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

II.

III.

III

IV.

VI.

VII.

VII

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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?