On the Nature of the Universe (Oxford World’s Classics) (38 page)

And gentle pleasing ways can easily

Accustom you to share your life with her.

And for the rest—by custom love is bred.

Something which feels a blow, however light,

But frequently, must in the end give way.

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Do you not see how even a drop of water

By constant dripping wears away a stone?

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Who has the genius to build a song

Worthy of nature’s majesty, and worthy

Of these discoveries? Who can find fit words

To praise the man who left us such great treasures

Born from his breast and searched out by his mind?

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No one, I think, from mortal body sprung.

If I must speak, my noble Memmius,

As nature’s majesty now known demands,

He was a god, a god indeed, who first

Found out that rule and principle of life

Which bears the name of Wisdom, and by his skill

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Brought life out from such mighty waves and darkness

And placed it in such calm and light so clear.

Only compare the things that others found

In ancient time, and earned the name divine.

Ceres they say brought crops to mortal men

And Bacchus the vine-born liquor of the grape;

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But life without these things could still abide,

As even now they say some nations live.

But good life needs a heart that’s pure and clean.

So he more rightly earns the name of god

From whom even now through mighty nations spread

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Sweet solace comes to soothe the minds of men.

And if you think the deeds of Hercules

Can stand in rivalry with his, why then

You’ll stray much further from true reasoning.

What harm now could Nemean lion do

With gaping jaws, or bristling Arcadian boar?

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What harm the Cretan bull or Lerna’s pest,

The Hydra fenced about with poisonous snakes?

What threefold Geryon with his tripled breast?

What matter now Stymphalus’ horrid birds

And Diomed’s Thracian horses breathing fire

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In lands by Bistony and Ismara?

The golden apples of the Hesperides,

The snake that guards them with unsleeping eye,

Enormous body coiled around the tree,

What mischief by the wild Atlantic shore

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Could it now do, where no one ever comes

From lands we know, and natives fear to tread?

And all the other monsters of this kind,

All dead; but if they had not been slain, and still

Were living, why, what mischief could they do?

None as I think, seeing that even now

Earth teems with wild beasts and is filled with fear

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Through forests and great mountains and deep thickets;

Though as a rule it lies within our power

To shun these places, and leave them unvisited.

But unless the mind is purged, what battles then

And perils must enter it against our will!

How great then the sharp cares with which lust rends

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The troubled man, how great likewise the fears!

And what of pride and filth and wantonness?

What ruin they bring! and luxury and sloth?

He therefore who has mastered all these vices

And cast them from the mind by words, not arms,

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Will it not then be right to find him worthy

To be counted in the number of the gods?

Especially since in words from heaven inspired

He used to teach about the gods themselves,

And all the nature of the world make plain.

In his footsteps I tread and his great doctrines

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I follow, and in my poem I teach how all things

Must stay within the law of their creation

And cannot annul the strong statutes of time.

And herein first of all we have found that mind

Consists of body that first itself had birth

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And cannot last intact through endless years,

But images in dreams deceive the mind

When we seem to see a man whom life has left.

Next at this point the order of my theme

Leads me to show that all the whole wide world

Came into birth and in the end must die;

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And in what ways that mass of matter founded

The earth and sky and sea and stars and sun

And the moon’s orb; and then what animals

Arose from the earth, and what were never born;

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And how men first made use of varied speech

Among themselves by finding names for things;

And how into their minds that fear of gods

Crept in, which over all the world keeps holy

Shrines, pools, groves, altars, and images of gods;

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And by what force the courses of the sun

And the moon’s movements pilot nature steers,

I shall explain, lest haply we believe

That these between the earth and sky are free

Of their own will to make their yearly courses,

Meet for the growth of crops and animals,

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Or think they are turned by some design of gods.

For men who have been well taught about the gods

That they live free from care may wonder still

By what design the world goes on, not least

Those things they see in heaven above their heads;

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And then to the old religions back they turn,

And cleave to cruel masters whom they think,

Unhappy fools, to be all-powerful,

Not knowing what can be and what cannot,

Not knowing in a word how everything

Has finite power and deep-set boundary stone.

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To proceed, and make no more delay with promises,

First please observe the earth and sea and sky;

These three, a threefold nature, Memmius,

Three forms so unalike, so interwoven,

One day will give to destruction; all the mass

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And mighty engine of the world, upheld

For many centuries, will crash in ruin.

Nor do I fail to see how strange and new

This ruin of heaven and earth must strike the mind,

How hard it is to prove by words of mine;

As happens when some unaccustomed thing

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Comes to the ears, something eyes cannot grasp

Nor hands lay hold of, hands the surest way

To bring belief to hearts and minds of men.

Yet I’ll speak out. Perhaps the facts themselves

Will bring belief and in a little time

The earth with mighty movements torn apart

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You will see, and all the world convulsed with shocks.

This far from us may pilot fortune steer,

And reason rather than the event declare

The fearful crash that brings the world’s collapse.

And now, before I utter oracles

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More holy and more surely true than those

The Pythia speaks from Phoebus’ laurelled tripod,

With words of wisdom I shall comfort you;

Lest bridled by religion you may think

That earth and sun and sky, sea, stars, and moon

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Must last for ever, their bodies being divine;

Lest you should think that for a monstrous crime

Men should, like giants, suffer punishment

Whose reason shakes the ramparts of the world,

Willing to quench the shining sun in heaven

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And stain immortal things with mortal speech.

So far these things are from divinity,

So little worthy to be counted gods,

That we should rather find in them the pattern

Of things possessing neither life nor sense.

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For clearly not in any and every body

Can mind and can intelligence exist.

There can be no trees in the sky, no clouds

In the salt sea, nor fish live in the fields,

Nor blood exist in logs nor sap in stones.

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Everything has its place, certain and fixed,

Where it must live and grow and have its being.

So the mind cannot arise without the body,

Alone, nor exist apart from blood and sinews.

But if it could, then much more easily

It would place itself in head or shoulders, or right down

In heels, or indeed in any part, provided

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It were in the same man, the same vessel, enclosed;

And since, within the body, mind and spirit

By a fixed rule and ordinance are given

The place where they can live and grow apart,

All the more strongly then must we deny

That wholly outside body or animal form

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In crumbling clods of earth or the sun’s fire

They can live, or in water or the high shores of sky.

These things therefore for sure are not endowed