De Rerum Natura
Lucretius
Lucretius. De Rerum Natura. William Ellery Leonard. E. P. Dutton. 1916.
- O who can build with puissant breast a song
- Worthy the majesty of these great finds?
- Or who in words so strong that he can frame
- The fit laudations for deserts of him
- Who left us heritors of such vast prizes,
- By his own breast discovered and sought out?-
- There shall be none, methinks, of mortal stock.
- For if must needs be named for him the name
- Demanded by the now known majesty
- Of these high matters, then a god was he,-
- Hear me, illustrious Memmius- a god;
- Who first and chief found out that plan of life
- Which now is called philosophy, and who
- By cunning craft, out of such mighty waves,
- Out of such mighty darkness, moored life
- In havens so serene, in light so clear.
- Compare those old discoveries divine
- Of others: lo, according to the tale,
- Ceres established for mortality
- The grain, and Bacchus juice of vine-born grape,
- Though life might yet without these things abide,
- Even as report saith now some peoples live.
- But man's well-being was impossible
- Without a breast all free. Wherefore the more
- That man doth justly seem to us a god,
- From whom sweet solaces of life, afar
- Distributed o'er populous domains,
- Now soothe the minds of men. But if thou thinkest
- Labours of Hercules excel the same,
- Much farther from true reasoning thou farest.
- For what could hurt us now that mighty maw
- Of Nemeaean Lion, or what the Boar
- Who bristled in Arcadia? Or, again,
- O what could Cretan Bull, or Hydra, pest
- Of Lerna, fenced with vipers venomous?
- Or what the triple-breasted power of her
- The three-fold Geryon...
- The sojourners in the Stymphalian fens
- So dreadfully offend us, or the Steeds
- Of Thracian Diomedes breathing fire
- From out their nostrils off along the zones
- Bistonian and Ismarian? And the Snake,
- The dread fierce gazer, guardian of the golden
- And gleaming apples of the Hesperides,
- Coiled round the tree-trunk with tremendous bulk,
- O what, again, could he inflict on us
- Along the Atlantic shore and wastes of sea?-
- Where neither one of us approacheth nigh
- Nor no barbarian ventures. And the rest
- Of all those monsters slain, even if alive,
- Unconquered still, what injury could they do?
- None, as I guess. For so the glutted earth
- Swarms even now with savage beasts, even now
- Is filled with anxious terrors through the woods
- And mighty mountains and the forest deeps-
- Quarters 'tis ours in general to avoid.
- But lest the breast be purged, what conflicts then,
- What perils, must bosom, in our own despite!
- O then how great and keen the cares of lust
- That split the man distraught! How great the fears!
- And lo, the pride, grim greed, and wantonness-
- How great the slaughters in their train! and lo,
- Debaucheries and every breed of sloth!
- Therefore that man who subjugated these,
- And from the mind expelled, by words indeed,
- Not arms, O shall it not be seemly him
- To dignify by ranking with the gods?-
- And all the more since he was wont to give,
- Concerning the immortal gods themselves,
- Many pronouncements with a tongue divine,
- And to unfold by his pronouncements all
- The nature of the world.