On the Nature of Things - Тит Лукреций Кар

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More grateful 'tis at times (for nature craves

           No artifice nor luxury), if forsooth

           There be no golden images of boys

           Along the halls, with right hands holding out

           The lamps ablaze, the lights for evening feasts,

           And if the house doth glitter not with gold

           Nor gleam with silver, and to the lyre resound

           No fretted and gilded ceilings overhead,

           Yet still to lounge with friends in the soft grass

           Beside a river of water, underneath

           A big tree's boughs, and merrily to refresh

           Our frames, with no vast outlay—most of all

           If the weather is laughing and the times of the year

           Besprinkle the green of the grass around with flowers.

           Nor yet the quicker will hot fevers go,

           If on a pictured tapestry thou toss,

           Or purple robe, than if 'tis thine to lie

           Upon the poor man's bedding. Wherefore, since

           Treasure, nor rank, nor glory of a reign

           Avail us naught for this our body, thus

           Reckon them likewise nothing for the mind:

           Save then perchance, when thou beholdest forth

           Thy legions swarming round the Field of Mars,

           Rousing a mimic warfare—either side

           Strengthened with large auxiliaries and horse,

           Alike equipped with arms, alike inspired;

           Or save when also thou beholdest forth

           Thy fleets to swarm, deploying down the sea:

           For then, by such bright circumstance abashed,

           Religion pales and flees thy mind; O then

           The fears of death leave heart so free of care.

           But if we note how all this pomp at last

           Is but a drollery and a mocking sport,

           And of a truth man's dread, with cares at heels,

           Dreads not these sounds of arms, these savage swords

           But among kings and lords of all the world

           Mingles undaunted, nor is overawed

           By gleam of gold nor by the splendour bright

           Of purple robe, canst thou then doubt that this

           Is aught, but power of thinking?—when, besides

           The whole of life but labours in the dark.

           For just as children tremble and fear all

           In the viewless dark, so even we at times

           Dread in the light so many things that be

           No whit more fearsome than what children feign,

           Shuddering, will be upon them in the dark.

           This terror then, this darkness of the mind,

           Not sunrise with its flaring spokes of light,

           Nor glittering arrows of morning can disperse,

           But only nature's aspect and her law.

      ATOMIC MOTIONS

           Now come: I will untangle for thy steps

           Now by what motions the begetting bodies

           Of the world-stuff beget the varied world,

           And then forever resolve it when begot,

           And by what force they are constrained to this,

           And what the speed appointed unto them

           Wherewith to travel down the vast inane:

           Do thou remember to yield thee to my words.

           For truly matter coheres not, crowds not tight,

           Since we behold each thing to wane away,

           And we observe how all flows on and off,

           As 'twere, with age-old time, and from our eyes

           How eld withdraws each object at the end,

           Albeit the sum is seen to bide the same,

           Unharmed, because these motes that leave each thing

           Diminish what they part from, but endow

           With increase those to which in turn they come,

           Constraining these to wither in old age,

           And those to flower at the prime (and yet

           Biding not long among them). Thus the sum

           Forever is replenished, and we live

           As mortals by eternal give and take.

           The nations wax, the nations wane away;

           In a brief space the generations pass,

           And like to runners hand the lamp of life

           One unto other.

                                But if thou believe

           That the primordial germs of things can stop,

           And in their stopping give new motions birth,

           Afar thou wanderest from the road of truth.

           For since they wander through the void inane,

           All the primordial germs of things must needs

           Be borne along, either by weight their own,

           Or haply by another's blow without.

           For, when, in their incessancy so oft

           They meet and clash, it comes to pass amain

           They leap asunder, face to face: not strange—

           Being most hard, and solid in their weights,

           And naught opposing motion, from behind.

           And that more clearly thou perceive how all

           These mites of matter are darted round about,

           Recall to mind how nowhere in the sum

           Of All exists a bottom,—nowhere is

           A realm of rest for primal bodies; since

           (As amply shown and proved by reason sure)

           Space has no bound nor measure, and extends

           Unmetered forth in all directions round.

           Since this stands certain, thus 'tis out of doubt

           No rest is rendered to the primal bodies

           Along the unfathomable inane; but rather,

          

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