Lucretius: 3, 1-93  (Melville 1997)

You, who from so great darkness could uplift

So clear a light, lighting the joys of life,

You, glory of the Greeks, I follow you

And in your footprints plant my footsteps firm,

Not in desire of rivalry, but love                          5

Drives me to yearn to copy you. The swallow

Can't vie with swans. What would a trembling kid

Do in contest with a strong swift horse?

You, father, have revealed the truth, and you

A father's precepts gave us in your pages.          10

As bees in flowery glades sip every bloom,

So we, like them, feed on your golden words,

Golden, most worthy of eternal life.

For once your reason, born of mind divine,

Starts to proclaim, the nature of the world       15

The terrors of the mind flee all away,

The walls of heaven open, and through the void

Immeasurable, the truth of things I see.

The gods appear now and their quiet abodes

Which no winds ever shake, nor any rain

Falls on them from dark clouds, nor ever snow  20

Congealed with bitter frost with its white fall

Mars them; but always ever-cloudless air

Enfolds and smiles on them with bounteous light.

There nature everything ,supplies, and there

Through all the length of ages nothing comes

To vex the tranquil tenor of their minds.

But in contrast nowhere at all appear                 25

The halls of Acheron, though earth no bar

Opposes, but lets all be clearly seen

That moves beneath our feet throught the void,

And now from all these things delight and joy,

As it were divine, takes hold of me, and awe

That by your power nature so manifest

Lies open and in every part displayed.               30

And since I have taught the beginnings of all things,

What kind they are, and how in varying forms

Of their own accord, driven by everlasting

Motion, they fly, and how all things from them

Can be created, next and following this

The nature of mind and spirit by my verses         35

Must be made clear, and headlong out of doors

That fear of Hell be thrown; which from its depths

Disquiets the life of man, suffusing all

With the blackness of death, and leaving no delights

Pure and unsullied. This man it persuades          40

To break the bonds of friendship and another     83

To violate honour, and in a word

To turn all morals upside down. Traitors

To country and to parents men have been

For fear, the appalling fear, of Acheron.              86

For when men say a life of infamy

And foul diseases is more terrible

Than death's deep pit, and that they know that blood

Is what the spirit is made of, or even wind,

(If so the fancy takes them) and that they have

No need of what my reasoning tells them, then   45

I'll show you that they speak thus seeking praise,

Boasting, and not because the matter's proved.

These men in exile, banished from their homes,

Far from the sight of men, stained by foul charges,

Cursed, in, a word, by every misery,

Yet live; and despite their words they sacrifice   50

To their ancestral gods, they slay black cattle,

They send oblations to the ghosts below,

And in their bitter straits they turn their minds

More keenly now than ever to religion.

Thus, when inperils and adversity                         55

A man has fallen, it's more useful then

To look at him and easier to know him.

For only then from out the heart's deep core-

True voices rise, the mask's stripped off, the man

Remains. Greed and blind lust for fame

Moreover, which compel men to transgress

The bounds of law, and often times make them,   60

Allies and ministers of crime, strive night and day

With toil and sweat to gain the heights of power,

These wounds of life in no small part are fed

By fear of death. For 'tis the commn view

That shameful scorn and bitter poverty

Are far removed from a sweet and stable life,     65

And, as it were, are simply lingering

Before the gates of death. From which, when men

Driven by groundless fear desire to flee

And to remove themselves far, far away,

By civil strife they make wealth for themselves   70

And heap up riches, murder upon murder

Piling in greed. A brother’s death gives joy.

A kinsman’s board supplies both hate and fear.

By similar reasoning, born of the same fear,

Envy consumes them; that he before their eyes    75

Gets power, is known, parades in pomp and show,

While they the while in darkness and filth

Lie wallowing – that’s their complaint, you see!

Some die to get a statue and a name.

And often too, crazed by the fear of death,

Such hate of life and light possesses them              80

That their own deaths they plan, with sorrowing heart,

Forgetting that this fear begets their woes.            82

For we, like children frightened of the dark,         87

Are sometimes frightened in  the light – of things

No more to be feared than fears that in the dark

Distress a child, thinking they may come true.       90

Therefore this terror and darkness of the mind

Not by the suns rays, nor the bright shafts of day,

Must be dispersed, as is most necessary,

But by the face of nature and her laws.