact.
- And, first,
- This do I say, as oft I've said before:
- In earth are atoms of things of every sort;
- And know, these all thus rise from out the earth-
- Many life-giving which be good for food,
- And many which can generate disease
- And hasten death, O many primal seeds
- Of many things in many modes- since earth
- Contains them mingled and gives forth discrete.
- And we have shown before that certain things
- Be unto certain creatures suited more
- For ends of life, by virtue of a nature,
- A texture, and primordial shapes, unlike
- For kinds alike. Then too 'tis thine to see
- How many things oppressive be and foul
- To man, and to sensation most malign:
- Many meander miserably through ears;
- Many in-wind athrough the nostrils too,
- Malign and harsh when mortal draws a breath;
- Of not a few must one avoid the touch;
- Of not a few must one escape the sight;
- And some there be all loathsome to the taste;
- And many, besides, relax the languid limbs
- Along the frame, and undermine the soul
- In its abodes within. To certain trees
- There hath been given so dolorous a shade
- That often they gender achings of the head,
- If one but be beneath, outstretched on the sward.
- There is, again, on Helicon's high hills
- A tree that's wont to kill a man outright
- By fetid odour of its very flower.
- And when the pungent stench of the night-lamp,
- Extinguished but a moment since, assails
- The nostrils, then and there it puts to sleep
- A man afflicted with the falling sickness
- And foamings at the mouth. A woman, too,
- At the heavy castor drowses back in chair,
- And from her delicate fingers slips away
- Her gaudy handiwork, if haply she
- Hath got the whiff at menstruation-time.
- Once more, if thou delayest in hot baths,
- When thou art over-full, how readily
- From stool in middle of the steaming water
- Thou tumblest in a fit! How readily
- The heavy fumes of charcoal wind their way
- Into the brain, unless beforehand we
- Of water 've drunk. But when a burning fever,
- O'ermastering man, hath seized upon his limbs,
- Then odour of wine is like a hammer-blow.
- And seest thou not how in the very earth
- Sulphur is gendered and bitumen thickens
- With noisome stench?- What direful stenches, too,
- Scaptensula out-breathes from down below,
- When men pursue the veins of silver and gold,
- With pick-axe probing round the hidden realms
- Deep in the earth?- Or what of deadly bane
- The mines of gold exhale? O what a look,
- And what a ghastly hue they give to men!
- And seest thou not, or hearest, how they're wont
- In little time to perish, and how fail
- The life-stores in those folk whom mighty power
- Of grim necessity confineth there
- In such a task? Thus, this telluric earth
- Out-streams with all these dread effluvia
- And breathes them out into the open world
- And into the visible regions under heaven.
- Thus, too, those Birdless places must up-send
- An essence bearing death to winged things,
- Which from the earth rises into the breezes
- To poison part of skiey space, and when
- Thither the winged is on pennons borne,
- There, seized by the unseen poison, 'tis ensnared,
- And from the horizontal of its flight
- Drops to the spot whence sprang the effluvium.
- And when 'thas there collapsed, then the same power
- Of that effluvium takes from all its limbs
- The relics of its life. That power first strikes
- The creatures with a wildering dizziness,
- And then thereafter, when they're once down-fallen
- Into the poison's very fountains, then
- Life, too, they vomit out perforce, because
- So thick the stores of bane around them fume.
- Again, at times it happens that this power,
- This exhalation of the Birdless places,
- Dispels the air betwixt the ground and birds,
- Leaving well-nigh a void. And thither when
- In horizontal flight the birds have come,
- Forthwith their buoyancy of pennons limps,
- All useless, and each effort of both wings
- Falls out in vain. Here, when without all power
- To buoy themselves and on their wings to lean,
- Lo, nature constrains them by their weight to slip
- Down to the earth, and lying prostrate there
- Along the well-nigh empty void, they spend
- Their souls through all the openings of their frame.
- . . . . . .
- Further, the water of wells is colder then
- At summer time, because the earth by heat
- Is rarefied, and sends abroad in air
- Whatever seeds it peradventure have
- Of its own fiery exhalations.
- The more, then, the telluric ground is drained
- Of heat, the colder grows the water hid
- Within the earth. Further, when all the earth
- Is by the cold compressed, and thus contracts
- And, so to say, concretes, it happens, lo,
- That by contracting it expresses then
- Into the wells what heat it bears itself.
- 'Tis said at Hammon's fane a fountain is,
- In daylight cold and hot in time of night.
- This fountain men be-wonder over-much,
- And think that suddenly it seethes in heat
- By intense sun, the subterranean, when
- Night with her terrible murk hath cloaked the lands-
- What's not true reasoning by a long remove:
- I' faith when sun o'erhead, touching with beams
- An open body of water, had no power
- To render it hot upon its upper side,
- Though his high light possess such burning glare,
- How, then, can he, when under the gross earth,
- Make water boil and glut with fiery heat?-
- And, specially, since scarcely potent he
- Through hedging walls of houses to inject
- His exhalations hot, with ardent rays.
- What, then's, the principle? Why, this, indeed:
- The earth about that spring is porous more
- Than elsewhere the telluric ground, and be
- Many the seeds of fire hard by the water;
- On this account, when night with dew-fraught shades
- Hath whelmed the earth, anon the earth deep down
- Grows chill, contracts; and thuswise squeezes out
- Into the spring what seeds she holds of fire
- (As one might squeeze with fist), which render hot
- The touch and steam of the fluid. Next, when sun,
- Up-risen, with his rays has split the soil
- And rarefied the earth with waxing heat,
- Again into their ancient abodes return
- The seeds of fire, and all the Hot of water
- Into the earth retires; and this is why
- The fountain in the daylight gets so cold.
- Besides, the water's wet is beat upon
- By rays of sun, and, with the dawn, becomes
- Rarer in texture under his pulsing blaze;
- And, therefore, whatso seeds it holds of fire
- It renders up, even as it renders oft
- The frost that it contains within itself
- And thaws its ice and looseneth the knots.
- There is, moreover, a fountain cold in kind
- That makes a bit of tow (above it held)
- Take fire forthwith and shoot a flame; so, too,
- A pitch-pine torch will kindle and flare round
- Along its waves, wherever 'tis impelled
- Afloat before the breeze. No marvel, this:
- Because full many seeds of heat there be
- Within the water; and, from earth itself
- Out of the deeps must particles of fire
- Athrough the entire fountain surge aloft,
- And speed in exhalations into air
- Forth and abroad (yet not in numbers enow
- As to make hot the fountain). And, moreo'er,
- Some force constrains them, scattered through the water,
- Forthwith to burst abroad, and to combine
- In flame above. Even as a fountain far
- There is at Aradus amid the sea,
- Which bubbles out sweet water and disparts
- From round itself the salt waves; and, behold,
- In many another region the broad main
- Yields to the thirsty mariners timely help,
- Belching sweet waters forth amid salt waves.
- Just so, then, can those seeds of fire burst forth
- Athrough that other fount, and bubble out
- Abroad against the bit of tow; and when
- They there collect or cleave unto the torch,
- Forthwith they readily flash aflame, because
- The tow and torches, also, in themselves
- Have many seeds of latent fire. Indeed,
- And seest thou not, when near the nightly lamps
- Thou bringest a flaxen wick, extinguished
- A moment since, it catches fire before
- 'Thas touched the flame, and in same wise a torch?
- And many another object flashes aflame
- When at a distance, touched by heat alone,
- Before 'tis steeped in veritable fire.
- This, then, we must suppose to come to pass
- In that spring also.
- Now to other things!
- And I'll begin to treat by what decree
- Of nature it came to pass that iron can be
- By that stone drawn which Greeks the magnet call
- After the country's name (its origin
- Being in country of Magnesian folk).
- This stone men marvel at; and sure it oft
- Maketh a chain of rings, depending, lo,
- From off itself! Nay, thou mayest see at times
- Five or yet more in order dangling down
- And swaying in the delicate winds, whilst one
- Depends from other, cleaving to under-side,
- And ilk one feels the stone's own power and bonds-
- So over-masteringly its power flows down.
- In things of this sort, much must be made sure
- Ere thou account of the thing itself canst give,
- And the approaches roundabout must be;
- Wherefore the more do I exact of thee
- A mind and ears attent.
- First, from all things
- We see soever, evermore must flow,
- Must be discharged and strewn about, about,
- Bodies that strike the eyes, awaking sight.
- From certain things flow odours evermore,
- As cold from rivers, heat from sun, and spray
- From waves of ocean, eater-out of walls
- Along the coasts. Nor ever cease to seep
- The varied echoings athrough the air.
- Then, too, there comes into the mouth at times
- The wet of a salt taste, when by the sea
- We roam about; and so, whene'er we watch
- The wormwood being mixed, its bitter stings.
- To such degree from all things is each thing
- Borne streamingly along, and sent about
- To every region round; and nature grants
- Nor rest nor respite of the onward flow,
- Since 'tis incessantly we feeling have,
- And all the time are suffered to descry
- And smell all things at hand, and hear them sound.
- Now will I seek again to bring to mind
- How porous a body all things have- a fact
- Made manifest in my first canto, too.
- For, truly, though to know this doth import
- For many things, yet for this very thing
- On which straightway I'm going to discourse,
- 'Tis needful most of all to make it sure
- That naught's at hand but body mixed with void.
- A first ensample: in grottos, rocks o'erhead
- Sweat moisture and distil the oozy drops;
- Likewise, from all our body seeps the sweat;
- There grows the beard, and along our members all
- And along our frame the hairs. Through all our veins
- Disseminates the foods, and gives increase
- And aliment down to the extreme parts,
- Even to the tiniest finger-nails. Likewise,
- Through solid bronze the cold and fiery heat
- We feel to pass; likewise, we feel them pass
- Through gold, through silver, when we clasp in hand
- The brimming goblets. And, again, there flit
- Voices through houses' hedging walls of stone;
- Odour seeps through, and cold, and heat of fire
- That's wont to penetrate even strength of iron.
- Again, where corselet of the sky girds round
- . . . . . .
- And at same time, some Influence of bane,
- When from Beyond 'thas stolen into [our world].
- And tempests, gathering from the earth and sky,
- Back to the sky and earth absorbed retire-
- With reason, since there's naught that's fashioned not
- With body porous.
- Furthermore, not all
- The particles which be from things thrown off
- Are furnished with same qualities for sense,
- Nor be for all things equally adapt.
- A first ensample: the sun doth bake and parch
- The earth; but ice he thaws, and with his beams
- Compels the lofty snows, up-reared white
- Upon the lofty hills, to waste away;
- Then, wax, if set beneath the heat of him,
- Melts to a liquid. And the fire, likewise,
- Will melt the copper and will fuse the gold,
- But hides and flesh it shrivels up and shrinks.
- The water hardens the iron just off the fire,
- But hides and flesh (made hard by heat) it softens.
- The oleaster-tree as much delights
- The bearded she-goats, verily as though
- 'Twere nectar-steeped and shed ambrosia;
- Than which is naught that burgeons into leaf
- More bitter food for man. A hog draws back
- For marjoram oil, and every unguent fears
- Fierce poison these unto the bristled hogs,
- Yet unto us from time to time they seem,
- As 'twere, to give new life. But, contrariwise,
- Though unto us the mire be filth most foul,
- To hogs that mire doth so delightsome seem
- That they with wallowing from belly to back
- Are never cloyed.
- A point remains, besides,
- Which best it seems to tell of, ere I go
- To telling of the fact at hand itself.
- Since to the varied things assigned be
- The many pores, those pores must be diverse
- In nature one from other, and each have
- Its very shape, its own direction fixed.
- And so, indeed, in breathing creatures be
- The several senses, of which each takes in
- Unto itself, in its own fashion ever,
- Its own peculiar object. For we mark
- How sounds do into one place penetrate,
- Into another flavours of all juice,
- And savour of smell into a third. Moreover,
- One sort through rocks we see to seep, and, lo,
- One sort to pass through wood, another still
- Through gold, and others to go out and off
- Through silver and through glass. For we do see
- Through some pores form-and-look of things to flow,
- Through others heat to go, and some things still
- To speedier pass than others through same pores.
- Of verity, the nature of these same paths,
- Varying in many modes (as aforesaid)
- Because of unlike nature and warp and woof
- Of cosmic things, constrains it so to be.
- Wherefore, since all these matters now have been
- Established and settled well for us
- As premises prepared, for what remains
- 'Twill not be hard to render clear account
- By means of these, and the whole cause reveal
- Whereby the magnet lures the strength of iron.
- First, stream there must from off the lode-stone seeds
- Innumerable, a very tide, which smites
- By blows that air asunder lying betwixt
- The stone and iron. And when is emptied out
- This space, and a large place between the two
- Is made a void, forthwith the primal germs
- Of iron, headlong slipping, fall conjoined
- Into the vacuum, and the ring itself
- By reason thereof doth follow after and go
- Thuswise with all its body. And naught there is
- That of its own primordial elements
- More thoroughly knit or tighter linked coheres
- Than nature and cold roughness of stout iron.
- Wherefore, 'tis less a marvel what I said,
- That from such elements no bodies can
- From out the iron collect in larger throng
- And be into the vacuum borne along,
- Without the ring itself do follow after.
- And this it does, and followeth on until
- 'Thath reached the stone itself and cleaved to it
- By links invisible. Moreover, likewise,
- The motion's assisted by a thing of aid
- (Whereby the process easier becomes),-
- Namely, by this: as soon as rarer grows
- That air in front of the ring, and space between
- Is emptied more and made a void, forthwith
- It happens all the air that lies behind
- Conveys it onward, pushing from the rear.
- For ever doth the circumambient air
- Drub things unmoved, but here it pushes forth
- The iron, because upon one side the space
- Lies void and thus receives the iron in.
- This air, whereof I am reminding thee,
- Winding athrough the iron's abundant pores
- So subtly into the tiny parts thereof,
- Shoves it and pushes, as wind the ship and sails.
- The same doth happen in all directions forth:
- From whatso side a space is made a void,
- Whether from crosswise or above, forthwith
- The neighbour particles are borne along
- Into the vacuum; for of verity,
- They're set a-going by poundings from elsewhere,
- Nor by themselves of own accord can they
- Rise upwards into the air. Again, all things
- Must in their framework hold some air, because
- They are of framework porous, and the air
- Encompasses and borders on all things.
- Thus, then, this air in iron so deeply stored
- Is tossed evermore in vexed motion,
- And therefore drubs upon the ring sans doubt
- And shakes it up inside....
- . . . . . .
- In sooth, that ring is thither borne along
- To where 'thas once plunged headlong- thither, lo,
- Unto the void whereto it took its start.
- It happens, too, at times that nature of iron
- Shrinks from this stone away, accustomed
- By turns to flee and follow. Yea, I've seen
- Those Samothracian iron rings leap up,
- And iron filings in the brazen bowls
- Seethe furiously, when underneath was set
- The magnet stone. So strongly iron seems
- To crave to flee that rock. Such discord great
- Is gendered by the interposed brass,
- Because, forsooth, when first the tide of brass
- Hath seized upon and held possession of
- The iron's open passage-ways, thereafter
- Cometh the tide of the stone, and in that iron
- Findeth all spaces full, nor now hath holes
- To swim through, as before. 'Tis thus constrained
- With its own current 'gainst the iron's fabric
- To dash and beat; by means whereof it spues
- Forth from itself- and through the brass stirs up-
- The things which otherwise without the brass
- It sucks into itself. In these affairs
- Marvel thou not that from this stone the tide
- Prevails not likewise other things to move
- With its own blows: for some stand firm by weight,
- As gold; and some cannot be moved forever,
- Because so porous in their framework they
- That there the tide streams through without a break,
- Of which sort stuff of wood is seen to be.
- Therefore, when iron (which lies between the two)
- Hath taken in some atoms of the brass,
- Then do the streams of that Magnesian rock
- Move iron by their smitings.
- Yet these things
- Are not so alien from others, that I
- Of this same sort am ill prepared to name
- Ensamples still of things exclusively
- To one another adapt. Thou seest, first,
- How lime alone cementeth stones: how wood
- Only by glue-of-bull with wood is joined-
- So firmly too that oftener the boards
- Crack open along the weakness of the grain
- Ere ever those taurine bonds will lax their hold.
- The vine-born juices with the water-springs
- Are bold to mix, though not the heavy pitch
- With the light oil-of-olive. And purple dye
- Of shell-fish so uniteth with the wool's
- Body alone that it cannot be ta'en
- Away forever- nay, though thou gavest toil
- To restore the same with the Neptunian flood,
- Nay, though all ocean willed to wash it out
- With all its waves. Again, gold unto gold
- Doth not one substance bind, and only one?
- And is not brass by tin joined unto brass?
- And other ensamples how many might one find!
- What then? Nor is there unto thee a need
- Of such long ways and roundabout, nor boots it
- For me much toil on this to spend. More fit
- It is in few words briefly to embrace
- Things many: things whose textures fall together
- So mutually adapt, that cavities
- To solids correspond, these cavities
- Of this thing to the solid parts of that,
- And those of that to solid parts of this-
- Such joinings are the best. Again, some things
- Can be the one with other coupled and held,
- Linked by hooks and eyes, as 'twere; and this
- Seems more the fact with iron and this stone.
- Now, of diseases what the law, and whence
- The Influence of bane upgathering can
- Upon the race of man and herds of cattle
- Kindle a devastation fraught with death,
- I will unfold. And, first, I've taught above
- That seeds there be of many things to us
- Life-giving, and that, contrariwise, there must
- Fly many round bringing disease and death.
- When these have, haply, chanced to collect
- And to derange the atmosphere of earth,
- The air becometh baneful. And, lo, all
- That Influence of bane, that pestilence,
- Or from Beyond down through our atmosphere,
- Like clouds and mists, descends, or else collects
- From earth herself and rises, when, a-soak
- And beat by rains unseasonable and suns,
- Our earth hath then contracted stench and rot.
- Seest thou not, also, that whoso arrive
- In region far from fatherland and home
- Are by the strangeness of the clime and waters
- Distempered?- since conditions vary much.
- For in what else may we suppose the clime
- Among the Britons to differ from Aegypt's own
- (Where totters awry the axis of the world),
- Or in what else to differ Pontic clime
- From Gades' and from climes adown the south,
- On to black generations of strong men
- With sun-baked skins? Even as we thus do see
- Four climes diverse under the four main-winds
- And under the four main-regions of the sky,
- So, too, are seen the colour and face of men
- Vastly to disagree, and fixed diseases
- To seize the generations, kind by kind:
- There is the elephant-disease which down
- In midmost Aegypt, hard by streams of Nile,
- Engendered is- and never otherwhere.
- In Attica the feet are oft attacked,
- And in Achaean lands the eyes. And so
- The divers spots to divers parts and limbs
- Are noxious; 'tis a variable air
- That causes this. Thus when an atmosphere,
- Alien by chance to us, begins to heave,
- And noxious airs begin to crawl along,
- They creep and wind like unto mist and cloud,
- Slowly, and everything upon their way
- They disarrange and force to change its state.
- It happens, too, that when they've come at last
- Into this atmosphere of ours, they taint
- And make it like themselves and alien.
- Therefore, asudden this devastation strange,
- This pestilence, upon the waters falls,
- Or settles on the very crops of grain
- Or other meat of men and feed of flocks.
- Or it remains a subtle force, suspense
- In the atmosphere itself; and when therefrom
- We draw our inhalations of mixed air,
- Into our body equally its bane
- Also we must suck in. In manner like,
- Oft comes the pestilence upon the kine,
- And sickness, too, upon the sluggish sheep.
- Nor aught it matters whether journey we
- To regions adverse to ourselves and change
- The atmospheric cloak, or whether nature
- Herself import a tainted atmosphere
- To us or something strange to our own use
- Which can attack us soon as ever it come.
- 'Twas such a manner of disease, 'twas such
- Mortal miasma in Cecropian lands
- Whilom reduced the plains to dead men's bones,
- Unpeopled the highways, drained of citizens
- The Athenian town. For coming from afar,
- Rising in lands of Aegypt, traversing
- Reaches of air and floating fields of foam,
- At last on all Pandion's folk it swooped;
- Whereat by troops unto disease and death
- Were they o'er-given. At first, they'd bear about
- A skull on fire with heat, and eyeballs twain
- Red with suffusion of blank glare. Their throats,
- Black on the inside, sweated oozy blood;
- And the walled pathway of the voice of man
- Was clogged with ulcers; and the very tongue,
- The mind's interpreter, would trickle gore,
- Weakened by torments, tardy, rough to touch.
- Next when that Influence of bane had chocked,
- Down through the throat, the breast, and streamed had
- E'en into sullen heart of those sick folk,
- Then, verily, all the fences of man's life
- Began to topple. From the mouth the breath
- Would roll a noisome stink, as stink to heaven
- Rotting cadavers flung unburied out.
- And, lo, thereafter, all the body's strength
- And every power of mind would languish, now
- In very doorway of destruction.
- And anxious anguish and ululation (mixed
- With many a groan) companioned alway
- The intolerable torments. Night and day,
- Recurrent spasms of vomiting would rack
- Alway their thews and members, breaking down
- With sheer exhaustion men already spent.
- And yet on no one's body couldst thou mark
- The skin with o'er-much heat to burn aglow,
- But rather the body unto touch of hands
- Would offer a warmish feeling, and thereby
- Show red all over, with ulcers, so to say,
- Inbranded, like the "sacred fires" o'erspread
- Along the members. The inward parts of men,
- In truth, would blaze unto the very bones;
- A flame, like flame in furnaces, would blaze
- Within the stomach. Nor couldst aught apply
- Unto their members light enough and thin
- For shift of aid- but coolness and a breeze
- Ever and ever. Some would plunge those limbs
- On fire with bane into the icy streams,
- Hurling the body naked into the waves;
- Many would headlong fling them deeply down
- The water-pits, tumbling with eager mouth
- Already agape. The insatiable thirst
- That whelmed their parched bodies, lo, would make
- A goodly shower seem like to scanty drops.
- Respite of torment was there none. Their frames
- Forspent lay prone. With silent lips of fear
- Would Medicine mumble low, the while she saw
- So many a time men roll their eyeballs round,
- Staring wide-open, unvisited of sleep,
- The heralds of old death. And in those months
- Was given many another sign of death:
- The intellect of mind by sorrow and dread
- Deranged, the sad brow, the countenance
- Fierce and delirious, the tormented ears
- Beset with ringings, the breath quick and short
- Or huge and intermittent, soaking sweat
- A-glisten on neck, the spittle in fine gouts
- Tainted with colour of crocus and so salt,
- The cough scarce wheezing through the rattling throat.
- Aye, and the sinews in the fingered hands
- Were sure to contract, and sure the jointed frame
- To shiver, and up from feet the cold to mount
- Inch after inch: and toward the supreme hour
- At last the pinched nostrils, nose's tip
- A very point, eyes sunken, temples hollow,
- Skin cold and hard, the shuddering grimace,
- The pulled and puffy flesh above the brows!-
- O not long after would their frames lie prone
- In rigid death. And by about the eighth
- Resplendent light of sun, or at the most
- On the ninth flaming of his flambeau, they
- Would render up the life. If any then
- Had 'scaped the doom of that destruction, yet
- Him there awaited in the after days
- A wasting and a death from ulcers vile
- And black discharges of the belly, or else
- Through the clogged nostrils would there ooze along
- Much fouled blood, oft with an aching head:
- Hither would stream a man's whole strength and flesh.
- And whoso had survived that virulent flow
- Of the vile blood, yet into thews of him
- And into his joints and very genitals
- Would pass the old disease. And some there were,
- Dreading the doorways of destruction
- So much, lived on, deprived by the knife
- Of the male member; not a few, though lopped
- Of hands and feet, would yet persist in life,
- And some there were who lost their eyeballs: O
- So fierce a fear of death had fallen on them!
- And some, besides, were by oblivion
- Of all things seized, that even themselves they knew
- No longer. And though corpse on corpse lay piled
- Unburied on ground, the race of birds and beasts
- Would or spring back, scurrying to escape
- The virulent stench, or, if they'd tasted there,
- Would languish in approaching death. But yet
- Hardly at all during those many suns
- Appeared a fowl, nor from the woods went forth
- The sullen generations of wild beasts-
- They languished with disease and died and died.
- In chief, the faithful dogs, in all the streets
- Outstretched, would yield their breath distressfully
- For so that Influence of bane would twist
- Life from their members. Nor was found one sure
- And universal principle of cure:
- For what to one had given the power to take
- The vital winds of air into his mouth,
- And to gaze upward at the vaults of sky,
- The same to others was their death and doom.
- 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.