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Book 3
On the Nature of Things · 55 chapters- 1PROEM
- 2Rises to vision the majesty of gods,
- 3Headlong, which so confounds our human life
- 4The mask off-stripped, reality behind.
- 5Will hate of living and beholding light
- 6That sense of mind is in no fixed part seated,
- 7Oft in our limbs, when much of body's gone;
- 8And that cleaves seated in the midmost breast.
- 9In turn it hits and drives the body too.
- 10As what the mind proposes and begins;
- 11This also shows the nature of the same,
- 12It beareth nothing of the weight away.
- 13Enter so far, nor a sharp ill seep through,
- 14Sense-bearing motion along the vitals springs.
- 15But more of hot have they whose restive hearts,
- 16Expound the hidden causes, nor find names
- 17Seen to endure. For not as water at times
- 18The mind looks forth, as out of opened doors,
- 19Maintain between them intervals as large
- 20Least part of time; companioning, it goes
- 21Have mortal birth and death, I will go on
- 22From out man's members it has gone away.
- 23Monstrous diseases and the dreadful pain,
- 24If not that violent and impetuous wine
- 25By the same venom. But, again, where cause
- 26Means instant death of that which was before.
- 27Alone, up-rended from its roots, apart
- 28Division from the soul, without decay
- 29Hath passed away, admit we must that soul,
- 30The feet, the hands, instead of cleaving still
- 31Should slice it down the middle and cleave in twain,
- 32All remnants of the soul. Nay, once again:
- 33Its parts together to one place, and so
- 34Is fallen away, at no o'erlong remove
- 35From all the thews, articulations, bones.
- 36It leaves not one remainder of itself
- 37Nor is there how they once might enter in
- 38Wherefore they must be also capable
- 39And at the rites of Love, that souls should stand
- 40Duration and birth, wholly outside the frame.
- 41And thus dissolve them by the blows of might.
- 42And the times, shaken by tumultuous war,
- 43Suffer a sore distress. For shouldst thou gaze
- 44Still works an unseen sting upon his heart,
- 45Grow stiff in cold, or sink with load of earth
- 46For when the soul and frame together are sunk
- 47Should of a sudden send a voice abroad,
- 48Urges just suit and in her words lays down
- 49And thus like thee are generations all--
- 50However hugely he extend his bulk--
- 51To pour, like those young virgins in the tale,
- 52Thereafter have gone under, once who swayed
- 53Whilst yet thou livest and lookest?--who in sleep
- 54And makes for town again. In such a way
- 55The future times may carry, or what be