^*€>cfc* $*%t&Ri&. &*2&£&&&L 
 
 UC-NRLF 
 
 *B 311 Ell 
 
 LVCRETIVS 
 
 ON 
 
 LIFE AND DEATH 
 
 V. H.MALLOCK 
 
LUCRETIUS ON LIFE AND DEATH 
 
LUCRETIUS 
 
 ON 
 
 LIFE AND DEATH 
 
 IN THE METRE OF OMAR KHAYYAM 
 
 TO WHICH ARE APPENDED PARALLEL PASSAGES 
 FROM THE ORIGINAL 
 
 BY 
 
 W. H. MALLOCK 
 
 SECOND EDITION 
 
 NEW YORK 
 JOHN LANE COMPANY 
 
 MCMX 
 
First Edition, Demy Svo, published May 1900 
 
 Reissued in Crown 87/0, October 1901 
 
 Second Edition, Crown Svo, March 1910 
 
 S^Sfc^K-fccA w<V ^UO^ 
 
 
PA £4*3 
 
 PREFACE 
 
 Few philosophical poems in the English language have 
 been more widely read than the poem in which the 
 genius of FitzGerald has introduced us to that of the 
 Persian, Omar Khayyam. More critics than one have 
 remarked on the curious likeness between the philosophy 
 of Omar and that of the Roman, Lucretius, who also, 
 like the Persian, expressed his philosophy in verse. 
 The difference, however, between the two is not less 
 curious than the likeness ; and it occurred to me that 
 it would be a not uninteresting experiment to render 
 parts of Lucretius into the stanza employed by Omar — 
 or rather the English equivalent with which FitzGerald 
 has made us familiar — in order that, by thus reducing 
 
 M7010 1 
 
vi LUCRETIUS 
 
 them to a common literary denominator, a comparison 
 between them might be more readily made. 
 
 The philosophy of Lucretius, however, has, like that 
 of Omar, an interest for us in the present day which is 
 far more than literary. Like Omar, he deals with that 
 precise train of reflection which scientific knowledge, as 
 distinct from the assumptions of faith, tends to rouse in 
 the minds of all who think ; and the intellectual position 
 of Lucretius was, in many ways, even nearer than Omar's 
 to that of the modern world. Lucretius was, so far 
 as the knowledge of his time would allow him to be, as 
 completely and as consciously a scientific man and a 
 physicist as Darwin, or Huxley, or any of our con- 
 temporary evolutionists. Indeed his doctrines, allowing 
 for certain inevitable differences, are astonishingly 
 similar to theirs ; and his general conception of the 
 conclusions to which all science is tending may be said 
 to be absolutely identical. He disclaimed the character 
 
PREFACE vii 
 
 of an original thinker or discoverer, representing himself 
 merely as a disciple of his great master, Epicurus ; but 
 he made the philosophy of his master altogether his 
 own, and as such we may here speak of it. 
 
 His main object as a physicist was to show, by 
 physical reasoning, that life and matter are parts of the 
 same order of things, and that the soul of man results 
 from the same general process as that which results in 
 all other sensible phenomena — in the body of man, in 
 the flowers, the seas, the mountains, in the whole frame 
 of the earth, and in all the suns and stars. Earth and 
 the system to which it belongs he regarded as but an 
 infinitesimal portion of a universe of similar systems 
 which are scattered through endless space, and have 
 always been forming themselves, persisting, and then 
 again decomposing, for all time — if that can be called 
 time which is endless. The whole of this limitless 
 universe, " which decomposes but to recompose," con- 
 
vitf LUCRETIUS 
 
 sists, he maintained, of atoms aggregated in various 
 forms ; and beyond space, and atoms, and the laws in 
 accordance with which the atoms act, nothing exists, has 
 existed, or ever can exist ; consciousness, life, soul, 
 whether in man or animals, being merely an atomic 
 tissue of an exceptionally subtle kind. 
 
 The worlds, and in particular the earth and all the 
 things belonging to it, have come to be what they 
 are by a process of natural selection. The atoms 
 throughout infinite time make an infinite variety of 
 combinations ; but those alone have persisted which 
 were fit to persist, the others resolving presently into 
 their component parts. Animals and men are the 
 result of the same process. . They represent the forms 
 of life that alone have been fit to live, out of innumer- 
 able forms that have appeared, and have perished 
 because they have been not fit. Man's senses were 
 not designed for him in order that he might put 
 
PREFACE ix 
 
 them to their uses ; but because he has them, and can 
 use them, and can maintain his life in consequence, 
 the human race remains. 
 
 The methods by which Lucretius endeavours to 
 support these conclusions are essentially the same as 
 those of the modern physicist. He endeavours to 
 support them by reasoning from the known and the 
 observable to the unknown. He takes the most 
 familiar phenomena of nature, and of daily and domestic 
 life — such as the smell of a lamp when extinguished, 
 the dancing of motes in a sunbeam, the appearance of 
 maggots in carrion — and seeks to show that all the 
 mysteries of the cosmos are explicable by reference to 
 a sequence of such cause and effect as every day we 
 can verify by the evidence of our own senses. The 
 narrow limits of his knowledge prevented him from 
 imparting to his system anything which resembles the 
 actuality of modern science. In advancing from the 
 
x LUCRETIUS 
 
 known to the unknown, the scientific thinker of to-day 
 plants each successive footstep on some discovery of 
 what actually is — testing his discoveries by a series of 
 minute experiments. Lucretius, as soon as he passed 
 beyond the region of ordinary observation, had to content 
 himself with what, reasoning by rude analogy, ordinary 
 observation suggested to him as things that might be. 
 
 In its details, therefore, his science is not science at 
 all ; as the reader, who cares to do so, may very easily 
 see by studying his highly curious and fantastic theory of 
 vision. But though in its details his doctrine has little 
 more reality than a dream, it approaches, in its premises, 
 the latest theories of to-day ; and its practical conclusion, 
 so far as human life is concerned, is identical with that 
 of the latest scientific philosophy. This conclusion is 
 that all conscious life comes into existence with the body, 
 and disappears with its dissolution ; that it is not the 
 miraculous creation of any deity, or deities ; and that 
 
PREFACE xi 
 
 if any deities exist, they emerge from the nature of 
 things, just as man does, and have no concern with his 
 actions. It is doubtful whether Lucretius believed in 
 their existence at all. In any case he regarded them as 
 an essentially negligible quantity ; and even should they 
 be aware of man's existence whilst he lived, man, death 
 being the end of him, passes wholly beyond their ken. 
 There is no knowledge in the grave. There is no other 
 life but this. Such was the sum and substance of the 
 message of Lucretius to his contemporaries. 
 
 This is a doctrine which, willingly or unwillingly, 
 many philosophers have taught besides Lucretius. But 
 other philosophers have, as a rule, taught it either as a 
 doctrine of sadness and despair, or as an inducement 
 to voluptuous licence. Omar presents it to us as 
 both. He is alternately possessed by the tragedy of 
 the inevitable end, and by the desire to wring from 
 existence every pleasure that it can yield us, before the 
 
xii LUCRETIUS 
 
 night comes, in which no more pleasure can be taken. 
 But Lucretius addresses his hearers in a very different 
 tone. Omar's advice to man — 
 
 Drink, for we know not whence we came, nor why ; 
 Drink, for we know not why we go, nor where, 
 
 is rejected by him as a piece of ignorant folly which 
 defeats its own ends. The only true pleasures, he 
 teaches, are found not in excess but in moderation ; 
 and though even these are not perhaps very great, they 
 are better than anything we can gain for ourselves by 
 the excitement and agitation of excess. 
 
 He differs, however, from Omar in a deeper way 
 than this, and from other philosophers also who are 
 adherents of the same creed. To them the extinction of 
 life seems in itself a sad thing. Lucretius proclaims it 
 as a blessing, a relief, an emancipation. That man 
 has no other life is the crowning truth of science. 
 It is the truth for the sake of proving which — of 
 
PREFACE xiii 
 
 placing it beyond all doubt — the science of the nature 
 of things is alone worth studying. 
 
 The reason which he gives us for this attitude of 
 mind is interesting, and throws a remarkable light on 
 the spiritual conditions of his day. Life, according to 
 him, would be naturally tolerable enough, and very 
 often happy, if it were not for one thing ; and this is 
 the universal dread, not of death itself, but of the 
 destiny that awaits us after death. Mankind at large, 
 he says, labours under the horrible belief, which is 
 always in the background of their minds, that they are 
 born under the wrath of God, or of the gods, and that 
 these monstrous powers have called them into life only 
 in order that, after death, they may torment them in 
 hell for ever. Here is really the root of all human 
 sadness. It is the fear of what the gods will do to us 
 — those all-seeing angry masters, vile in their vindictive 
 righteousness, gathering where they have not strawed. 
 
xiv LUCRETIUS 
 
 Let us once, says Lucretius, rid ourselves of this 
 nightmare of the imagination, and the aching of 
 our hearts will cease. We shall rise up and be 
 free. 
 
 Science it is which accomplishes for us the great 
 deliverance ; and it does so by demonstrating these two 
 cardinal truths — first, that no god, or gods, of the kind 
 in question, exist ; and secondly, that even if they did 
 exist, they would be absolutely impotent to wreak their 
 malice on us after death, because after death there will 
 be nothing left of us for them to torture. 
 
 It is the latter of these considerations on which he 
 dwells most persistently, and in which he appears to 
 find his well of deepest comfort ; and for this there is 
 the following reason. In spite of his doctrine that 
 life, if bodily pain and a fear of the gods be absent, 
 is naturally pleasing rather than otherwise, he is haunted 
 by a conviction that there is an inherent bitterness in it 
 
PREFACE xv 
 
 after all. Though the delights of love may seem to 
 
 be never so satisfying, yet 
 
 A bitter something in the midmost hours 
 
 Of joy starts up and stings amongst the flowers. 
 
 And again, after he has triumphantly announced the 
 completeness with which " immortal death " relieves 
 mortal man from the fear of future suffering, he 
 proceeds to argue that seated in man's very self is 
 some source of restlessness, discontent, and sorrow, by 
 which life is still vitiated, even though all fear of hell 
 and of the anger of the gods be done away with. Self, 
 he says, is the secret malady of each of us — for ever un- 
 satisfied, for ever ill at ease ; and death alone can free 
 us from this foe that is of our own household. 
 
 In admitting and insisting on this fact Lucretius 
 is not perhaps quite consistent as a thinker ; but the 
 feelings of few men are entirely in accordance with 
 their thoughts, and the union in the poet of a note of 
 
xvi LUCRETIUS 
 
 subdued pessimism with one of courageous though 
 hardly enthusiastic optimism affects the mind more 
 deeply than either could have done separately. 
 
 The following poem, though a considerable number 
 of the stanzas closely follow the sentences, and some 
 even the very words of the original, can hardly be 
 called a translation in the usual acceptation of the 
 word. The work of Lucretius comprises between seven 
 and eight thousand lines ; the following poem comprises 
 not so many as five hundred. Of the work of Lucretius, 
 by far the larger part consists of what is not so much 
 poetry as scientific expositions in verse. Its poetry is 
 confined to various exquisite illustrations taken from 
 scenes and aspects of external nature, and to the 
 moral teaching which the poet draws from his natural 
 science. His purely scientific principles I have contented 
 myself with merely indicating, and it is his moral teach- 
 ing which I have mainly attempted to reproduce. This 
 
PREFACE xvii 
 
 is scattered throughout his work in a variety of isolated 
 passages ; as a consequence of which he very often 
 repeats himself, and does but imperfect justice to the 
 continuity of his thoughts and sentiments. I have done 
 my best to exhibit them in a continuous form ; and, 
 in choosing the passages on which the following poem 
 is founded, I have disregarded altogether their original 
 order, taking them from this place and from that, as 
 seemed most suitable for my purpose. 
 
 There are very few of the stanzas which have not 
 some equivalent in the original ; but most of them 
 are summings up of the tendency of the thought of 
 Lucretius, or echoes of his feelings, rather than repro- 
 ductions of his words. In order that the reader may 
 form some judgment as to this point for himself, I have 
 appended to the poem those lines of the original which 
 have been more or less closely translated, together with 
 others representative of the meaning and train of 
 
xviii LUCRETIUS 
 
 argument which the poem aims at reproducing. The 
 Latin lines are translated in literal prose for the benefit 
 of those who are not classical scholars. 
 
 In one or two stanzas I have made use of phrases 
 taken from great writers which are household words 
 with all. One of these is from Tennyson, two from 
 Shakespeare, and two or three from the Bible. For 
 doing this I have the precedent of Lucretius himself, 
 who lays Ennius under the same kind of contribution. 
 In the two former cases my object has been to convey 
 to the reader a sense of the vital identity of modern 
 thought with ancient, and in the latter to convey 
 to him a sense of the strange contrast between the 
 gospel of science, which, in the days of Lucretius, as in 
 our own, had no hope to offer us but that of eternal 
 death, and the gospel of the Christian religion, which 
 offers us eternal life. 
 
 This contrast is made additionally interesting by the 
 
PREFACE xix 
 
 fact that Lucretius died. only fifty years before Christ was 
 born. In Christ originated that great spiritual and in- 
 tellectual movement which succeeded, for so many ages, 
 in rendering the Lucretian philosophy at once useless 
 and incredible to the progressive races of mankind ; but 
 now, after a lapse of nearly two thousand years, the 
 conditions which evoked that philosophy are once more 
 reappearing. Once more we are confronted with two 
 solutions of life — that which takes as its basis some 
 creative act of faith, and that which is based solely on 
 the observation of such phenomena as are apprehended 
 by the senses, can be expressed in rigorous formulas, or 
 leave behind them objective records of their occurrence. 
 But though these old conditions are being revived, they 
 are being revived with great differences. Religion as 
 represented by Christianity is by no means the same 
 thing as the religion which excited the contempt and 
 indignation of Lucretius. The Christian religion, in 
 
xx LUCRETIUS 
 
 spite of the Christian Hell, offers to mankind not a future 
 of torment only, but a future of rest and peace, which 
 possibly even Lucretius might have regarded as prefer- 
 able, if true, to that which he anticipated in the grave. 
 Religion as represented by Christianity is no longer 
 the enemy of man. It is man's friend and comforter ; 
 but it is a friend whose credentials seem to many to 
 have become doubtful. Science, on the other hand, has 
 triumphantly extended its dominions. It has demon- 
 strated, with an accuracy beyond the dreams of Lucretius, 
 the all-pervading presence of uniform and endless laws. 
 It has traced the steps by which mind slowly develops 
 itself out of matter. If it has not shown us that con- 
 sciousness is a mere function of the brain, it has shown 
 us that without the brain, we can, even if it exists, have 
 no knowledge of it, and that without the senses it 
 could have no thinkable content ; and has strengthened 
 the argument that, if the evidence of faith is repudiated, 
 
PREFACE xxi 
 
 the dissolution of the individual body and the individual 
 life are simultaneous. The result is that the choice 
 between religion and science has become in the present 
 day even more vital to man, and fraught with deeper 
 issues, than it was in the days when Lucretius wrote his 
 poem on " The Nature of Things,' ' and preached his 
 gospel of a redemption, not from the grave, but in it. 
 Those, however, who, under changed conditions, are 
 adherents of the principles which he shares with the 
 latest scientists of to-day, can hardly find the only hope 
 which is open to them expressed by any writer with a 
 loftier and more poignant dignity than that with which 
 they will find it expressed by the Roman disciple of 
 Epicurus. 
 
LUCRETIUS ON LIFE AND DEATH 
 
 IN THE METRE OF OMAR KHAYYAM 
 
 I 
 
 Suave mart magno 
 I 
 
 XX^HEN storms blow loud, 'tis sweet to watch at ease 
 From shore, the sailor labouring with the seas : 
 Because the sense, not that such pains are his, 
 But that they are not ours, must always please. 
 
 ii 
 
 Sweet for the cragsman, from some high retreat 
 Watching the plains below where legions meet, 
 To await the moment when the walls of war 
 Thunder and clash together. But more sweet, 
 
2 LUCRETIUS 
 
 in 
 
 Sweeter by far on Wisdom's rampired height 
 To pace serene the porches of the light, 
 
 And thence look down — down on the purblind herd 
 Seeking and never finding in the night 
 
 IV 
 
 The road to peace — the peace that all might hold, 
 But yet is missed by young men and by old, 
 Lost in the strife for palaces and powers, 
 The axes, and the lictors, and the gold. 
 
 v 
 Oh sightless eyes ! Oh hands that toil in vain ! 
 Not such your needs. Your nature's needs are twain, 
 
 And only twain : and these are to be free — 
 Your minds from terror, and your bones from pain. 
 
ON LIFE AND DEATH 3 
 
 VI 
 
 Unailing limbs, a calm unanxious breast — 
 Grant Nature these, and she will do the rest. 
 
 Nature will bring you, be you rich or poor, 
 Perhaps not much — at all events her best. 
 
 VII 
 
 What though no statued youths from wall and wall 
 Strew light along your midnight festival, 
 
 With golden hands, nor beams from Lebanon 
 Keep the lyre's languor lingering through the hall, 
 
 VIII 
 
 Yours is the table 'neath the high-whispering trees ; 
 Yours is the lyre of leaf and stream and breeze. 
 The golden flagon, and the echoing dome — 
 Lapped in the Spring, what care you then for these ? 
 
4 LUCRETIUS 
 
 IX 
 
 Sleep is no sweeter on the ivory bed 
 
 Than yours on moss ; and fever's shafts are sped 
 
 As clean through silks damasked for dreaming kings, 
 As through the hood that wraps the poor man's head. 
 
 x 
 
 What then, if all the prince's glittering store 
 Yields to his body not one sense the more, 
 
 Nor any ache or fever of them all 
 Is barred out by bronze gates or janitor — 
 
 XI 
 
 What shall the palace, what the proud domain 
 Do for the mind — vain splendours of the vain ? 
 How shall these minister to a mind diseased, 
 Or raze one written trouble from the brain ? 
 
ON LIFE AND DEATH 
 
 XII 
 
 Unless you think that conscience with its stings 
 And misery, fears the outward pomp of things — 
 
 Fears to push swords and sentinels aside, 
 And sit the assessor of the kings of kings. 
 
 XIII 
 
 The mind ! Ay — there's the rub. The root is there 
 Of that one malady which all men share. 
 
 It gleams between the haggard lids of joy ; 
 It burns a canker in the heart of care. 
 
 XIV 
 
 Within the gold bowl, when the feast is set, 
 It lurks. 'Tis bitter in the labourer's sweat. 
 
 Feed thou the starving, and thou bring'st it back — 
 Back to the starving, who alone forget. 
 
6 LUCRETIUS 
 
 xv 
 
 Oh you who under silken curtains lie, 
 And you whose only roof-tree is the sky, 
 
 What is the curse that blights your lives alike ? 
 Not that you hate to live, but fear to die. 
 
 XVI 
 
 Fear is the poison. Wheresoe'er you go, 
 Out of the skies above, the clods below, 
 
 The sense thrills through you of some pitiless Power 
 Who scowls at once your father and your foe ; 
 
 xvn 
 Who lets his children wander at their whim, 
 Choosing their road, as though not bound by him : 
 
 But all their life is rounded with a shade, 
 And every road goes down behind the rim ; 
 
ON LIFE AND DEATH 7 
 
 XVIII 
 
 And there behind the rim, the swift, the lame, 
 At different paces, but their end the same, 
 Into the dark shall one by one go down, 
 Where the great furnace shakes its hair of flame. 
 
 xix 
 
 Oh ye who cringe and cower before the throne 
 Of him whose heart is fire, whose hands are stone, 
 Who shall deliver you from this death in life — 
 Strike off your chains, and make your souls your own ? 
 
II 
 
 E tenebris tantis 
 
 (^OME unto me all ye that labour. Ye 
 
 Whose souls are heavy-laden, come to me, 
 And I will lead you forth by streams that heal, 
 And feed you with the truth that sets men free. 
 
 ii 
 
 Not from myself, poor souls with fear foredone, 
 Not from myself I have it, but from one 
 
 At whose approach the lamps of all the wise 
 Fade and go out like stars before the sun. 
 
LUCRETIUS ON LIFE AND DEATH 
 
 in 
 I am the messenger of one that saith 
 His saving sentence through my humbler breath : 
 
 And would you know his gospel's name, 'tis this- 
 The healing gospel of the eternal death. 
 
 IV 
 
 A teacher he, the latchet of whose shoe 
 I am not worthy stooping to undo : 
 
 And on your aching brows and weary eyes 
 His saving sentence shall descend like dew. 
 
 For this is he that dared the almighty foe, 
 Looked up, and struck the Olympian blow for blow, 
 And dragged the phantom from his fancied skies — 
 The Samian Sage — the first of those that know. 
 
io LUCRETIUS 
 
 VI 
 
 Him not the splintered lightnings, nor the roll 
 Of thunders daunted. Undismayed, his soul 
 
 Rose, and outsoared the thunder, plumbed the abyss, 
 And scanned the wheeling worlds from pole to pole ; 
 
 VII 
 
 And from the abyss brought back for you and me 
 The secret that alone can set men free. 
 
 He showed us how the worlds and worlds began, 
 And what things can, and what things cannot be. 
 
 VIII 
 
 And as I hear his clarion, I — I too 
 
 See earth and heaven laid open to my view ; 
 
 And lo, from earth and heaven the curse is gone, 
 And all the things that are, are born anew. 
 
ON LIFE AND DEATH n 
 
 IX 
 
 Vision divine ! Far off in crystal air, 
 What forms are these ? The immortal Gods are there. 
 Ay — but what Gods ? Not those that trembling 
 men 
 Would bribe with offerings, and appease with prayer. 
 
 x 
 
 Far off they lie, where storm-winds never blow, 
 Nor ever storm-cloud moves across the glow ; 
 
 Nor frost of winter nips them, nor their limbs 
 Feel the white fluttering of one plume of snow. 
 
 XI 
 
 At ease they dream, and make perpetual cheer 
 Far off. From them we nothing have to fear, 
 
 Nothing to hope. How should the calm ones hate ? 
 The tearless know the meaning of a tear ? 
 
12 LUCRETIUS 
 
 XII 
 
 We leave, we bless them, in their homes on high. 
 No atheist is my master, he, nor I : 
 
 But when I turn, and seek the stain of Hell 
 Which flames and smokes along the nadir sky, 
 
 XIII 
 
 Even as I gaze the ancient shapes of ill 
 Flicker and fade. From off the accursed hill 
 
 The huge stone melts. The Ixionian wheel 
 Rests, and the barkings of the hound are still. 
 
 XIV 
 
 The damned forbear to shriek, their wounds to bleed, 
 The fires to torture, and the worm to feed ; 
 
 And stars are glittering through the rift, where once 
 The stream went wailing 'twixt its leagues of reed ; 
 
ON LIFE AND DEATH 13 
 
 xv 
 And all the pageant goes ; whilst I, with awe, 
 See in its place the things my master saw ; 
 
 See in its place the three eternal things — 
 The only three — atoms and space and law. 
 
 XVI 
 
 Hearken, oh earth ! Hearken, oh heavens bereft 
 Of your old gods, these ageless Fates are left, 
 Who are at once the makers and the made, 
 Who are at once the weavers and the weft. 
 
 XVII 
 
 All things but these arise and fail and fall, 
 
 From flowers to stars — the great things and the small ; 
 
 Whilst the great Sum of all things rests the same, 
 The all-creating, all-devouring All. 
 
i 4 LUCRETIUS ON LIFE AND DEATH 
 
 XVIII 
 
 Oh you who with me, in my master's car, 
 Up from the dens of faith have risen afar, 
 Do not you see at last on yonder height 
 A light that burns and beacons like a star ? 
 
 XIX 
 
 Do not you sniff the morning in our flight ? 
 The air turns cool, the dusk team turns to white. 
 
 Night's coursers catch the morning on their manes 
 The dews are on the pasterns of the night. 
 
 xx 
 
 At last we are near the secret, oh my friend. 
 Patience awhile ! We soon shall reach the end — 
 
 The gospel of the everlasting death. 
 Incline your ear to reason, and attend. 
 
Ill 
 
 Sic igitur magni quoque circum moenia tnundi 
 Expugnata dabunt labem putresque ruinas. 
 
 ^fO single thing abides ; but all things flow. 
 
 Fragment to fragment clings — the things thus grow 
 Until we know and name them. By degrees 
 They melt, and are no more the things we know. 
 
 n 
 Globed from the atoms falling slow or swift 
 I see the suns, I see the systems lift 
 
 Their forms ; and even the systems and the suns 
 Shall go back slowly to the eternal drift. 
 
1 6 LUCRETIUS 
 
 in 
 Thou too, oh earth — thine empires, lands, and seas — 
 Least, with thy stars, of all the galaxies, 
 
 Globed from the drift like these, like these thou too 
 Shalt go. Thou art going, hour by hour, like these. 
 
 IV 
 
 Nothing abides. Thy seas in delicate haze 
 
 Go off ; those mooned sands forsake their place ; 
 
 And where they are, shall other seas in turn 
 Mow with their scythes of whiteness other bays. 
 
 v 
 
 Lo, how the terraced towers, and monstrous round 
 Of league-long ramparts rise from out the ground, 
 With gardens in the clouds. Then all is gone, 
 And Babylon is a memory and a mound. 
 
ON LIFE AND DEATH 17 
 
 vi 
 
 Observe this dew-drenched rose of Tyrian grain — 
 A rose to-day. But you will ask in vain 
 To-morrow what it is ; and yesterday 
 It was the dust, the sunshine and the rain. 
 
 VII 
 
 This bowl of milk, the pitch on yonder jar, 
 
 Are strange and far-bound travellers come from far. 
 
 This is a snow-flake that was once a flame — 
 The flame was once the fragment of a star. 
 
 VIII 
 
 Round, angular, soft, brittle, dry, cold, warm, 
 Things are their qualities : things are their form— 
 
 And these in combination, even as bees, 
 Not singly but combined, make up the swarm : 
 
i 8 LUCRETIUS 
 
 IX 
 
 And when the qualities like bees on wing, 
 Having a moment clustered, cease to cling, 
 
 As the thing dies without its qualities, 
 So die the qualities without the thing. 
 
 x 
 
 Where is the coolness when no cool winds blow ? 
 Where is the music when the lute lies low ? 
 Are not the redness and the red rose one, 
 And the snow's whiteness one thing with the snow ? 
 
 XI 
 
 Even so, now mark me, here we reach the goal 
 Of Science, and in little have the whole — 
 
 Even as the redness and the rose are one, 
 So with the body one thing is the soul. 
 
ON LIFE AND DEATH 19 
 
 XII 
 
 For, as our limbs and organs all unite 
 
 To make our sum of suffering and delight, 
 
 And, without eyes and ears and touch and tongue, 
 Were no such things as taste and sound and sight, 
 
 XIII 
 
 So without these we all in vain shall try 
 To find the thing that gives them unity — 
 
 The thing to which each whispers, " Thou art 
 thou"— 
 The soul which answers each, " And I am I." 
 
 XIV 
 
 What ! shall the dateless worlds in dust be blown 
 Back to the unremembered and unknown, 
 
 And this frail Thou — this flame of yesterday — 
 Burn on, forlorn, immortal, and alone ? 
 
ao LUCRETIUS 
 
 xv 
 
 Did Nature, in the nurseries of the night 
 Tend it for this — Nature whose heedless might, 
 
 Casts, like some shipwrecked sailor, the poor babe, 
 Naked and bleating on the shores of light ? 
 
 XVI 
 
 What is it there ? A cry is all it is. 
 It knows not if its limbs be yours or his. 
 
 Less than that cry the babe was yesterday. 
 The man to-morrow shall be less than this. 
 
 XVII 
 
 Tissue by tissue to a soul he grows, 
 
 As leaf by leaf the rose becomes the rose. 
 
 Tissue from tissue rots ; and, as the Sun 
 Goes from the bubbles when they burst, he goes. 
 
ON LIFE AND DEATH 21 
 
 XVIII 
 
 Ah, mark those pearls of Sunrise ! Fast and free 
 Upon the waves they are dancing. Souls shall be 
 
 Things that outlast their bodies, when each spark 
 Outlasts its wave, each wave outlasts the sea. 
 
 XIX 
 
 The seeds that once were we take flight and fly, 
 Winnowed to earth, or whirled along the sky, 
 
 Not lost but disunited. Life lives on. 
 It is the lives, the lives, the lives, that die. 
 
 xx 
 
 They go beyond recapture and recall, 
 Lost in the all-indissoluble All : — 
 
 Gone like the rainbow from the fountain's foam, 
 Gone like the spindrift shuddering down the squall. 
 
22 LUCRETIUS ON LIFE AND DEATH 
 
 XXI 
 
 Flakes of the water, on the waters cease ! 
 Soul of the body, melt and sleep like these. 
 
 Atoms to atoms — weariness to rest — 
 Ashes to ashes — hopes and fears to peace ! 
 
 XXII 
 
 Oh Science, lift aloud thy voice that stills 
 The pulse of fear, and through the conscience thrills — 
 Thrills through the conscience with the news of 
 peace — 
 How beautiful thy feet are on the hills ! 
 
IV 
 
 Nil igitur mors est 
 
 I 
 r\EATH is for us, then, nothing — a mere name 
 For the mere noiseless ending of a flame. 
 It hurts us not, for there is nothing left 
 To hurt : and as of old, when Carthage came 
 
 ii 
 
 To battle, we and ours felt nought at all, 
 Nor quailed to see city and farm and stall 
 
 Flare into dust, and all our homeless fields 
 Trampled beneath the hordes of Hannibal, 
 
LUCRETIUS 
 
 in 
 But slumbered on and on, nor cared a jot, 
 Deaf to the stress and tumult, though the lot 
 
 Of things was doubtful, to which lords should fall 
 The rule of all — but we, we heeded not — 
 
 IV 
 
 So when that wedlock of the flesh and mind 
 Which makes us what we are, shall cease to bind, 
 And mind and flesh, being mind and flesh no 
 more, 
 Powdered to dust go whistling down the wind, 
 
 v 
 Even as our past was shall our future be. 
 Others may start and tremble, but not we, 
 
 Though heaven with the disbanded dust of earth 
 Be dark, or earth be drowned beneath the sea. 
 
ON LIFE AND DEATH 25 
 
 VI 
 
 Why then torment ourselves, and shrink aghast 
 Like timorous children from the great At Last ? 
 
 For though the Future holds its face averse, 
 See that hid face reflected in the past, 
 
 VII 
 
 As in a shield. Look ! Does some monster seem 
 To threaten there ? Is that the Gorgon's gleam ? 
 
 What meets your eyes is nothing — or a face 
 Even gentler than a sleep without a dream. 
 
 VIII 
 
 And yet — ah thou who art about to cease 
 From toil, and lapse into perpetual peace, 
 
 Why will the mourners stand about thy bed, 
 And sting thy parting hour with words like these ? — 
 
26 LUCRETIUS 
 
 IX 
 
 " Never shalt thou behold thy dear home more, 
 Never thy wife await thee at thy door, 
 Never again thy little climbing boy 
 A father's kindness in thine eyes explore. 
 
 x 
 
 " All you have toiled for, all you have loved," they 
 
 say, 
 " Is gone, is taken in a single day ; " 
 
 But never add, " All memory, all desire, 
 All love — these likewise shall have passed away." 
 
 XI 
 
 Ah ignorant mourners ! Did they only see 
 The fate which Death indeed lays up for thee, 
 
 How would they sing a different song from this — 
 " Beloved, not thou the sufferer — thou ; but we. 
 
ON LIFE AND DEATH 27 
 
 XII 
 
 " Thou hast lost us all ; but thou, redeemed from 
 
 pain, 
 Shalt sleep the sleep that kings desire in vain. 
 
 Thou hast left us all ; and lo, for us, for us, 
 A void that never shall be filled again. 
 
 XIII 
 
 " Not thine, but ours, to see the sharp flames thrust 
 Their daggers through the hands we clasped in 
 trust ; 
 To see the dear lips crumble, and at last 
 To brood above a bitter pile of dust. 
 
 XIV 
 
 " Not thine, but ours is this. All pain is fled 
 From thee, and we are wailing in thy stead, 
 
 Not for the dead that leave the loved behind, 
 But for the living that must lose their dead." 
 
V 
 
 Denique si vocem 
 
 I 
 f)H ye of little faith, who fear to scan 
 
 The inevitable hour that ends your span, 
 If me you doubt, let Nature find a voice ; 
 And will not Nature reason thus with man ? 
 
 ii 
 "Fools," she will say, "whose petulant hearts and 
 
 speech 
 Dare to arraign, and long to overreach, 
 
 Mine ordinance — I see two schools of fools. 
 Silent be both, and I will speak with each. 
 
LUCRETIUS ON LIFE AND DEATH 29 
 
 in 
 
 " And first for thee, whose whimpering lips complain 
 That all life's wine for thee is poured in vain, 
 
 That each hour spills it like a broken cup — 
 Life is for thee the loss, and Death the gain. 
 
 IV 
 
 " Death shall not mock thee. Death at last shall slake 
 Your life's thirst from a cup that will not break. 
 Cease then your mutter ings. Drain that wine-cup 
 dry, 
 Nor fear the wine. Why should you wish to wake ? 
 
 v 
 
 " And next for thee, who hast eaten and drunk with 
 
 zest 
 At my most delicate table of the best, 
 
 Yet when the long feast ends art loth to go, 
 Why not, oh fool, rise like a sated guest — 
 
30 LUCRETIUS 
 
 VI 
 
 " Rise like some guest who has drunk well and deep, 
 And now no longer can his eyelids keep 
 
 From closing ; rise and hie thee home to rest, 
 And enter calmly on the unending sleep ? 
 
 VII 
 
 " What, will you strive with me, and say me * No,' 
 Like some distempered child ; and whisper low, 
 
 1 Give me but one life more, one hour, to drink 
 One draught of some new sweetness ere I go ' ? 
 
 VIII 
 
 " Oh three times fool ! For could I only do 
 The impossible thing you ask, and give to you 
 Not one life more, but many, 'twere in vain. 
 You would find nothing sweet, and nothing new. 
 
ON LIFE AND DEATH 31 
 
 IX 
 
 " Pleasure and power, the friend's, the lover's kiss, 
 Would bring you weariness in place of bliss. 
 
 You would turn aside, and say, ' I have known 
 them all, 
 And am long tired of this, and this, and this.' 
 
 x 
 
 " Nature can nothing do she has not done — 
 Nature, to whom a thousand lives are one : 
 
 And though a thousand lives were yours to endure, 
 You would find no new thing beneath the Sun. 
 
 XI 
 
 " Children of ended joy, and ended care, 
 
 I tell you both, take back, take back your prayer ; 
 
 For one life's joys and loves, or one life's load, 
 Are all, are all, that one man's bones can bear." 
 
32 LUCRETIUS ON LIFE AND DEATH 
 
 XII 
 
 Such, if the mute Omnipotence were free 
 To speak, which it is not, its words would be. 
 
 Could you gainsay them ? Lend your ears once 
 more, 
 Not to the mute Omnipotence, but me. 
 
VI 
 
 In vita sunt omnia nobis 
 
 I 
 pOR I, if still you are haunted by the fear 
 
 Of Hell, have one more secret for your ear. 
 Hell is indeed no fable ; but, my friends, 
 Hell and its torments are not there, but here. 
 
 n 
 
 No Tantalus down below with craven head 
 
 Cowers from the hovering rock : but here instead 
 
 A Tantalus lives in each fond wretch who fears 
 
 An angry God, and views the heavens with dread. 
 
 3 
 
34 LUCRETIUS 
 
 in 
 No Tityos there lies prone, and lives to feel 
 The beak of the impossible vulture steal 
 
 Day after day out of his bleeding breast 
 The carrion of the insatiable meal. 
 
 IV 
 
 But you and I are Tityos, when the dire 
 Poison of passion turns our blood to fire ; 
 
 For despised love is crueller than the pit, 
 And bitterer than the vulture's beak desire. 
 
 v 
 Hell holds no Sisyphus who, with toil and pain, 
 Still rolls the huge stone up the hill in vain. 
 But he is Sisyphus who, athirst for power, 
 Fawns on the crowd, and toils and fails to gain 
 
ON LIFE AND DEATH 35 
 
 VI 
 
 The crowd's vile suffrage. What a doom is his — 
 Abased and unrewarded ! Is not this 
 
 Ever to roll the huge stone up the hill, 
 And see it still rebounding to the abyss ? 
 
 VII 
 
 Oh forms of fear, oh sights and sounds of woe ! 
 The shadowy road down which we all must go 
 
 Leads not to these, but from them. Hell is here, 
 Here in the broad day. Peace is there below. 
 
 VIII 
 
 Think yet again, if still your fears protest, 
 Think how the dust of this broad road to rest 
 
 Is homely with the feet of all you love, 
 The wisest, and the bravest, and the best. 
 
3 6 LUCRETIUS 
 
 IX 
 
 Ancus has gone before you down that road. 
 Scipio, the lord of war, the all-dreaded goad 
 
 Of Carthage, he too, like his meanest slave, 
 Has travelled humbly to the same abode. 
 
 x 
 
 Thither the singers, and the sages fare, 
 Thither the great queens with their golden hair. 
 
 Homer himself is there with all his songs ; 
 And even my mighty Master's self is there. 
 
 XI 
 
 There too the knees that nursed you, and the clay 
 That was a mother once, this many a day 
 
 Have gone. Thither the king with crowned brows 
 Goes, and the weaned child leads him on the way. 
 
ON LIFE AND DEATH 37 
 
 XII 
 
 Brother and friend, and art thou still averse 
 
 To tread that road ? And will the way be worse 
 
 For thee than them ? Dost thou disdain or fear 
 To tread the road of babes, and emperors ? 
 
 XIII 
 
 Is life so sweet a thing, then, even for those 
 On whom it smiles in all its bravest shows ? 
 See, in his marble hall the proud lord lies, 
 And seems to rest, but does not know repose. 
 
 xiv 
 
 " Bring me my chariot," to his slaves he cries. 
 
 The chariot comes. With thundering hoofs he flies — 
 
 Flies to his villa, where the calm arcades 
 Prophesy peace, and fountains cool the skies. 
 
38 LUCRETIUS 
 
 xv 
 
 Vain are the calm arcades, the fountain's foam, 
 Vain the void solitude he calls a home. 
 
 " Bring me my chariot," like a hunted thing 
 He cries once more, and thunders back to Rome. 
 
 XVI 
 
 So each man strives to flee that secret foe 
 Which is himself. But move he swift or slow, 
 
 That Self, for ever punctual at his heels, 
 Never for one short hour will let him go. 
 
 XVII 
 
 How, could he only teach his eyes to see 
 The things that can, the things that cannot be, 
 
 He would hail the road by which he shall at last 
 Escape the questing monster, and be free ! 
 
ON LIFE AND DEATH 39 
 
 XVIII 
 
 He shall escape it even by that same way 
 
 On which fear whispers him 'twill turn to bay : 
 
 For on that road the questing monster dies 
 Like a mans shadow on a sunless day. 
 
 XIX 
 
 Brother and friend, this life brings joy and ease 
 And love to some, to some the lack of these — 
 
 Only the lack ; to others tears and pain ; 
 But at the last it brings to all the peace 
 
 xx 
 
 That passes understanding. Sweet, thrice sweet, 
 This healing Gospel of the unhomed retreat, 
 
 Where, though not drinking, we shall no more thirst, 
 And meeting not, shall no more wish to meet. 
 
VII 
 
 Scire licet nobis nihil esse in morte timendum 
 
 I 
 " HpHY wife, thy home, the child that climbed thy knee 
 Are sinking down like sails behind the sea." 
 Breathe to the dying this ; but breathe as well, 
 " All love for these shall likewise pass from thee." 
 
 ii 
 
 Brother, if I should watch their last light shine 
 In those loved eyes, those dying ears of thine 
 
 Should hear me murmur what, when my hour comes, 
 I would some friend might murmur into mine. 
 
LUCRETIUS ON LIFE AND DEATH 41 
 
 in 
 Rest, rest, perturbed bosom — heart forlorn, 
 With thoughts of ended joys, and evil borne, 
 
 And — worse — of evil done : for they, like thee, 
 Shall rest — those others thou hast made to mourn. 
 
 IV 
 
 Even if there lurk behind some veil of sky 
 The fabled Maker, the immortal Spy, 
 
 Ready to torture each poor life he made, 
 Thou canst do more than God can — thou canst die. 
 
 v 
 Will not the thunders of thy God be dumb 
 When thou art deaf for ever ? Can the Sum 
 
 Of all things bruise what is not ? Nay — take heart ; 
 For where thou goest, thither no God can come. 
 
42 LUCRETIUS 
 
 VI 
 
 Rest, brother, rest. Have you done ill or well, 
 Rest, rest. There is no God, no Gods, who dwell 
 
 Crowned with avenging righteousness on high, 
 Nor frowning ministers of their hate in Hell. 
 
 VII 
 
 None shall accuse thee, none shall judge : for lo, 
 Those others have forgotten long ago : 
 And all thy sullied drifts of memory 
 Shall lie as white, shall lie as cold as snow : 
 
 VIII 
 
 And no vain hungering for the joys of yore 
 Gone with the vanished sunsets, nor the sore 
 Torn in your heart by all the ills you did, 
 Nor even the smart of those poor ills you bore ; 
 
ON LIFE AND DEATH 43 
 
 IX 
 
 And no omnipotent wearer of a crown 
 
 Of righteousness, nor fiend with branded frown 
 
 Swart from the flame, shall break or reach your rest, 
 Or stir your temples from the eternal down. 
 
 x 
 
 Flakes of the water, on the waters cease ! 
 Soul of the body, melt and sleep like these. 
 
 Atoms to atoms — weariness to rest. 
 Ashes to ashes — hopes and fears to peace ! 
 
PASSAGES 
 FROM LUCRETIUS <DE RERUM NATURA' 
 
 Which form the Basis of the Preceding Poem 
 
 I 
 
 i 
 CUAVE mari magno vexantibus aequora ventis 
 E terra magnum alterius spectare laborem ; 
 Non quia vexari quemquam est iucunda voluptas, 
 Set quibus ipse malis careas quia cernere suave est. 
 
 It is sweet when winds are troubling the waters on 
 the great deep, to watch from land the great labours of 
 another ; not because there is any light-hearted pleasure 
 in knowing that another is suffering, but because it 
 is pleasant to realise from what sufferings you yourself 
 are free. — Lucretius, Book ii. 1-4. 
 
46 LUCRETIUS 
 
 ii 
 
 Per campos instructa tua sine parte pericli 
 Suave etiam belli certamina magna tueri. 
 
 It is also sweet to behold, without any peril to your- 
 self, the great forces of war arrayed for battle along 
 the plains. — Book ii. 5, 6. 
 
 in 
 
 Sed nil dulcius est bene quam munita tenere 
 Edita doctrina sapientum templa serena ; 
 Despicere unde queas alios passimque videre 
 Errare, 
 
 But nothing is sweeter than to occupy the well- 
 defended serene heights of the wise, built high with 
 learning, from which you may be able to look down on 
 others, and see them wandering {Ibid. 7-10), 
 
PASSAGES FROM THE ORIGINAL 47 
 
 IV 
 
 atque viarri palantes quaerere vitae, 
 Certare ingenio, contendere nobilitate, 
 Noctes atque dies niti praestante labore 
 Ad summas emergere opes rerumque potiri. 
 
 and straying in all directions in search of the path of 
 life, contending in intellect, in pride of birth, and 
 struggling with hard labour day and night to rise to 
 wealth, and seize on the government of affairs. — 
 Ibid. 10-13. 
 
 v 
 O miseras hominum mentes ! o pectora caeca ! 
 Qualibus in tenebris vitae quantisque periclis 
 Degitur hoc aevi quodcumque est ! Nonne videtis 
 Nil aliud sibi naturam latrare, 
 
 Oh miserable minds of men ! oh blind breasts ! In 
 what shadows of life, in what perils such life as is yours 
 
48 LUCRETIUS 
 
 is passed ! Do not you see that Nature demands for 
 herself no more than this (Book ii. 14-16) — 
 
 VI 
 
 — nisi ut cui 
 Corpore seiunctus dolor absit, mente fruatur 
 Iucundo sensu cura semota metuque ? 
 
 — that he from whose body care is removed and absent, 
 may enjoy his mind with pleasure, freed from care and 
 fear ? — Ibid. 17-19. 
 
 Ergo corpoream ad naturam pauca videmus 
 Esse opus omnino, quae demant cumque dolorem 
 Delicias quoque uti multas substernere possint. 
 
 We see, therefore, that but few things are necessary 
 to the nature of the body, in order to ward off pain, 
 and to give us many pleasures. — Ibid. 20-22. 
 
PASSAGES FROM THE ORIGINAL 49 
 
 VII 
 
 Si non aurea sunt iuvenum simulacra per aedes 
 Lampadas igniferas manibus retinentia dextris, 
 Lumina nocturnis epulis ut suppeditentur, 
 Nee domus argento fulget auroque renidet, 
 Nee citharae reboant laqueata aurataque templa ; 
 
 If there are not in your houses, golden statues of 
 youths, holding burning lamps in their hands, to supply 
 light to the midnight feast ; if their hall shines 
 not with silver, nor glitters with gold, nor the lyre 
 makes the fretted and gilded roofs resound {Ibid. 
 24-28) ; 
 
 VIII 
 
 Quum tamen inter se prostrati in gramine molli 
 Propter aquae rivum sub ramis arboris altae 
 Non magnis opibus iucunde corpora curant. 
 
 nevertheless when they have stretched themselves 
 on the soft grass, near a rivulet of water, under the 
 
50 LUCRETIUS 
 
 branches of a tree, they, with no great riches, so far as 
 the senses go, have a happy life enough. — Book ii. 29-31. 
 
 IX 
 
 Nee calidae citius decedunt corpore febres 
 Textilibus si in picturis ostroque rubenti 
 Iacteris, quam si in plebeia veste cubandum est. 
 
 Nor do hot fevers depart sooner from your body, if 
 you are tossed on woven pictures and blushing purple, 
 than if you have to lie under a plebeian coverlet. — 
 Ibid. 34-36. 
 
 X AND XI 
 
 Quapropter quoniam nil nostro in corpore gazae 
 
 Proficiunt neque nobilitas neque gloria regni, 
 
 Quod superest animo quoque nil prodesse putandum. 
 
 Wherefore since neither treasures, nor nobility, nor 
 the glory of a kingdom are of any profit to the body, 
 
PASSAGES FROM THE ORIGINAL 51 
 
 we must deem also that they are of no profit to the 
 mind. — Ibid. 37-39. 
 
 XII 
 
 Si non forte tuas legiones per loca campi 
 Fervere quum videas, belli simulacra cientes, 
 His tibi turn rebus timefactae religiones 
 Effugiunt animo pavidae, mortisque timores. 
 
 Unless, perhaps, when you see your legions moving 
 themselves along the places of the plain, stirring up 
 images of war, the terrors of religion and the dread of 
 death, frightened by these things, flee panic-stricken 
 from your mind. — Ibid. 41-44. 
 
 XIII TO XIX 
 
 Aeternas quoniam poenas in morte timendum, 
 
 Since men [as they now believe] have to fear an 
 eternity of torment when they die (Book i. 1 11), 
 
52 LUCRETIUS 
 
 Metus ille foras praeceps Acherontis agendus, 
 Funditus humanam qui vitam turbat ab imo 
 Omnia suffundens mortis nigrore, neque ullam 
 Esse voluptatem liquidam puramque relinquit. 
 
 that fear of Acheron must be driven headlong from 
 our minds utterly which now suffuses all things with the 
 darkness of death, nor allows any pleasure to remain to 
 us clear and pure. — Book iii. 37-40. 
 
II 
 
 1-TUNC igitur terrorem animi tenebrasque necesse est 
 
 Non radii solis neque lucida tela diei 
 Discutiant, sed naturae species ratioque. 
 
 This terror and these shadows of the mind must be 
 dispersed, not by the rays of the sun, or the lucid darts 
 of day, but by the knowledge of nature and of reason. — 
 Book iii. 91-93. 
 
 II TO IV 
 
 E tenebris tantis tarn clarum extollere lumen 
 Qui primus potuisti illustrans commoda vitae, 
 Te sequor, o Graiae gentis decus, inque tuis nunc 
 Fixa pedum pono pressis vestigia signis. 
 
54 LUCRETIUS 
 
 Thou, who from so great darkness wert first able to 
 lift so shining a light, illuminating the blessings of life, 
 Thee, oh glory of the Grecian race, do I follow, and 
 plant my feet in thy footprints. — Book iii. 1-4. 
 
 Ipse Epicurus [qui] . . . omnes 
 Restinxit, Stellas exortus uti aetherius sol. 
 
 Epicurus, who extinguishes the lights of all other 
 
 men, as the risen sun extinguishes the stars. — Ibid. 
 
 1055. 
 
 v 
 
 Humana ante oculos foede quum vita iaceret 
 In terris oppressa gravi sub religione 
 Quae caput a coeli regionibus ostendebat 
 Horribili super aspectu mortalibus instans, 
 Primum Graius homo mortales tollere contra 
 Est oculos ausus primusque obsistere contra. 
 
 When human life lay shamefully grovelling before our 
 eyes, bowed to the dust beneath the heavy weight of 
 
PASSAGES FROM THE ORIGINAL 55 
 
 religion, which displayed its head from the regions of 
 the heavens, threatening mortals with her hideous 
 aspect, a man of Greece was the first to raise mortal eyes 
 against her, and make a stand against her. — Book i. 
 63-68. 
 
 VI 
 
 Quern nee fama deum nee fulmina nee minitanti 
 Murmure compressit coelum. 
 
 Whom neither tales of Gods, nor lightnings, nor the 
 heaven with its threatening murmurs repressed. — Ibid. 
 69, 70. 
 
 VII 
 
 Ergo vivida vis animi pervicit et extra 
 
 Processit longe flammantia moenia mundi 
 
 Atque omne immensum peragravit mente animoque, 
 
 Unde refer t nobis victor quid possit oriri, 
 
 Quid nequeat. 
 
56 LUCRETIUS 
 
 Therefore the vivid strength of his mind conquered, 
 and proceeded far beyond the flaming walls of the 
 universe, and in mind and thought traversed the whole 
 vast of space ; and hence triumphant he brings back 
 to us the knowledge of what can arise and exist, and 
 what cannot. — Book i. 73-76. 
 
 VIII 
 
 Nam simul ac ratio tua coepit vociferari 
 Naturam rerum, haud divina mente coactam, 
 DifFugiunt animi terrores, moenia mundi 
 Discedunt. Totum video per inane geri res. 
 
 For as soon as thy reason begins to shout aloud the 
 nature of things — nature not ruled by the mind of any 
 deity — the terrors of the mind flee away ; the walls of 
 the universe open ; and I see the process of things in all 
 the void of space. — Book iii. 14-17. 
 
PASSAGES FROM THE ORIGINAL 57 
 
 IX TO XI 
 
 Apparet Divum numen sedesque quietae, 
 Quas neque concutiunt venti nee nubila nimbis 
 Adspergunt neque nix acri concreta pruina 
 Cana cadens violat, semperque innubilus aether 
 Integer et large diffuso lumine ridet. 
 Omnia suppeditat porro natura neque ulla 
 Res animi pacem delibat tempore in ullo. 
 
 The divinity of the gods appears, and their tranquil 
 seats, which no winds shake nor clouds sprinkle with 
 mist, nor the white falling snow, congealed with sharp 
 frost, violates ; but the pure air is cloudless ever, and 
 laughs with diffused light. Nature, too, provides the 
 gods with all things ; nor does anything ever take 
 their peace of heart away from them. — Ibid. 18-24. 
 
58 LUCRETIUS 
 
 XII TO XIV 
 
 At contra nusquam apparent Acherusia templa 
 Nee tellus obstat quin omnia dispiciantur. 
 
 But on the other hand, though the earth does not 
 hinder a complete view of everything, the Acherusian 
 abodes are to be seen nowhere. — Book iii. 25-26. 
 
 XV TO XVII 
 
 His ibi me rebus quaedam divina voluptas 
 Percipit atque horror. 
 
 Under the influence of these spectacles, a certain 
 divine pleasure and awe takes hold of me. — Ibid. 28-29. 
 
 Natura . . . corpus inani 
 Et quod inane autem est finiri corpore cogit, 
 Ut sic alternis infinita omnia reddat. 
 
PASSAGES FROM THE ORIGINAL 59 
 
 Nature compels body to be bounded with space, and 
 empty space to be bounded by body, so that by these 
 mutual limits she may render all things infinite. — Book 
 i. 1 009-101 1. 
 
 Minui rem quamque videmus 
 Et quasi longinquo fluere omnia cernimus aevo 
 
 Quum tamen incolumis videatur summa manere. 
 
 We see that all things are diminished and flow away 
 through length of time ; but the great sum of things 
 is seen to remain undecayed. — Book ii. 68-71. 
 
Ill 
 
 I 
 TV/JUT AT enim mundi naturam totius aetas 
 
 Ex alioque alius status excipere omnia debet, 
 Nee manet ulla sui similis res. Omnia migrant. 
 
 For time changes the nature of the entire universe, 
 and one condition of things after another must succeed 
 in all things : nor does anything abide like itself. All 
 things move and change. — Book v. 828-830. 
 
 11 
 Sic igitur magni quoque circum moenia mundi 
 Expugnata dabunt labem putresque ruinas. 
 
 So likewise the walls of the great universe assailed 
 on all sides [by age and the attack of hostile atoms] 
 
PASSAGES FROM THE ORIGINAL 61 
 
 shall suffer decay, and fall in mouldering ruin. — Book 
 ii. 1 144, 1 145. 
 
 in 
 
 Quare etiam atque etiam tales fateare necesse est 
 
 Esse alios alibi congressus materiai 
 
 Qualis hie est avido complexu quern tenet aether. 
 
 Wherefore again and again it is necessary that you 
 admit the existences of other aggregates of matter 
 elsewhere, such as the earth, which the air holds in its 
 close embrace. — Ibid. 1 061-1063. 
 
 Iamque adeo fracta est aetas effoetaque tellus. 
 Already the age of the world is broken, and the 
 earth worn out. — Ibid. 1 1 50. 
 
 IV 
 
 Magnam partem sol detrahit aestu . . . 
 Praeterea docui multum quoque tollere nubes 
 Humorem, magno conceptum ex aequore ponti. 
 
62 LUCRETIUS 
 
 The sun with its heat draws off a large part of the 
 sea. I have shown thee also how the clouds take off 
 much drawn by them from the vast surface of the 
 deep. — Book v. 617, 628, 629. 
 
 v 
 Et inter se mortales mutua vivunt. 
 Augescunt aliae gentes, aliae minuuntur, 
 Inque brevi spatio mutantur saecla animantum. 
 
 The races of mortals subsist by interchange. Some 
 races increase, some diminish, and in a brief space 
 of time the generations of the living are changed. — 
 Book ii. 76-78. 
 
 VI 
 
 Pereunt imbres, ubi eos pater aether 
 In gremium matris terrai praecipitavit ; 
 At nitidae surgunt fruges ramique virescunt. 
 
PASSAGES FROM THE ORIGINAL 63 
 
 The rains die when father aether has precipitated 
 them into the lap of mother earth ; but the shining 
 fruits rise, and the branches of the trees grow green. — 
 Book i. 251-253. 
 
 VIII AND IX 
 
 Nam quodcumque suis mutatum finibus exit, 
 Continuo hoc mors est illius quod fuit ante. 
 
 For whatsoever thing is changed, and loses its 
 distinguishing qualities, this change is the instant death 
 of the thing which was before. — Book ii. 753, 754. 
 
 IX, X, AND XI 
 
 Quod genus e thuris glebis evellere odorem 
 Haud facile est quin intereat natura quoque eius. 
 Sic animi atque animae naturam corpore toto 
 Extrahere haud facile est quin corpora dissolvantur. 
 
 For as you cannot tear away the scent from balls of 
 frankincense, without at the same time destroying its 
 
64 LUCRETIUS 
 
 whole nature, so you cannot extract the mind and soul 
 from the whole body, without the body being dissolved. 
 — Book iii. 327-330. 
 
 XV AND XVI 
 
 Turn porro puer, ut saevis proiectus ab undis 
 Navita, nudus humi iacet, infans, indigus omni 
 Vitali auxilio, quum primum in luminis oras 
 Nixibus ex alvo matris natura profudit 
 Vagituque locum lugubri complet, ut aequum est 
 Cui tantum in vita restat transire malorum. 
 
 Moreover the babe, like a sailor cast up by the 
 fierce waves, lies speechless, without all vital support, 
 naked upon the ground, where first nature with pain 
 has sent it from its mother's womb, forth into the 
 regions of light ; and it fills the air with a dismal 
 wailing, as is right for one for whom in life so many 
 sorrows remain to be passed through. — Book v. 222-227. 
 
PASSAGES FROM THE ORIGINAL 65 
 
 XVII 
 
 Praeterea gigni pariter cum corpore et una 
 Crescere sentimus pariterque senescere mentem. 
 
 Besides we see the mind to be born with the body, 
 to grow with the body, and to decay with it. — Book iii. 
 446-447. 
 
 XIX 
 
 Nequeunt ullius corporis esse 
 Sensus ante ipsam genitam naturam animantis, 
 Nimirum quia materies disiecta tenetur 
 Aere fluminibus terris. 
 
 The senses of no living thing can exist before the 
 substance of the living thing itself is got together ; and 
 naturally so, because till then the materials are dispersed 
 in the air, the rivers, and in the earth. — Book ii. 936- 
 939- 
 
66 LUCRETIUS 
 
 XXI 
 
 Nam sua cuique locis ex omnibus omnia plagis 
 Corpora distribuuntur et ad sua saecla recedunt. 
 Humor ad humorem, terreno corpore terra 
 Crescit et ignem ignes procudunt aetheraque aether. 
 
 For to every body from all regions of space are 
 contributed by atomic agitation its own congruous 
 atoms ; moisture to moisture ; earth to earth ; fire to 
 fire ; air to air. — Book ii. 1 1 1 2-1 1 1 5. 
 
IV 
 
 "^TIL igitur mors est ad nos neque pertinet hilum, 
 Quandoquidem natura animi mortalis habctur. 
 
 Death therefore is nothing, and has nothing to do 
 with us, since the nature of the mind is mortal. — Book 
 iii. 842, 843. 
 
 II AND III 
 
 Et velut anteacto nil tempore sensimus aegri, 
 Ad confligendum venientibus undique Poenis, 
 Omnia quum belli trepido concussa tumultu 
 Horrida contremuere sub altis aetheris auris, 
 In dubioque fuere utrorum ad regna cadendum 
 Omnibus humanis esset terraque marique : — 
 
68 LUCRETIUS 
 
 And as, in past time, we felt no trouble ourselves, 
 when the Carthaginians gathered from all sides to con- 
 flict, and when all things with the terrifying tumult of 
 war trembled under the high air of heaven ; and it was 
 doubtful under the sway of which power the rule of all 
 things human, in land and sea, should fall : — (Book iii. 
 
 843-849O 
 
 IV AND V 
 
 Sic, ubi non erimus, quum corporis atque animal 
 Discidium fuerit quibus e sumus uniter apti, 
 Scilicet haud nobis quidquam, qui non erimus turn, 
 Accidere omnino poterit sensumque movere, 
 Non si terra mari miscebitur et mare coelo. 
 
 So when we shall cease to be, and when the disrup- 
 tion shall come of that soul and body of which we are 
 jointly composed, it is certain that to us, who shall not 
 then exist, nothing will be able to happen, or to rouse 
 
PASSAGES FROM THE ORIGINAL 69 
 
 our feelings, not even if the earth shall be mingled with 
 the sea, and the sea with heaven. — Ibid. 850-854. 
 
 VI 
 
 Respice item quam nil ad nos anteacta vetustas 
 Temporis aeterni fuerit, quam nascimur ante. 
 Hoc igitur speculum nobis natura futuri 
 Temporis exponit post mortem denique nostram. 
 Num quid horribile apparet ? Num triste videtur 
 Quidquam ? Nonne omni somno securius extat ? 
 
 Consider also how all the endless time that passed 
 before we were born was nothing to us. This does 
 nature hold up to us as a mirror, of that time to come, 
 which shall be when we are dead. Does anything 
 horrible appear ? Is anything sad seen ? Is not what 
 you see there calmer than any sleep? — Ibid. 985-990. 
 
70 LUCRETIUS 
 
 VII TO IX 
 
 Nam iam non domus accipiet te laeta, neque uxor 
 Optima nee dukes occurrent oscula nati 
 Praeripere et tacita pectus dulcedine tangent . . . 
 IUud in his rebus non addunt, Nee tibi earum 
 Iam desiderium insidet rerum insuper ulla. 
 
 For now [say the mourners] your pleasant home 
 shall never again receive you, nor your well-loved wife, 
 nor your tender little ones run to you to snatch your 
 kisses, and touch your heart with a silent sweetness. 
 [The mourners say this, but] they never think of add- 
 ing, Nor shall any longer any desire for these things 
 remain with you. — Book iii. 907-913. 
 
 x TO XIII 
 
 Quod bene si videant animo dictisque sequantur, 
 Dissolvant animi magno se angore metuque. 
 Tu quidem ut es lecto sopitus, sic eris aevi 
 
PASSAGES FROM THE ORIGINAL 71 
 
 Quod superest cunctis privatu' doloribus aegris ; 
 At nos horrifico cinefactum te prope busto 
 Insatiabiliter deflebimus ; aeternumque 
 Nulla dies nobis moerorem e pectore demet. 
 
 Which truth, if men would see with their minds, and 
 follow it with their words, they would free themselves 
 from much sorrow and fear of mind. [Then would 
 they say to the dying] You laid to sleep on your bed, 
 will be as you are for ever, freed from all cark and 
 care ; but we standing by you, never shall cease weep- 
 ing for your loss ; nor will ever the day come to our 
 lives which will take our abiding sorrow from our 
 hearts. — Ibid. 9 1 4-9 2 1 . 
 
"\ENIQUE si vocem rerum natura repente 
 
 Mittat et hoc alicui nostrum sic increpet ipsa : — 
 
 Lastly, if the nature of things should suddenly utter 
 a voice, and herself thus upbraid any one of us : — (Book 
 iii. 944, 945.) 
 
 11 
 
 Quid tibi tantopere est mortalis quod nimis aegris 
 Luctibus indulges ? quid mortem congemis ac fles ? 
 
 What good cause have you, oh mortal, to indulge in 
 this immoderate grief? Why do you bemoan and weep 
 over your coming death? — Ibid. 946, 947. 
 
PASSAGES FROM THE ORIGINAL 73 
 
 III AND IV 
 
 Sin ea quae fructus quumque es periere profusa 
 Vitaque in offenso est, cur amplius addere quaeris ? 
 
 But if these things, of which you have had the use, 
 have been poured out and wasted, and life is hateful to 
 you, why seek to add to it? — Ibid, 953, 954. 
 
 v AND VI 
 
 Nam gratum fuerit tibi vita anteacta priorque 
 Et non omnia pertusum congesta quasi in vas 
 Commoda perfluxere atque ingrata interiere ; 
 Cur non ut plenus vitae conviva recedis 
 Aequo animoque capis securam, stulte, quietem ? 
 
 For if your past life has been grateful to you, and all 
 your blessings have not, as though poured into a leaky 
 vessel, flowed away, and been lost, why not, like a guest 
 
74 LUCRETIUS 
 
 sated at the banquet of life, retire, and with calm mind 
 take your rest that never will be broken? — Book iii. 
 948-952. 
 
 VII TO X 
 
 Cur . . . 
 
 Nee potius vitae finem facis atque laboris ? 
 Nam tibi praeterea quod machiner inveniamque, 
 Quod placeat, nihil est ; eadem sunt omnia semper. 
 . . . eadem tamen omnia restant, 
 Omnia si pergas vivendo vincere saecla. 
 
 Why not rather wish [instead of living on] to make 
 an end of life and sorrow at once ? For there is nothing 
 further which I could contrive or find out to please you. 
 All things are always the same . . . You would find 
 them always the same, even if you outlasted all the 
 ages in living. — Ibid. 958-962. 
 
PASSAGES FROM THE ORIGINAL 75 
 
 XII 
 
 Quid respondemus, nisi iustam intendere litem, 
 Naturam et veram verbis exponere causam ? 
 
 What do we answer to all this, but that nature brings 
 a just charge against us, and sets forth a true case, in so 
 speaking ? — Ibid. 962, 963. 
 
VI 
 
 A TQUE ea nimirum quaecunque Acherunte prof undo 
 Prodita sunt esse, in vita sunt omnia nobis. 
 
 And those things which are said to be in the depths 
 of hell, really all of them happen to us, not there, but 
 in life. — Book iii. 991, 992. 
 
 11 
 
 Nee miser impendens magnum timet aere saxum 
 Tantalus, ut fama est, cassa formidine torpens : 
 Sed magis in vita divum metus urget inanis 
 Mortales casumque timent quern cuique ferat fors. 
 
 Nor does any miserable Tantalus, as is said, stupid 
 with blind fear, dread the great rock hanging above 
 
PASSAGES FROM THE ORIGINAL 77 
 
 him in the air. But in this life an empty fear of the 
 gods oppresses mortals ; and they dread the fall that 
 chance may bring to each. — Ibid. 993-996. 
 
 in 
 Nee Tityon volucres ineunt Acherunte iacentem 
 Nee quid sub magno scrutentur pectore quidquam 
 Perpetuam aetatem poterunt reperire profecto . . . 
 Nee tamen aeternum poterit perferre laborem 
 Nee praebere cibum proprio de cor pore semper. 
 
 Nor do the birds penetrate Tityos as he lies in 
 Acheron ; nor, however his huge breast might be 
 explored, could they find food there for infinite time . . . 
 Nor could he himself endure the eternal pain, nor 
 supply food always from his body. — Ibid. 997-1004. 
 
 IV 
 
 Sed Tityos nobis hie est, in amore iacentem 
 Quern volucres lacerant atque exest anxius angor. 
 
78 LUCRETIUS 
 
 But he is a Tityos amongst us, whom, as he lies in 
 love, the birds of passion tear, and anxious disquiet 
 eats. — Book iii. 1005- 1009. 
 
 v 
 
 Sisyphus in vita quoque nobis ante oculos est 
 Qui petere a populo fasces saevasque secures 
 Imbibit et semper victus tristisque recedit. 
 
 A Sisyphus likewise is before our eyes in this life, in 
 him who sets himself to seek from the voters the 
 fasces and the fierce axes, and retires always beaten and 
 sad. — Ibid. 1008-1010. 
 
 VI 
 
 Nam petere imperium quod inane est nee datur unquam 
 Atque in eo semper durum sufferre laborem, 
 Hoc est adverso nixantem trudere monte 
 Saxum quod tamen a summo iam vertice rursum 
 Volvitur et plani raptim petit aequora campi. 
 
PASSAGES FROM THE ORIGINAL 79 
 
 For to seek power, which is empty in itself, and is 
 moreover not gained, and constantly to endure hard 
 labour in the pursuit of it, this is to hurl the stone with 
 pain up the adverse hill, which yet is even now rolled 
 down again from the summit, and impetuously seeks 
 the surface of the open plain. — Ibid. 1011-1015. 
 
 VII 
 
 Hinc Acherusia fit stultorum denique vita. 
 
 From fears of the torments of hell, the life of fools 
 becomes a hell itself. — Ibid. 1036. 
 
 VIII 
 
 Hoc etiam tibi tute interdum dicere possis. 
 
 This too you will also be able to say to yourself, 
 [to give yourself courage]. — Ibid. 1037. 
 
80 LUCRETIUS 
 
 IX 
 
 Lumina sis oculis etiam bonus Anai' reliquit . . . 
 Scipiades, belli fulmen, Carthaginis horror, 
 Ossa dedit terrae proinde ac famul infimus esset. 
 
 Even the good Ancus has deserted the light with his 
 eyes . . . Scipio, the thunderbolt of war, the dread of 
 Carthage, gave his bows to the earth, as though he 
 were his lowest slave. — Book iii. 1038, and 1047, 1048. 
 
 x 
 
 Adde repertores doctrinarum atque leporum, 
 
 Adde Heliconiadum comites; quorum unus Homer us . . . 
 
 Ipse Epicurus obit decurso lumine vitae. 
 
 Add to these the inventors of the sciences and the 
 graces, and the companies of the Muses, of whom Homer 
 is one . . . Epicurus died likewise, when his life's light 
 had run its course. — Ibid. 1049, 1050, and 1055. 
 
PASSAGES FROM THE ORIGINAL 81 
 
 XIII 
 
 Exit saepe foras magnis ex aedibus ille, 
 Esse domi quern pertaesum est. 
 
 Often he goes forth out of his vast halls, who has 
 grown weary of remaining at home. — Ibid. 1073, 
 1074. 
 
 XIV 
 
 Currit agens mannos ad villam praecipitanter, 
 Auxilium tectis quasi ferre ardentibus instans. 
 
 He hastens precipitately to his villa hurrying on his 
 horses, as though his house was on fire, and he were 
 hastening to put out the flames. — Ibid. 1076, 1077. 
 
 xv 
 Oscitat extemplo, tetigit quum limina villae, 
 Aut abit in somnum gravis atque oblivia quaerit, 
 Aut etiam properans urbem petit atque revisit. 
 But he has no sooner touched the threshold of his 
 
 villa than he yawns, or falls heavily to sleep, and 
 
 6 
 
82 LUCRETIUS 
 
 heavily seeks forgetfulness ; or even hurrying back 
 again, betakes himself once more to the city. — Book 
 iii. 1078-1080. 
 
 XVI 
 
 Hoc se quisque modo fugit ; at quern scilicet, ut fit, 
 Effugere haud potis est, ingratis haeret, et odit 
 Propterea, morbi quia causam non tenet aeger. 
 
 In this way each man flees from himself; but this 
 self, whom, as it happens, he cannot escape from, still 
 clings to him, and he hates it ; for he, the sick man, 
 does not know the cause of his disease. — Ibid. 1081-1083. 
 
 XVII 
 
 Quam bene si videat, iam rebus quisque relictis 
 Naturam primum studeat cognoscere rerum, 
 Temporis aeterni quoniam, non unius horae, 
 Ambigitur status, in quo sit mortalibus omnis 
 Aetas, post mortem quae restat cunque manendo. 
 
PASSAGES FROM THE ORIGINAL 83 
 
 Which cause if everybody could understand, each, 
 in the first place, all other pursuits being left, would 
 study to learn the nature of things ; since what is at 
 issue is the state not of one hour, but of that eternity in 
 which the whole age of mortals — whatsoever may remain 
 of it — after death must continue. — Ibid. 108 4- 1088. 
 
 xx 
 
 Tanquam in morte mali cum primis hoc sit eorum, 
 Quod sitis exurat miseros atque arida torreat, 
 Aut aliae cuius desiderium insideat rei. 
 
 As if at their death this would be their chief evil, 
 that parching thirst should burn and dry them up in 
 their wretchedness, or the vain longing for some other 
 thing settle on them. — Ibid. 939-941. 
 
VII 
 
 III AND IV 
 
 /^\UARE religio pedibus subiecta vicissim 
 ^^ Obteritur, nos exaequat victoria coelo. 
 
 By means of whose science religion in its turn lies 
 bruised under our feet, and his victory makes us equal 
 with heaven. — Book i. 78, 79. 
 
 v 
 
 Scire licet nobis nihil esse in morte timendum 
 Nee miserum fieri qui non est posse neque hilum 
 Differre an ullo fuerit iam tempore natus, 
 Mortalem vitam mors quum immortalis ademit. 
 
 We may be assured that in death there is nothing to 
 be dreaded by us ; that he who does not exist cannot be 
 
PASSAGES FROM THE ORIGINAL 85 
 
 made miserable ; and that it is nothing to a man that 
 he was ever born at all, when once immortal death has 
 taken away mortal life. — Book iii. 879-882. 
 
 IX 
 
 Nee quisquam in barathrum nee Tartara deditur atra. 
 
 Nor is any one ever given to the pit, or the night of 
 Tartarus. — Ibid. 979. 
 
 Printed by R. & R. Clark, Limited, Edinburgh. 
 

 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY 
 BERKELEY 
 
 Return to desk from which borrowed. 
 This book is DUE on the last date stamped below. 
 
 ' u Qc\ 
 
 & )an'52HEJ 
 7Jan'52LU 
 
 
 13Dec'55jLf 
 
 Ilfl do — 4 !> 
 JAN 6 1956 U| 
 
 
 REC'D LD 
 
 MAY 5 ^ 
 
 ^RLIBRARY loan 
 
 1975 
 
 .IF., BERK. 
 
 OCT 2 8 
 
 UNIV. OF CA 
 
 LD 21-100m-9,'48(B399sl6)476 
 
VB 38490 
 
 M70iC;7 
 
 '9/A 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY