Lucretius
Lucretius
Titus Lucretius Caruswas a Roman poet and philosopher. His only known work is the epic philosophical poem De rerum natura about the tenets and philosophy of Epicureanism, and which is usually translated into English as On the Nature of Things...
NationalityRoman
ProfessionPoet
ocean wind sea
It is a pleasure for to sit at ease Upon the land, and safely for to see How other folks are tossed on the seas That with the blustering winds turmoiled be.
religious wicked action
Religious questions have often led to wicked and impious actions.
elements tools divine
Meantime, when once we know from nothing still Nothing can be create, we shall divine More clearly what we seek: those elements From which alone all things created are, And how accomplished by no tool of Gods.
blow cells inward
...Nature allows Destruction nor collapse of aught, until Some outward force may shatter by a blow, Or inward craft, entering its hollow cells, Dissolve it down.
names goes-on body
And thus thou canst remark that every act At bottom exists not of itself, nor is As body is, nor has like name with void; But rather of sort more fitly to be called An accident of body, and of place Wherein all things go on.
rain earth bears
...Thus it comes That earth, without her seasons of fixed rains, Could bear no produce such as makes us glad, And whatsoever lives, if shut from food, Prolongs its kind and guards its life no more.
unions germs body
Bodies, again, Are partly primal germs of things, and partly Unions deriving from the primal germs.
evil
How many evils have flowed from religion.
hands space giving
Thus the sum Forever is replenished, and we live As mortals by eternal give and take. The nations wax, the nations wane away; In a brief space the generations pass, And like to runners hand the lamp of life One unto other.
tears quiet left-behind
Tears for the mourners who are left behind Peace everlasting for the quiet dead.
sea watches shore
Tis pleasant to stand on shore and watch others labouring in a stormy sea.
spring world matter
The sum of things there is no power can change, For naught exists outside, to which can flee Out of the world matter of any kind, Nor forth from which a fresh supply can spring, Break in upon the founded world, and change Whole nature of things, and turn their motions about.
eye men hands
And since the mind is of a man one part, Which in one fixed place remains, like ears, And eyes, and every sense which pilots life; And just as hand, or eye, or nose, apart, Severed from us, can neither feel nor be, But in the least of time is left to rot, Thus mind alone can never be, without The body and the man himself, which seems, As 'twere the vessel of the same- or aught Whate'er thou'lt feign as yet more closely joined: Since body cleaves to mind by surest bonds.
prayer wind sea
When the supreme violence of a furious wind upon the sea sweeps over the waters the chief admiral of a fleet along with his mighty legions, does he not crave the gods' peace with vows and in his panic seek with prayers the peace of the winds and favouring breezes. Nonetheless, he is caught up in the furious hurricane and driven upon the shoals of death.