Lucretius on life and death :: :: University of Virginia Library

Lucretius on life and death

In the metre of Omar Khayybam: To which are appended parallel passages from the original: By W. H. Mallock

Mallock, W. H. (1849-1923)

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LUCRETIUS ON LIFE AND DEATH

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LUCRETIUS ON LIFE AND DEATH

IN THE METRE OF OMAR KHAYYÁM

I

Suave mari magno

I

When storms blow loud, 'tis sweet to watch at ease
From shore, the sailor labouring with the seas:
Because the sense, not that such pains are his,
But that they are not ours, must always please.

II

Sweet for the cragsman, from some high retreat
Watching the plains below where legions meet,
To await the moment when the walls of war
Thunder and clash together. But more sweet,

III

Sweeter by far on Wisdom's rampired height
To pace serene the porches of the light,
And thence look down—down on the purblind herd
Seeking and never finding in the night

IV

The road to peace—the peace that all might hold,
But yet is missed by young men and by old,
Lost in the strife for palaces and powers,
The axes, and the lictors, and the gold.

V

Oh sightless eyes! Oh hands that toil in vain!
Not such your needs. Your nature's needs are twain,
And only twain: and these are to be free—
Your minds from terror, and your bones from pain.

VI

Unailing limbs, a calm unanxious breast—
Grant Nature these, and she will do the rest.
Nature will bring you, be you rich or poor,
Perhaps not much—at all events her best.

VII

What though no statued youths from wall and wall
Strew light along your midnight festival,
With golden hands, nor beams from Lebanon
Keep the lyre's languor lingering through the hall,

VIII

Yours is the table 'neath the high-whispering trees;
Yours is the lyre of leaf and stream and breeze,
The golden flagon, and the echoing dome—
Lapped in the Spring, what care you then for these?

IX

Sleep is no sweeter on the ivory bed
Than yours on moss; and fever's shafts are sped
As clean through silks damasked for dreaming kings,
As through the hood that wraps the poor man's head.

X

What then, if all the prince's glittering store
Yields to his body not one sense the more,
Nor any ache or fever of them all
Is barred out by bronze gates or janitor—

XI

What shall the palace, what the proud domain
Do for the mind—vain splendours of the vain?
How shall these minister to a mind diseased,
Or raze one written trouble from the brain?

XII

Unless you think that conscience with its stings
And misery, fears the outward pomp of things—
Fears to push swords and sentinels aside,
And sit the assessor of the kings of kings.

XIII

The mind! Ay—there's the rub. The root is there
Of that one malady which all men share.
It gleams between the haggard lids of joy;
It burns a canker in the heart of care.

XIV

Within the gold bowl, when the feast is set,
It lurks. 'Tis bitter in the labourer's sweat.
Feed thou the starving, and thou bring'st it back—
Back to the starving, who alone forget.

XV

Oh you who under silken curtains lie,
And you whose only roof-tree is the sky,
What is the curse that blights your lives alike?
Not that you hate to live, but fear to die.

XVI

Fear is the poison. Wheresoe'er you go,
Out of the skies above, the clods below,
The sense thrills through you of some pitiless Power
Who scowls at once your father and your foe;

XVII

Who lets his children wander at their whim,
Choosing their road, as though not bound by him:
But all their life is rounded with a shade,
And every road goes down behind the rim;

XVIII

And there behind the rim, the swift, the lame,
At different paces, but their end the same,
Into the dark shall one by one go down,
Where the great furnace shakes its hair of flame.

XIX

Oh ye who cringe and cower before the throne
Of him whose heart is fire, whose hands are stone,
Who shall deliver you from this death in life—
Strike off your chains, and make your souls your own?

II

E tenebris tantis

I

Come unto me all ye that labour. Ye
Whose souls are heavy-laden, come to me,
And I will lead you forth by streams that heal,
And feed you with the truth that sets men free.

II

Not from myself, poor souls with fear foredone,
Not from myself I have it, but from one
At whose approach the lamps of all the wise
Fade and go out like stars before the sun.

III

I am the messenger of one that saith
His saving sentence through my humbler breath:
And would you know his gospel's name, 'tis this—
The healing gospel of the eternal death.

IV

A teacher he, the latchet of whose shoe
I am not worthy stooping to undo:
And on your aching brows and weary eyes
His saving sentence shall descend like dew.

V

For this is he that dared the almighty foe,
Looked up, and struck the Olympian blow for blow,
And dragged the phantom from his fancied skies—
The Samian Sage—the first of those that know.

VI

Him not the splintered lightnings, nor the roll
Of thunders daunted. Undismayed, his soul
Rose, and outsoared the thunder, plumbed the abyss,
And scanned the wheeling worlds from pole to pole;

VII

And from the abyss brought back for you and me
The secret that alone can set men free.
He showed us how the worlds and worlds began,
And what things can, and what things cannot be.

VIII

And as I hear his clarion, I—I too
See earth and heaven laid open to my view;
And lo, from earth and heaven the curse is gone,
And all the things that are, are born anew.

IX

Vision divine! Far off in crystal air,
What forms are these? The immortal Gods are there.
Ay—but what Gods? Not those that trembling men
Would bribe with offerings, and appease with prayer.

X

Far off they lie, where storm-winds never blow,
Nor ever storm-cloud moves across the glow;
Nor frost of winter nips them, nor their limbs
Feel the white fluttering of one plume of snow.

XI

At ease they dream, and make perpetual cheer
Far off. From them we nothing have to fear,
Nothing to hope. How should the calm ones hate?
The tearless know the meaning of a tear?

XII

We leave, we bless them, in their homes on high.
No atheist is my master, he, nor I:
But when I turn, and seek the stain of Hell
Which flames and smokes along the nadir sky,

XIII

Even as I gaze the ancient shapes of ill
Flicker and fade. From off the accursed hill
The huge stone melts. The Ixionian wheel
Rests, and the barkings of the hound are still.

XIV

The damned forbear to shriek, their wounds to bleed,
The fires to torture, and the worm to feed;
And stars are glittering through the rift, where once
The stream went wailing 'twixt its leagues of reed;

XV

And all the pageant goes; whilst I, with awe,
See in its place the things my master saw;
See in its place the three eternal things—
The only three—atoms and space and law.

XVI

Hearken, oh earth! Hearken, oh heavens bereft
Of your old gods, these ageless Fates are left,
Who are at once the makers and the made,
Who are at once the weavers and the weft.

XVII

All things but these arise and fail and fall,
From flowers to stars—the great things and the small;
Whilst the great Sum of all things rests the same,
The all-creating, all-devouring All.

XVIII

Oh you who with me, in my master's car,
Up from the dens of faith have risen afar,
Do not you see at last on yonder height
A light that burns and beacons like a star?

XIX

Do not you sniff the morning in our flight?
The air turns cool, the dusk team turns to white.
Night's coursers catch the morning on their manes;
The dews are on the pasterns of the night.

XX

At last we are near the secret, oh my friend.
Patience awhile! We soon shall reach the end—
The gospel of the everlasting death.
Incline your ear to reason, and attend.

III

Sic igitur magni quoque circum moenia mundi
Expugnata dabunt labem putresque ruinas.

I

No single thing abides; but all things flow.
Fragment to fragment clings—the things thus grow
Until we know and name them. By degrees
They melt, and are no more the things we know.

II

Globed from the atoms falling slow or swift
I see the suns, I see the systems lift
Their forms; and even the systems and the suns
Shall go back slowly to the eternal drift.

III

Thou too, oh earth—thine empires, lands, and seas—
Least, with thy stars, of all the galaxies,
Globed from the drift like these, like these thou too
Shalt go. Thou art going, hour by hour, like these.

IV

Nothing abides. Thy seas in delicate haze
Go off; those moonéd sands forsake their place;
And where they are, shall other seas in turn
Mow with their scythes of whiteness other bays.

V

Lo, how the terraced towers, and monstrous round
Of league-long ramparts rise from out the ground,
With gardens in the clouds. Then all is gone,
And Babylon is a memory and a mound.

VI

Observe this dew-drenched rose of Tyrian grain—
A rose to-day. But you will ask in vain
To-morrow what it is; and yesterday
It was the dust, the sunshine and the rain.

VII

This bowl of milk, the pitch on yonder jar,
Are strange and far-bound travellers come from far.
This is a snow-flake that was once a flame—
The flame was once the fragment of a star.

VIII

Round, angular, soft, brittle, dry, cold, warm,
Things are their qualities: things are their form—
And these in combination, even as bees,
Not singly but combined, make up the swarm:

IX

And when the qualities like bees on wing,
Having a moment clustered, cease to cling,
As the thing dies without its qualities,
So die the qualities without the thing.

X

Where is the coolness when no cool winds blow?
Where is the music when the lute lies low?
Are not the redness and the red rose one,
And the snow's whiteness one thing with the snow?

XI

Even so, now mark me, here we reach the goal
Of Science, and in little have the whole—
Even as the redness and the rose are one,
So with the body one thing is the soul.

XII

For, as our limbs and organs all unite
To make our sum of suffering and delight,
And, without eyes and ears and touch and tongue,
Were no such things as taste and sound and sight,

XIII

So without these we all in vain shall try
To find the thing that gives them unity—
The thing to which each whispers, “Thou art thou”—
The soul which answers each, “And I am I.”

XIV

What! shall the dateless worlds in dust be blown
Back to the unremembered and unknown,
And this frail Thou—this flame of yesterday—
Burn on, forlorn, immortal, and alone?

XV

Did Nature, in the nurseries of the night
Tend it for this—Nature whose heedless might,
Like some poor shipwrecked sailor, takes the babe,
And casts it bleating on the shores of light?

XVI

What is it there? A cry is all it is.
It knows not if its limbs be yours or his.
Less than that cry the babe was yesterday.
The man to-morrow shall be less than this.

XVII

Tissue by tissue to a soul he grows,
As leaf by leaf the rose becomes the rose.
Tissue from tissue rots; and, as the Sun
Goes from the bubbles when they burst, he goes.

XVIII

Ah, mark those pearls of Sunrise! Fast and free
Upon the waves they are dancing. Souls shall be
Things that outlast their bodies, when each spark
Outlasts its wave, each wave outlasts the sea.

XIX

The seeds that once were we take flight and fly,
Winnowed to earth, or whirled along the sky,
Not lost but disunited. Life lives on.
It is the lives, the lives, the lives, that die.

XX

They go beyond recapture and recall,
Lost in the all-indissoluble All:—
Gone like the rainbow from the fountain's foam,
Gone like the spindrift shuddering down the squall.

XXI

Flakes of the water, on the waters cease!
Soul of the body, melt and sleep like these.
Atoms to atoms—weariness to rest—
Ashes to ashes—hopes and fears to peace!

XXII

Oh Science, lift aloud thy voice that stills
The pulse of fear, and through the conscience thrills—
Thrills through the conscience with the news of peace—
How beautiful thy feet are on the hills!

IV

Nil igitur mors est

I

Death is for us, then, nothing—a mere name
For the mere noiseless ending of a flame.
It hurts us not, for there is nothing left
To hurt: and as of old, when Carthage came

II

To battle, we and ours felt nought at all,
Nor quailed to see city and farm and stall
Flare into dust, and all our homeless fields
Trampled beneath the hordes of Hannibal,

III

But slumbered on and on, nor cared a jot,
Deaf to the stress and tumult, though the lot
Of things was doubtful, to which lords should fall
The rule of all—but we, we heeded not—

IV

So when that wedlock of the flesh and mind
Which makes us what we are, shall cease to bind,
And mind and flesh, being mind and flesh no more,
Powdered to dust go whistling down the wind,

V

Even as our past was shall our future be.
Others may start and tremble, but not we,
Though heaven with the disbanded dust of earth
Be dark, or earth be drowned beneath the sea.

VI

Why then torment ourselves, and shrink aghast
Like timorous children from the great At Last?
For though the Future holds its face averse,
See that hid face reflected in the past,

VII

As in a shield. Look! Does some monster seem
To threaten there? Is that the Gorgon's gleam?
What meets your eyes is nothing—or a face
Even gentler than a sleep without a dream.

VIII

And yet—ah thou who art about to cease
From toil, and lapse into perpetual peace,
Why will the mourners stand about thy bed,
And sting thy parting hour with words like these?—

IX

“Never shalt thou behold thy dear home more,
Never thy wife await thee at thy door,
Never again thy little climbing boy
A father's kindness in thine eyes explore.

X

“All you have toiled for, all you have loved,” they say,
“Is gone, is taken in a single day;”
But never add, “All memory, all desire,
All love—these likewise shall have passed away.”

XI

Ah ignorant mourners! Did they only see
The fate which Death indeed lays up for thee,
How would they sing a different song from this—
“Beloved, not thou the sufferer—not thou; but we.

XII

“Thou hast lost us all; but thou, redeemed from pain,
Shalt sleep the sleep that kings desire in vain.
Thou hast left us all; and lo, for us, for us,
A void that never shall be filled again.

XIII

“Not thine, but ours, to see the sharp flames thrust
Their daggers through the hands we clasped in trust;
To see the dear lips crumble, and at last
To brood above a bitter pile of dust.

XIV

“Not thine, but ours is this. All pain is fled
From thee, and we are wailing in thy stead,
Not for the dead that leave the loved behind,
But for the living that must lose their dead.”

V

Denique si vocem

I

Oh ye of little faith, who fear to scan
The inevitable hour that ends your span,
If me you doubt, let Nature find a voice;
And will not Nature reason thus with man?

II

“Fools,” she will say, “whose petulant hearts and speech
Dare to arraign, and long to overreach,
Mine ordinance—I see two schools of fools.
Silent be both, and I will speak with each.

III

“And first for thee, whose whimpering lips complain
That all life's wine for thee is poured in vain,
That each hour spills it like a broken cup—
Life is for thee the loss, and Death the gain.

IV

“Death shall not mock thee. Death at last shall slake
Your life's thirst from a cup that will not break.
Cease then your mutterings. Drain that wine-cup dry,
Nor fear the wine. Why should you wish to wake?

V

“And next for thee, who hast eaten and drunk with zest
At my most delicate table of the best,
Yet when the long feast ends art loth to go,
Why not, oh fool, rise like a sated guest—

VI

“Rise like some guest who has drunk well and deep,
And now no longer can his eyelids keep
From closing; rise and hie thee home to rest,
And enter calmly on the unending sleep?

VII

“What, will you strive with me, and say me ‘No,’
Like some distempered child; and whisper low,
‘Give me but one life more, one hour, to drink
One draught of some new sweetness ere I go’?

VIII

“Oh three times fool! For could I only do
The impossible thing you ask, and give to you
Not one life more, but many, 'twere in vain.
You would find nothing sweet, and nothing new.

IX

“Pleasure and power, the friend's, the lover's kiss,
Would bring you weariness in place of bliss.
You would turn aside, and say, ‘I have known them all,
And am long tired of this, and this, and this.’

X

“Nature can nothing do she has not done—
Nature, to whom a thousand lives are one:
And though a thousand lives were yours to endure,
You would find no new thing beneath the Sun.

XI

“Children of ended joy, and ended care,
I tell you both, take back, take back your prayer;
For one life's joys and loves, or one life's load,
Are all, are all, that one man's bones can bear.”

XII

Such, if the mute Omnipotence were free
To speak, which it is not, its words would be.
Could you gainsay them? Lend your ears once more,
Not to the mute Omnipotence, but me.

VI

In vita sunt omnia nobis

I

For I, if still you are haunted by the fear
Of Hell, have one more secret for your ear.
Hell is indeed no fable; but, my friends,
Hell and its torments are not there, but here.

II

No Tantalus down below with craven head
Cowers from the hovering rock: but here instead
A Tantalus lives in each fond wretch who fears
An angry God, and views the heavens with dread.

III

No Tityos there lies prone, and lives to feel
The beak of the impossible vulture steal
Day after day out of his bleeding breast
The carrion of the insatiable meal.

IV

But you and I are Tityos, when the dire
Poison of passion turns our blood to fire;
For despised love is crueller than the pit,
And bitterer than the vulture's beak desire.

V

Hell holds no Sisyphus who, with toil and pain,
Still rolls the huge stone up the hill in vain.
But he is Sisyphus who, athirst for power,
Fawns on the crowd, and toils and fails to gain.

VI

The crowd's vile suffrage. What a doom is his—
Abased and unrewarded! Is not this
Ever to roll the huge stone up the hill,
And see it still rebounding to the abyss?

VII

Oh forms of fear, oh sights and sounds of woe!
The shadowy road down which we all must go
Leads not to these, but from them. Hell is here,
Here in the broad day. Peace is there below.

VIII

Think yet again, if still your fears protest,
Think how the dust of this broad road to rest
Is homely with the feet of all you love,
The wisest, and the bravest, and the best.

IX

Ancus has gone before you down that road.
Scipio, the lord of war, the all-dreaded goad
Of Carthage, he too, like his meanest slave,
Has travelled humbly to the same abode.

X

Thither the singers, and the sages fare,
Thither the great queens with their golden hair.
Homer himself is there with all his songs;
And even my mighty Master's self is there.

XI

There too the knees that nursed you, and the clay
That was a mother once, this many a day
Have gone. Thither the king with crownéd brows
Goes, and the weaned child leads him on the way.

XII

Brother and friend, and art thou still averse
To tread that road? And will the way be worse
For thee than them? Dost thou disdain or fear
To tread the road of babes, and emperors?

XIII

Is life so sweet a thing, then, even for those
On whom it smiles in all its bravest shows?
See, in his marble hall the proud lord lies,
And seems to rest, but does not know repose.

XIV

“Bring me my chariot,” to his slaves he cries.
The chariot comes. With thundering hoofs he flies—
Flies to his villa, where the calm arcades
Prophesy peace, and fountains cool the skies.

XV

Vain are the calm arcades, the fountain's foam,
Vain the void solitude he calls a home.
“Bring me my chariot,” like a hunted thing
He cries once more, and thunders back to Rome.

XVI

So each man strives to flee that secret foe
Which is himself. But move he swift or slow,
That Self, for ever punctual at his heels,
Never for one short hour will let him go.

XVII

How, could he only teach his eyes to see
The things that can, the things that cannot be,
He would hail the road by which he shall at last
Escape the questing monster, and be free!

XVIII

He shall escape it even by that same way
On which fear whispers him 'twill turn to bay:
For on that road the questing monster dies
Like a man's shadow on a sunless day.

XIX

Brother and friend, this life brings joy and ease
And love to some, to some the lack of these—
Only the lack; to others tears and pain;
But at the last it brings to all the peace

XX

That passes understanding. Sweet, thrice sweet,
This healing Gospel of the unplumbed retreat,
Where, though not drinking, we shall no more thirst,
And meeting not, shall no more wish to meet.

VII

Scire licet nobis nihil esse in morte timendum

I

“Thy wife, thy home, the child that climbed thy knee
Are sinking down like sails behind the sea.”
Breathe to the dying this; but breathe as well,
“All love for these shall likewise pass from thee.”

II

Brother, if I should watch their last light shine
In those loved eyes, those dying ears of thine
Should hear me murmur what, when my hour comes,
I would some friend might murmur into mine.

III

Rest, rest, perturbèd bosom—heart forlorn,
With thoughts of ended joys, and evil borne,
And—worse—of evil done: for they, like thee,
Shall rest—those others thou hast made to mourn.

IV

Even if there lurk behind some veil of sky
The fabled Maker, the immortal Spy,
Ready to torture each poor life he made,
Thou canst do more than God can—thou canst die.

V

Will not the thunders of thy God be dumb
When thou art deaf for ever? Can the Sum
Of all things bruise what is not? Nay—take heart;
For where thou goest, thither no God can come.

VI

Rest, brother, rest. Have you done ill or well,
Rest, rest. There is no God, no Gods, who dwell
Crowned with avenging righteousness on high,
Nor frowning ministers of their hate in Hell.

VII

None shall accuse thee, none shall judge: for lo,
Those others have forgotten long ago:
And all thy sullied drifts of memory
Shall lie as white, shall lie as cold as snow:

VIII

And no vain hungering for the joys of yore
Gone with the vanished sunsets, nor the sore
Torn in your heart by all the ills you did,
Nor even the smart of those poor ills you bore;

IX

And no omnipotent wearer of a crown
Of righteousness, nor fiend with branded frown
Swart from the flame, shall break or reach your rest,
Or stir your temples from the eternal down.

X

Flakes of the water, on the waters cease!
Soul of the body, melt and sleep like these.
Atoms to atoms—weariness to rest.
Ashes to ashes—hopes and fears to peace!