Читать книгу On the Nature of Things - Тит Лукреций Кар - Страница 1

     Mother of Rome, delight of Gods and men,

     Dear Venus that beneath the gliding stars

     Makest to teem the many-voyaged main

     And fruitful lands—for all of living things

     Through thee alone are evermore conceived,

     Through thee are risen to visit the great sun—

     Before thee, Goddess, and thy coming on,

     Flee stormy wind and massy cloud away,

     For thee the daedal Earth bears scented flowers,

     For thee waters of the unvexed deep

     Smile, and the hollows of the serene sky

     Glow with diffused radiance for thee!

     For soon as comes the springtime face of day,

     And procreant gales blow from the West unbarred,

     First fowls of air, smit to the heart by thee,

     Foretoken thy approach, O thou Divine,

     And leap the wild herds round the happy fields

     Or swim the bounding torrents. Thus amain,

     Seized with the spell, all creatures follow thee

     Whithersoever thou walkest forth to lead,

     And thence through seas and mountains and swift streams,

     Through leafy homes of birds and greening plains,

     Kindling the lure of love in every breast,

     Thou bringest the eternal generations forth,

     Kind after kind. And since 'tis thou alone

     Guidest the Cosmos, and without thee naught

     Is risen to reach the shining shores of light,

     Nor aught of joyful or of lovely born,

     Thee do I crave co-partner in that verse

     Which I presume on Nature to compose

     For Memmius mine, whom thou hast willed to be

     Peerless in every grace at every hour—

     Wherefore indeed, Divine one, give my words

     Immortal charm. Lull to a timely rest

     O'er sea and land the savage works of war,

     For thou alone hast power with public peace

     To aid mortality; since he who rules

     The savage works of battle, puissant Mars,

     How often to thy bosom flings his strength

     O'ermastered by the eternal wound of love—

     And there, with eyes and full throat backward thrown,

     Gazing, my Goddess, open-mouthed at thee,

     Pastures on love his greedy sight, his breath

     Hanging upon thy lips. Him thus reclined

     Fill with thy holy body, round, above!

     Pour from those lips soft syllables to win

     Peace for the Romans, glorious Lady, peace!

     For in a season troublous to the state

     Neither may I attend this task of mine

     With thought untroubled, nor mid such events

     The illustrious scion of the Memmian house

     Neglect the civic cause.

                            Whilst human kind

     Throughout the lands lay miserably crushed

     Before all eyes beneath Religion—who

     Would show her head along the region skies,

     Glowering on mortals with her hideous face—

     A Greek it was who first opposing dared

     Raise mortal eyes that terror to withstand,

     Whom nor the fame of Gods nor lightning's stroke

     Nor threatening thunder of the ominous sky

     Abashed; but rather chafed to angry zest

     His dauntless heart to be the first to rend

     The crossbars at the gates of Nature old.

     And thus his will and hardy wisdom won;

     And forward thus he fared afar, beyond

     The flaming ramparts of the world, until

     He wandered the unmeasurable All.

     Whence he to us, a conqueror, reports

     What things can rise to being, what cannot,

     And by what law to each its scope prescribed,

     Its boundary stone that clings so deep in Time.

     Wherefore Religion now is under foot,

     And us his victory now exalts to heaven.

     I know how hard it is in Latian verse

     To tell the dark discoveries of the Greeks,

     Chiefly because our pauper-speech must find

     Strange terms to fit the strangeness of the thing;

     Yet worth of thine and the expected joy

     Of thy sweet friendship do persuade me on

     To bear all toil and wake the clear nights through,

     Seeking with what of words and what of song

     I may at last most gloriously uncloud

     For thee the light beyond, wherewith to view

     The core of being at the centre hid.

     And for the rest, summon to judgments true,

     Unbusied ears and singleness of mind

     Withdrawn from cares; lest these my gifts, arranged

     For thee with eager service, thou disdain

     Before thou comprehendest: since for thee

     I prove the supreme law of Gods and sky,

     And the primordial germs of things unfold,

     Whence Nature all creates, and multiplies

     And fosters all, and whither she resolves

     Each in the end when each is overthrown.

     This ultimate stock we have devised to name

     Procreant atoms, matter, seeds of things,

     Or primal bodies, as primal to the world.

     I fear perhaps thou deemest that we fare

     An impious road to realms of thought profane;

     But 'tis that same religion oftener far

     Hath bred the foul impieties of men:

     As once at Aulis, the elected chiefs,

     Foremost of heroes, Danaan counsellors,

     Defiled Diana's altar, virgin queen,

     With Agamemnon's daughter, foully slain.

     She felt the chaplet round her maiden locks

     And fillets, fluttering down on either cheek,

     And at the altar marked her grieving sire,

     The priests beside him who concealed the knife,

     And all the folk in tears at sight of her.

     With a dumb terror and a sinking knee

     She dropped; nor might avail her now that first

     'Twas she who gave the king a father's name.

     They raised her up, they bore the trembling girl

     On to the altar—hither led not now

     With solemn rites and hymeneal choir,

     But sinless woman, sinfully foredone,

     A parent felled her on her bridal day,

     Making his child a sacrificial beast

     To give the ships auspicious winds for Troy:

     Such are the crimes to which Religion leads.

     And there shall come the time when even thou,

     Forced by the soothsayer's terror-tales, shalt seek

     To break from us. Ah, many a dream even now

     Can they concoct to rout thy plans of life,

     And trouble all thy fortunes with base fears.

     I own with reason: for, if men but knew

     Some fixed end to ills, they would be strong

     By some device unconquered to withstand

     Religions and the menacings of seers.

     But now nor skill nor instrument is theirs,

     Since men must dread eternal pains in death.

     For what the soul may be they do not know,

     Whether 'tis born, or enter in at birth,

     And whether, snatched by death, it die with us,

     Or visit the shadows and the vasty caves

     Of Orcus, or by some divine decree

     Enter the brute herds, as our Ennius sang,

     Who first from lovely Helicon brought down

     A laurel wreath of bright perennial leaves,

     Renowned forever among the Italian clans.

     Yet Ennius too in everlasting verse

     Proclaims those vaults of Acheron to be,

     Though thence, he said, nor souls nor bodies fare,

     But only phantom figures, strangely wan,

     And tells how once from out those regions rose

     Old Homer's ghost to him and shed salt tears

     And with his words unfolded Nature's source.

     Then be it ours with steady mind to clasp

     The purport of the skies—the law behind

     The wandering courses of the sun and moon;

     To scan the powers that speed all life below;

     But most to see with reasonable eyes

     Of what the mind, of what the soul is made,

     And what it is so terrible that breaks

     On us asleep, or waking in disease,

     Until we seem to mark and hear at hand

     Dead men whose bones earth bosomed long ago.