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

by Ronald Melville

  He’s pitying himself. For he doesn’t separate

  Himself from the body lying there, he thinks

  It is still himself, and standing by it gives

  Some part of his own feeling to it.

  Hence he resents that he was born mortal,

  He does not see that in real death there’ll be

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  No other self that living could bewail

  His perished self, or stand by to feel pain

  In body torn or burnt. For if in death

  It is painful to be mangled by wild beasts,

  I do not see how it is not also painful

  Laid on a pyre to shrivel in hot flames

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  Or to be packed in honey and stifled, or

  To lie stiff with cold upon a marble slab,

  Or to be crushed under a weight of earth.

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  Men lie at table, goblets in their hands

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  And garlands on their brows; and in their hearts

  They say ‘Short is the joy of men,

  Too soon it is gone and none can e’er recall it.’

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  As if in death their chief trouble will be

  A parching thirst or burning drought, or a desire

  For something that they crave and cannot get.

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  ‘No longer now a happy home will greet you

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  Nor loving wife, nor your sweet children run

  To snatch your kisses and to touch your heart

  With silent sweet content. Nor shall you prosper

  In your life’s work, a bulwark to your people.

  Unhappy wretch,’ they cry, ‘one fatal day

  Has taken all those sweets of life away.’

  But this they do not add, that the desire

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  Of things like these hangs over you no more.

  Which if their minds could truly see and words

  Follow, why, then from great distress and fear

  They’ld free themselves. ‘You in the sleep of death

  Lie now and will forever lie, removed

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  Far from all pain and grief. But we, who saw

  You turned to ashes on a dreadful pyre,

  Mourned you in tears insatiable. For ever

  No day will lift that sorrow from our hearts.’

  Then we must ask, what bitterness is this,

  If all things end in sleep and quiet, that

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  A man can waste away in ceaseless grief.

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  For no one feels the want of himself and his life

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  When mind and body alike are quiet in sleep.

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  For all we care, that sleep might have no end.

  Free from all yearning for ourselves we lie.

  And yet, when a man springs up, startled from sleep

  And pulls himself together, through our limbs

  Those first beginnings are never far away

  From the sense-giving motions of the body.

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  Therefore much less to us must death be thought

  To be, if anything can be less than what

  We see to be nothing. For matter is thrown apart

  More widely after death, and no one wakes

  When once death’s chilling pause has halted him.

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  Again, suppose that nature suddenly

  Finding a voice upbraided one of us

  In words like these: ‘What ails you, mortal man,

  And makes you wallow in unhealthy grief?

  Why do you moan and groan and weep at death?

  For if your former life now past has pleased you

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  And if your blessings through a broken jar

  Have not run out, all wasted, unenjoyed,

  Why don’t you, like a man that’s wined and dined

  Full well on life, bow out, content, and so

  Your exit make and rest in peace, you fool?

  But if the things you’ve liked and loved are spent

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  And life’s a grievance to you, why then seek

  To add more? They will go just like the others,

  No joy at all, and all will end in dust.

  Better to make an end of life and trouble.

  For there is nothing else I can devise

  To please you. Always everything’s the same.

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  And if your body not yet by the years

  Is worn and fails, yet everything remains

  The same. There is no change, even if you live

  Longer than anyone on earth, and even more

  If it should be your fate never to die.’

  What answer can we give to this, except

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  That nature’s charge is just and that this speech

  Makes a good case, from which we’re not acquitted?

  Consider now an old man who complains

  Excessively about his death to come.

  Nature would justly cry out louder still

  And say in bitter words, ‘Away, you rogue,

  With all these tears and stop this snivelling.

  All life’s rewards you have reaped and now you’re withered,

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  But since you always want what you have not got

  And never are content with that you have,

  Your life has been unfulfilled, ungratifying,

  And death stands by you unexpectedly

  Before the feast is finished and you are full.

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  Come now, remember you’re no longer young

  And be content to go; thus it must be.’

  She would be right, I think, to act like this,

  Right to rebuke him and find fault with him.

  For the old order always by the new

  Thrust out gives way; and one thing must from another

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  Be made afresh; and no one ever falls

  Into the deep pit and black Tartarus.

  Matter is needed for the seeds to grow

  Of future generations. Yes, but all

  When life is done will follow you, and all

  Before your time have fallen, and will fall.

  So one thing from another will always come.

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  And life none have in freehold, all as tenants.

  Look back upon the ages of time past

  Eternal, before we were born, and see

  That they have been nothing to us, nothing at all.

  This is the mirror nature holds for us

  To show the face of time to come, when we

  At last are dead. Is there in this for us

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  Anything horrible? Is there anything sad?

  Is it not more free from care than any sleep?

  And all those things, for sure, which fables tell

  Exist deep down in Acheron, exist

  For us in this our life. No Tantalus

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  Unhappy wretch fears the great rock that hangs

  In the air above him, frozen with vain terror.

  No. It is in this life that the fear of gods

  Oppresses mortals without cause: the fall

  They fear is that which chance may bring to them.

  No Tityos lying in Acheron is torn

  By vultures, nor through all eternity

  Dig though they may can they find anything

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  In that vast breast; and though his frame be spread

  Immense to cover not nine acres only

  But the whole globe of earth with limbs outstretched,

  Yet not forever will he suffer pain

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  Nor from his body furnish food always.

  Our Tityos is here, lying in love,

  And torn by winged cares (anxiety

  Consumes him) or tortured by some other cravin
g.

  Sisyphus also in this life appears

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  Before our eyes. He seeks the people’s votes

  Athirst to get the Lictor’s rods and axes,

  And always loses and retires defeated.

  For to seek power that’s empty and never got

  And always vainly toil and sweat for it

  This is to strain to push up the steep hill

  The rock that always from the very top

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  Rolls headlong down again to the plain below.

  Another simile! The Danaids.

  To be always feeding an ungrateful mind

  And fill it with good things, and yet never

  To satisfy it (as the seasons do

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  When they come round bringing their fruits and all

  Their manifold delights, and yet we are never

  Filled full with all the varied fruits of life),

  This I believe is what the story means

  Of young and lovely girls that must pour water

  Into a leaking urn, and all their pains

  Can never fill it. Cerberus and the Furies

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  Dwell in that land where daylight never comes,

  They say, and Tartarus flames belching out;

  And none of these exist, nor ever can.

  But in this life there is fear of punishment

  For evil deeds, fear no less terrible

  Than the deeds themselves, and expiation of crime,

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  Prison, and the dread hurling from the rock,

  Stripes, torturers, dungeons, red-hot plates,

  Firebrands, and even if all of these be spared

  The guilty conscience filled with wild foreboding

  Applies the goad and scorches itself with whips,

  Seeing no end to all these miseries,

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  No final limit to its punishment,

  And fears that after death there’s worse to come.

  So fools make for themselves a Hell on earth.

  Now here is something you might say to yourself:

  ‘Even good Ancus lost the sight of day,

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  A better man than you, you rogue, by far.

  And many kings and powers after him

  Have fallen, rulers of great states and nations.

  And he who laid a highway through the sea

  And o’er the deep a road for armies made,

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  Taught them to walk across the briny lake

  And spurned the roaring waves with his cavalry,

  He also lost the glorious light of day

  And dying poured his spirit from his body.

  Great Scipio, the thunderbolt of war,

  Terror of Carthage, gave to earth his bones

  As though he had been the humblest of his slaves.

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  Add men that found out things of science and beauty

  Add all the brotherhood of Helicon,

  Whose one and only king throughout the ages

  Homer lies now in sleep with all the rest.

  Democritus, when a mature old age

  Warned him his mind and memory were fading,

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  Offered his head right willingly to death.

  Epicurus himself died when the light of life

  Had run its course, he who in genius

  Surpassed the race of men, outshone them all

  As the sun risen in heaven outshines the stars.

  And you, will you doubt and feel aggrieved to die?

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  Already, while you live and see, your life

  Is all but dead. You waste most of your time

  In sleep. You snore while wide awake; and dream

  Incessantly; and always in your mind

  You’re plagued with fear that’s meaningless, and often

  You can’t make out what is wrong with you, oppressed,

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  You drunken wretch, by cares on every side,

  And drift on shifting tides of fantasy.’

  If they could see, those men who know they feel

  A burden on their minds that wearies them,

  If they could also know the causes of it

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  And whence so great a pile of woe lies on them,

  They’ld never live as most of them do now

  Each ignorant of what he wants and seeking always

  By change of place to lay his burden down.

  A man leaves his great house because he’s bored

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  With life at home, and suddenly returns,

  Finding himself no happier abroad.

  He rushes off to his villa driving like mad,

  You’ld think he’s going to a house on fire,

  And yawns before he’s put his foot inside,

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  Or falls asleep and seeks oblivion,

  Or even rushes back to town again.

  So each man flies from himself (vain hope, because

  It clings to him the more closely against his will)

  And hates himself because he is sick in mind

  And does not know the cause of his disease.

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  Which if he clearly saw, at once he would

  Leave everything, and study first to know

  The nature of the world. For what is in question

  Is not of one hour but of eternity,

  The state in which all mortals after death

  Must needs remain for all remaining time.

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  And what is this great and evil lust of life

  That drives and tosses us in doubt and peril?

  A certain end of life is fixed for men.

  There is no escape from death and we must die.

  Again, we live and move and have our being

  In the same place always, and no new pleasure

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  By living longer can be hammered out.

  But while we can’t get what we want, that seems

  Of all things most desirable. Once got,

  We must have something else. One constant thirst

  Of life besets us ever open-mouthed.

  And there is doubt what fortunes later years

  And chance may bring us and what end awaits.

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  Nor by prolonging life, one single second

  Do we deduct from the long years of death.

  Nor have we strength to make in any way

  Our time less long once death has come to us.

  Live though you may through all ages that you wish,

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  No less that eternal death will still await,

  And no less long a time will be no more

  He who today from light his exit made

  Than he who perished months and years ago.

  BOOK FOUR

  A pathless country of the Pierides

  I traverse, where no foot has ever trod.

  A joy it is to come to virgin springs

  And drink, a joy it is to pluck new flowers,

  To make a glorious garland for my head

  From fields whose blooms the Muses never picked

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  To crown the brows of any man before.

  First, since of matters high I make my theme,

  Proceeding to set free the minds of men

  Bound by the tight knots of religion.

  Next, since of things so dark in verse so clear

  I write, and touch all things with the Muses’ charm.

  In this no lack of purpose may be seen.

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  For as with children, when the doctors try

  To give them loathsome wormwood, first they smear

  Sweet yellow honey on the goblet’s rim,

  That childhood all unheeding may be deceived

  At the lip’s edge, and so drink up the juice

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  Of bi
tter medicine, tricked but not betrayed,

  And by such means gain health and strength again,

  So now do I: for oft my doctrine seems

  Distasteful to those that have not sampled it

  And most shrink back from it. My purpose is

  With the sweet voices of Pierian song

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  To expound my doctrine, and as it were to touch it

  With the delicious honey of the Muses;

  So in this way perchance my poetry

  Can hold your mind, while you attempt to grasp

  The nature of the world, and understand

  Its value and its usefulness to men.

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  And since I have shown the nature of the mind,

  What it consists of, and how combined with body

  It flourishes, and how when torn away

  From the body it returns to its first elements,

  Now I address a matter of great import

  For our enquiries, and I show that there

  Exist what we call images of things;

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  Which as it were peeled off from the surfaces

  Of objects, fly this way and that through the air;

  These same, encountering us in wakeful hours,

  Terrify our minds, and also in sleep, as when

  We see strange shapes and phantoms of the dead

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  Which often as in slumber sunk we lay

  Have roused us in horror; lest perchance we think

  That spirits escape from Acheron, or ghosts

  Flit among the living, or that after death

  Something of us remains when once the body

  And mind alike together have been destroyed,

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  And each to its primal atoms has dissolved.

  I say therefore that likenesses or thin shapes

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  Are sent out from the surfaces of things

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  Which we must call as it were their films or bark

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  Because the image bears the look and shape

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  Of the body from which it came, as it floats in the air.

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  And this the dullest brain can recognize:

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  In the first place, since within the range of vision

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  Many things throw off bodies, some rarefied

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  As bonfires throw off smoke or fires heat,

  And others denser and more closely knit

  Like the thin coats cicadas often drop

  In summer, and when calves in birth throw off

  The caul from the body’s surface, or when snakes

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  Slough off their skins on thorns, and so we see

  Brambles bedizened with their fluttering spoils.

  Since these things happen, thin images also

  Must be thrown off from the surface of things;

  For if those other things fall, there is no reason,

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  No whisper of one, why these thinnest films