Lucretius on life and death In the metre of Omar Khayybam: To which are appended parallel passages from the original: By W. H. Mallock |
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 | Lucretius on life and death |  |
33
VI
In vita sunt omnia nobis
I
For I, if still you are haunted by the fearOf 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 headCowers 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.
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III
No Tityos there lies prone, and lives to feelThe 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 direPoison 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.
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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.
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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 clayThat 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.
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XII
Brother and friend, and art thou still averseTo 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 thoseOn 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.
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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 foeWhich 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 seeThe 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!
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XVIII
He shall escape it even by that same wayOn 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 easeAnd 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.
| Lucretius on life and death | |