On the Nature of the Universe (Oxford World’s Classics) (22 page)

And this is reached when into the veins of life

No more is given than passes out away.

Here for all things the advance of life must halt,

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Here nature checks the increase of her powers.

For all things that you see in cheerful growth

Scale step by step the ladder of ripe years,

Take into themselves more things than they discharge,

While food flows smoothly into all the veins

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And they themselves are not so loosely knit

As to shed matter freely and to squander

More than their life absorbs in nourishment.

For though we must accept that many bodies

Flow off from things and pass away, more must be added,

Until they have touched the topmost peak of growth.

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Then the strong vigour of maturity

Age slowly breaks and melts into decay.

And when growth stops, the larger a thing is

And wider, the more particles it throws off

And scatters them on all sides everywhere.

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Food does not easily penetrate the veins,

Nor in proportion to the flow outpoured

Is there enough to bring to birth again

All that is needed, and make good the loss.

So death comes rightly, when by constant flow

All things are thinned, and all things, struck from without

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By an increasing hail of blows, succumb;

Since at the end great age finds food to fail,

And without ceasing bodies from outside

Beating on things subdue them and destroy them.

So shall the ramparts of the mighty world

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Themselves be stormed and into crumbling ruin

Collapse. Even now the world’s great age is broken

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And earth worn out scarce bears small animals,

She who created all the generations

And brought to birth huge bodies of wild beasts.

No golden chain, I think, from heaven on high

Let down the breeds of mortals to the fields;

Nor sea nor waves that break upon the rocks

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Created them. From the same earth they sprang

That now supplies their nurture from her body.

Herself the shining crops and joyful vineyards

By her own will first made for mortal men;

Herself gave forth sweet fruits and joyful pastures,

Which now our toil scarce brings to growth and increase.

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We wear out oxen, wear out the strength of farmers,

Wear down the ploughshare in fields that scarce can feed us,

So do they grudge their fruits and multiply our toil.

And now the aged ploughman shakes his head

With many a sigh that all the weary labour

Of his strong arms has fallen away in vain,

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And when he compares times present with times past

Oft praises then the fortunes of his father.

And looking on his old and worn-out vines,

The husbandman bewails the march of time

And rails at heaven, and grieves that men of yore

In old god-fearing days could easily

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Within the confines of a narrow plot,

Far smaller then than now, support their lives.

He does not know that all things in decay

By slow degrees are moving towards their end

Worn by the age-old passage of the years.

You, who from so great darkness could uplift

So clear a light, lighting the joys of life,

You, glory of the Greeks, I follow you

And in your footprints plant my footsteps firm,

Not in desire of rivalry, but love

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Drives me to yearn to copy you. The swallow

Can’t vie with swans. What would a trembling kid

Do in contest with a strong swift horse?

You, father, have revealed the truth, and you

A father’s precepts gave us in your pages.

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As bees in flowery glades sip every bloom,

So we, like them, feed on your golden words,

Golden, most worthy of eternal life.

For once your reason, born of mind divine,

Starts to proclaim the nature of the world

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The terrors of the mind flee all away,

The walls of heaven open, and through the void

Immeasurable, the truth of things I see.

The gods appear now and their quiet abodes

Which no winds ever shake, nor any rain

Falls on them from dark clouds, nor ever snow

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Congealed with bitter frost with its white fall

Mars them; but always ever-cloudless air

Enfolds and smiles on them with bounteous light.

There nature everything supplies, and there

Through all the length of ages nothing comes

To vex the tranquil tenor of their minds.

But in contrast nowhere at all appear

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The halls of Acheron, though earth no bar

Opposes, but lets all be clearly seen

That moves beneath our feet throughout the void.

And now from all these things delight and joy,

As it were divine, takes hold of me, and awe

That by your power nature so manifest

Lies open and in every part displayed.

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And since I have taught the beginnings of all things,

What kind they are, and how in varying forms

Of their own accord, driven by everlasting

Motion, they fly, and how all things from them

Can be created, next and following this

The nature of mind and spirit by my verses

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Must be made clear, and headlong out of doors

That fear of Hell be thrown, which from its depths

Disquiets the life of man, suffusing all

With the blackness of death, and leaving no delights

Pure and unsullied. This man it persuades

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To break the bonds of friendship and another

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To violate honour, and in a word

To turn all morals upside down. Traitors

To country and to parents men have been

For fear, the appalling fear, of Acheron.

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For when men say a life of infamy

And foul diseases is more terrible

Than death’s deep pit, and that they know that blood

Is what the spirit is made of, or even wind,

(If so the fancy takes them) and that they have

No need of what my reasoning tells them, then

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I’ll show you that they speak thus seeking praise,

Boasting, and not because the matter’s proved.

These men in exile, banished from their homes,

Far from the sight of men, stained by foul charges,

Cursed, in a word, by every misery,

Yet live; and despite their words they sacrifice

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To their ancestral gods, they slay black cattle,

They send oblations to the ghosts below,

And in their bitter straits they turn their minds

More keenly now than ever to religion.

Thus, when in perils and adversity

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A man has fallen, it’s more useful then

To look at him and easier to know him.

For only then from out the heart’s deep core

True voices rise, the mask’s stripped off, the man

Remains. Greed and blind lust for fame

Moreover, which compel men to transgress

The bounds of law, and often times make them,

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Allies and ministers of crime, strive night and day

With toil and sweat to gain the heights of power,

These wounds of life in no small part are fed

By fear of death. For ’tis the common view

That shameful scorn and bitter poverty

Are far removed from a sweet and stable life,

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And, as it were, are simply lingering

Before the gates of death. From which, when men

Driven by groundless fear desire to flee

And to remove themselves far, far away,

By civil strife they make wealth for themselves

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And heap up riches, murder upon murder

Piling in greed. A brother’s death gives joy.

A kinsman’s board supplies both hate and fear.

By similar reasoning, born of the same fear,

Envy consumes them; that he before their eyes

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Gets power, is known, parades in pomp and show,

While they the while in darkness and in filth

Lie wallowing—that’s their complaint, you see!

Some die to get a statue and a name.

And often too, crazed by the fear of death,

Such hate of life and light possesses them

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That their own deaths they plan, with sorrowing heart,

Forgetting that this fear begets their woes.

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For we, like children frightened of the dark,

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Are sometimes frightened in the light—of things

No more to be feared than fears that in the dark

Distress a child, thinking they may come true.

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Therefore this terror and darkness of the mind

Not by the sun’s rays, nor the bright shafts of day,

Must be dispersed, as is most necessary,

But by the face of nature and her laws.

First I say that the mind, which we often call

The intelligence, in which is situated

The understanding and the government

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Of life, is a part of man, no less than hands

And feet and eyes are part of the living being,

Though many wise philosophers have thought

That it is not placed in a definite part, but is

A sort of vital essence of the body,

Called harmony by the Greeks, which makes us live

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Endowed with feeling, though the intelligence

Is not in any part; as when the body

Is said to be in good health, but health is not

A part of it, so in no definite place

They place the mind—and here they plainly err

Exceedingly, in many different ways.

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For often the body, which we see, is sick

And yet in another part, which we cannot see,

We’re happy. And conversely, in its turn,

The opposite applies, as when a man

Though sick in mind in body flourishes.

Let’s take another case—a man hurts his foot,

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It doesn’t mean he gets a headache too!

Again, when limbs are given to gentle sleep

And body without senses lies outstretched,

There’s something in us all the time that feels

In many ways, and takes into itself

Movements of pleasure and the heart’s vain cares.

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Next, that the spirit also you may know

Lies in our limbs, and that it is not harmony

That makes the body feel, firstly it happens

That if a great part of the body be taken away

Yet oft within our limbs life still remains.

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Again, when a few particles of heat

Have fled abroad, and outwards through the mouth

Air is expelled, at once this same spirit

Deserts the veins and leaves the bones. From this

You will recognize that not all particles

Work the same way or support life equally.

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But those that are seeds of wind and warming heat

Secure that life still lingers in our limbs.

Therefore there is within the body heat

And vital wind which at the point of death

Deserts our frame and causes us to die.

Well then, since we have recognized that mind

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And spirit are in some way a part of man,

Give back the name of harmony, brought down

To those musicians from high Helicon;

Maybe they found it somewhere else, and gave

The name to something till then nameless. Anyway

Whatever it is, let them keep it. And you

Please listen to the rest of what I say.

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