Of the Nature of Things

by Lucretius

Book III - Folly of the Fear of Death

Therefore death to us
     Is nothing, nor concerns us in the least,
     Since nature of mind is mortal evermore.
     And just as in the ages gone before
     We felt no touch of ill, when all sides round
     To battle came the Carthaginian host,
     And the times, shaken by tumultuous war,
     Under the aery coasts of arching heaven
     Shuddered and trembled, and all humankind
     Doubted to which the empery should fall
     By land and sea, thus when we are no more,
     When comes that sundering of our body and soul
     Through which we're fashioned to a single state,
     Verily naught to us, us then no more,
     Can come to pass, naught move our senses then—
     No, not if earth confounded were with sea,
     And sea with heaven. But if indeed do feel
     The nature of mind and energy of soul,
     After their severance from this body of ours,
     Yet nothing 'tis to us who in the bonds
     And wedlock of the soul and body live,
     Through which we're fashioned to a single state.
     And, even if time collected after death
     The matter of our frames and set it all
     Again in place as now, and if again
     To us the light of life were given, O yet
     That process too would not concern us aught,
     When once the self-succession of our sense
     Has been asunder broken. And now and here,
     Little enough we're busied with the selves
     We were aforetime, nor, concerning them,
     Suffer a sore distress. For shouldst thou gaze
     Backwards across all yesterdays of time
     The immeasurable, thinking how manifold
     The motions of matter are, then couldst thou well
     Credit this too: often these very seeds
     (From which we are to-day) of old were set
     In the same order as they are to-day—
     Yet this we can't to consciousness recall
     Through the remembering mind. For there hath been
     An interposed pause of life, and wide
     Have all the motions wandered everywhere
     From these our senses. For if woe and ail
     Perchance are toward, then the man to whom
     The bane can happen must himself be there
     At that same time. But death precludeth this,
     Forbidding life to him on whom might crowd
     Such irk and care; and granted 'tis to know:
     Nothing for us there is to dread in death,
     No wretchedness for him who is no more,
     The same estate as if ne'er born before,
     When death immortal hath ta'en the mortal life.

     Hence, where thou seest a man to grieve because
     When dead he rots with body laid away,
     Or perishes in flames or jaws of beasts,
     Know well: he rings not true, and that beneath
     Still works an unseen sting upon his heart,
     However he deny that he believes.
     His shall be aught of feeling after death.
     For he, I fancy, grants not what he says,
     Nor what that presupposes, and he fails
     To pluck himself with all his roots from life
     And cast that self away, quite unawares
     Feigning that some remainder's left behind.
     For when in life one pictures to oneself
     His body dead by beasts and vultures torn,
     He pities his state, dividing not himself
     Therefrom, removing not the self enough
     From the body flung away, imagining
     Himself that body, and projecting there
     His own sense, as he stands beside it: hence
     He grieves that he is mortal born, nor marks
     That in true death there is no second self
     Alive and able to sorrow for self destroyed,
     Or stand lamenting that the self lies there
     Mangled or burning. For if it an evil is
     Dead to be jerked about by jaw and fang
     Of the wild brutes, I see not why 'twere not
     Bitter to lie on fires and roast in flames,
     Or suffocate in honey, and, reclined
     On the smooth oblong of an icy slab,
     Grow stiff in cold, or sink with load of earth
     Down-crushing from above.

                               "Thee now no more
     The joyful house and best of wives shall welcome,
     Nor little sons run up to snatch their kisses
     And touch with silent happiness thy heart.
     Thou shalt not speed in undertakings more,
     Nor be the warder of thine own no more.
     Poor wretch," they say, "one hostile hour hath ta'en
     Wretchedly from thee all life's many guerdons,"
     But add not, "yet no longer unto thee
     Remains a remnant of desire for them"
     If this they only well perceived with mind
     And followed up with maxims, they would free
     Their state of man from anguish and from fear.
     "O even as here thou art, aslumber in death,
     So shalt thou slumber down the rest of time,
     Released from every harrying pang. But we,
     We have bewept thee with insatiate woe,
     Standing beside whilst on the awful pyre
     Thou wert made ashes; and no day shall take
     For us the eternal sorrow from the breast."
     But ask the mourner what's the bitterness
     That man should waste in an eternal grief,
     If, after all, the thing's but sleep and rest?
     For when the soul and frame together are sunk
     In slumber, no one then demands his self
     Or being. Well, this sleep may be forever,
     Without desire of any selfhood more,
     For all it matters unto us asleep.
     Yet not at all do those primordial germs
     Roam round our members, at that time, afar
     From their own motions that produce our senses—
     Since, when he's startled from his sleep, a man
     Collects his senses. Death is, then, to us
     Much less—if there can be a less than that
     Which is itself a nothing: for there comes
     Hard upon death a scattering more great
     Of the throng of matter, and no man wakes up
     On whom once falls the icy pause of life.

     This too, O often from the soul men say,
     Along their couches holding of the cups,
     With faces shaded by fresh wreaths awry:
     "Brief is this fruit of joy to paltry man,
     Soon, soon departed, and thereafter, no,
     It may not be recalled."—As if, forsooth,
     It were their prime of evils in great death
     To parch, poor tongues, with thirst and arid drought,
     Or chafe for any lack.

                           Once more, if Nature
     Should of a sudden send a voice abroad,
     And her own self inveigh against us so:
     "Mortal, what hast thou of such grave concern
     That thou indulgest in too sickly plaints?
     Why this bemoaning and beweeping death?
     For if thy life aforetime and behind
     To thee was grateful, and not all thy good
     Was heaped as in sieve to flow away
     And perish unavailingly, why not,
     Even like a banqueter, depart the halls,
     Laden with life? why not with mind content
     Take now, thou fool, thy unafflicted rest?
     But if whatever thou enjoyed hath been
     Lavished and lost, and life is now offence,
     Why seekest more to add—which in its turn
     Will perish foully and fall out in vain?
     O why not rather make an end of life,
     Of labour? For all I may devise or find
     To pleasure thee is nothing: all things are
     The same forever. Though not yet thy body
     Wrinkles with years, nor yet the frame exhausts
     Outworn, still things abide the same, even if
     Thou goest on to conquer all of time
     With length of days, yea, if thou never diest"—
     What were our answer, but that Nature here
     Urges just suit and in her words lays down
     True cause of action? Yet should one complain,
     Riper in years and elder, and lament,
     Poor devil, his death more sorely than is fit,
     Then would she not, with greater right, on him
     Cry out, inveighing with a voice more shrill:
     "Off with thy tears, and choke thy whines, buffoon!
     Thou wrinklest—after thou hast had the sum
     Of the guerdons of life; yet, since thou cravest ever
     What's not at hand, contemning present good,
     That life has slipped away, unperfected
     And unavailing unto thee. And now,
     Or ere thou guessed it, death beside thy head
     Stands—and before thou canst be going home
     Sated and laden with the goodly feast.
     But now yield all that's alien to thine age,—
     Up, with good grace! make room for sons: thou must."
     Justly, I fancy, would she reason thus,
     Justly inveigh and gird: since ever the old
     Outcrowded by the new gives way, and ever
     The one thing from the others is repaired.
     Nor no man is consigned to the abyss
     Of Tartarus, the black. For stuff must be,
     That thus the after-generations grow,—
     Though these, their life completed, follow thee;
     And thus like thee are generations all—
     Already fallen, or some time to fall.
     So one thing from another rises ever;
     And in fee-simple life is given to none,
     But unto all mere usufruct.

                                Look back:
     Nothing to us was all fore-passed eld
     Of time the eternal, ere we had a birth.
     And Nature holds this like a mirror up
     Of time-to-be when we are dead and gone.
     And what is there so horrible appears?
     Now what is there so sad about it all?
     Is't not serener far than any sleep?

     And, verily, those tortures said to be
     In Acheron, the deep, they all are ours
     Here in this life. No Tantalus, benumbed
     With baseless terror, as the fables tell,
     Fears the huge boulder hanging in the air:
     But, rather, in life an empty dread of Gods
     Urges mortality, and each one fears
     Such fall of fortune as may chance to him.
     Nor eat the vultures into Tityus
     Prostrate in Acheron, nor can they find,
     Forsooth, throughout eternal ages, aught
     To pry around for in that mighty breast.
     However hugely he extend his bulk—
     Who hath for outspread limbs not acres nine,
     But the whole earth—he shall not able be
     To bear eternal pain nor furnish food
     From his own frame forever. But for us
     A Tityus is he whom vultures rend
     Prostrate in love, whom anxious anguish eats,
     Whom troubles of any unappeased desires
     Asunder rip. We have before our eyes
     Here in this life also a Sisyphus
     In him who seeketh of the populace
     The rods, the axes fell, and evermore
     Retires a beaten and a gloomy man.
     For to seek after power—an empty name,
     Nor given at all—and ever in the search
     To endure a world of toil, O this it is
     To shove with shoulder up the hill a stone
     Which yet comes rolling back from off the top,
     And headlong makes for levels of the plain.
     Then to be always feeding an ingrate mind,
     Filling with good things, satisfying never—
     As do the seasons of the year for us,
     When they return and bring their progenies
     And varied charms, and we are never filled
     With the fruits of life—O this, I fancy, 'tis
     To pour, like those young virgins in the tale,
     Waters into a sieve, unfilled forever.

     Cerberus and Furies, and that Lack of Light

     Tartarus, out-belching from his mouth the surge
     Of horrible heat—the which are nowhere, nor
     Indeed can be: but in this life is fear
     Of retributions just and expiations
     For evil acts: the dungeon and the leap
     From that dread rock of infamy, the stripes,
     The executioners, the oaken rack,
     The iron plates, bitumen, and the torch.
     And even though these are absent, yet the mind,
     With a fore-fearing conscience, plies its goads
     And burns beneath the lash, nor sees meanwhile
     What terminus of ills, what end of pine
     Can ever be, and feareth lest the same
     But grow more heavy after death. Of truth,
     The life of fools is Acheron on earth.

     This also to thy very self sometimes
     Repeat thou mayst: "Lo, even good Ancus left
     The sunshine with his eyes, in divers things
     A better man than thou, O worthless hind;
     And many other kings and lords of rule
     Thereafter have gone under, once who swayed
     O'er mighty peoples. And he also, he—
     Who whilom paved a highway down the sea,
     And gave his legionaries thoroughfare
     Along the deep, and taught them how to cross
     The pools of brine afoot, and did contemn,
     Trampling upon it with his cavalry,
     The bellowings of ocean—poured his soul
     From dying body, as his light was ta'en.
     And Scipio's son, the thunderbolt of war,
     Horror of Carthage, gave his bones to earth,
     Like to the lowliest villein in the house.
     Add finders-out of sciences and arts;
     Add comrades of the Heliconian dames,
     Among whom Homer, sceptered o'er them all,
     Now lies in slumber sunken with the rest.
     Then, too, Democritus, when ripened eld
     Admonished him his memory waned away,
     Of own accord offered his head to death.
     Even Epicurus went, his light of life
     Run out, the man in genius who o'er-topped
     The human race, extinguishing all others,
     As sun, in ether arisen, all the stars.
     Wilt thou, then, dally, thou complain to go?—
     For whom already life's as good as dead,
     Whilst yet thou livest and lookest?—who in sleep
     Wastest thy life—time's major part, and snorest
     Even when awake, and ceasest not to see
     The stuff of dreams, and bearest a mind beset
     By baseless terror, nor discoverest oft
     What's wrong with thee, when, like a sotted wretch,
     Thou'rt jostled along by many crowding cares,
     And wanderest reeling round, with mind aswim."

     If men, in that same way as on the mind
     They feel the load that wearies with its weight,
     Could also know the causes whence it comes,
     And why so great the heap of ill on heart,
     O not in this sort would they live their life,
     As now so much we see them, knowing not
     What 'tis they want, and seeking ever and ever
     A change of place, as if to drop the burden.
     The man who sickens of his home goes out,
     Forth from his splendid halls, and straight—returns,
     Feeling i'faith no better off abroad.
     He races, driving his Gallic ponies along,
     Down to his villa, madly,—as in haste
     To hurry help to a house afire.—At once
     He yawns, as soon as foot has touched the threshold,
     Or drowsily goes off in sleep and seeks
     Forgetfulness, or maybe bustles about
     And makes for town again. In such a way
     Each human flees himself—a self in sooth,
     As happens, he by no means can escape;
     And willy-nilly he cleaves to it and loathes,
     Sick, sick, and guessing not the cause of ail.
     Yet should he see but that, O chiefly then,
     Leaving all else, he'd study to divine
     The nature of things, since here is in debate
     Eternal time and not the single hour,
     Mortal's estate in whatsoever remains
     After great death.

                    And too, when all is said,
     What evil lust of life is this so great
     Subdues us to live, so dreadfully distraught
     In perils and alarms? one fixed end
     Of life abideth for mortality;
     Death's not to shun, and we must go to meet.
     Besides we're busied with the same devices,
     Ever and ever, and we are at them ever,
     And there's no new delight that may be forged
     By living on. But whilst the thing we long for
     Is lacking, that seems good above all else;
     Thereafter, when we've touched it, something else
     We long for; ever one equal thirst of life
     Grips us agape. And doubtful 'tis what fortune
     The future times may carry, or what be
     That chance may bring, or what the issue next
     Awaiting us. Nor by prolonging life
     Take we the least away from death's own time,
     Nor can we pluck one moment off, whereby
     To minish the aeons of our state of death.
     Therefore, O man, by living on, fulfil
     As many generations as thou may:
     Eternal death shall there be waiting still;
     And he who died with light of yesterday
     Shall be no briefer time in death's No-more
     Than he who perished months or years before.