To mark what evils we ourselves be spared;
'Tis sweet, again, to view the mighty strife Of armies embattled yonder o'er the plains, Ourselves no sharers in the peril; but naught There is more goodly than to hold the high Serene plateaus, well fortressed by the wise, Whence thou may'st look below on other men And see them ev'rywhere wand'ring, all dispersed In their lone seeking for the road of life;
Rivals in genius, or emulous in rank,
Pressing through days and nights with hugest toil For summits of power and mastery of the world. O wretched minds of men! O blinded hearts!
In how great perils, in what darks of life
27
Are spent the human years, however brief !-- O not to see that nature for herself
Barks after nothing, save that pain keep off, Disjoined from the body, and that mind enjoy Delightsome feeling, far from care and fear! Therefore we see that our corporeal life
Needs little, altogether, and only such As takes the pain away, and can besides Strew underneath some number of delights. 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,
28
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,
29
Inveterately plied by motions mixed,
Some, at their jamming, bound aback and leave Huge gaps between, and some from off the blow Are hurried about with spaces small between.
And all which, brought together with slight gaps, In more condensed union bound aback,
Linked by their own all intertangled shapes,-- These form the irrefragable roots of rocks
And the brute bulks of iron, and what else
Is of their kind...
The rest leap far asunder, far recoil,
Leaving huge gaps between: and these supply For us thin air and splendour-lights of the sun. And many besides wander the mighty void-- Cast back from unions of existing things, Nowhere accepted in the universe,
And nowise linked in motions to the rest. And of this fact (as I record it here)
An image, a type goes on before our eyes Present each moment; for behold whenever The sun's light and the rays, let in, pour down Across dark halls of houses: thou wilt see
The many mites in many a manner mixed Amid a void in the very light of the rays, And battling on, as in eternal strife,
And in battalions contending without halt, In meetings, partings, harried up and down. From this thou mayest conjecture of what sort The ceaseless tossing of primordial seeds
Amid the mightier void--at least so far As small affair can for a vaster serve, And by example put thee on the spoor
Of knowledge. For this reason too 'tis fit