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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=450279" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>Book I - Part 01 - Proem</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">Mother of Rome, delight of Gods and men, <br>Dear Venus that beneath the gliding stars <br>Makest to teem the many-voyaged main <br>And fruitful lands- for all of living things <br>Through thee alone are evermore conceived, <br>Through thee are risen to visit the great sun- <br>Before thee, Goddess, and thy coming on, <br>Flee stormy wind and massy cloud away, <br>For thee the daedal Earth bears scented flowers, <br>For thee waters of the unvexed deep <br>Smile, and the hollows of the serene sky <br>Glow with diffused radiance for thee! <br>For soon as comes the springtime face of day, <br>And procreant gales blow from the West unbarred, <br>First fowls of air, smit to the heart by thee, <br>Foretoken thy approach, O thou Divine, <br>And leap the wild herds round the happy fields <br>Or swim the bounding torrents. Thus amain, <br>Seized with the spell, all creatures follow thee <br>Whithersoever thou walkest forth to lead, <br>And thence through seas and mountains and swift streams, <br>Through leafy homes of birds and greening plains, <br>Kindling the lure of love in every breast, <br>Thou bringest the eternal generations forth, <br>Kind after kind. And since 'tis thou alone <br>Guidest the Cosmos, and without thee naught <br>Is risen to reach the shining shores of light, <br>Nor aught of joyful or of lovely born, <br>Thee do I crave co-partner in that verse <br>Which I presume on Nature to compose <br>For Memmius mine, whom thou hast willed to be <br>Peerless in every grace at every hour- <br>Wherefore indeed, Divine one, give my words <br>Immortal charm. Lull to a timely rest <br>O'er sea and land the savage works of war, <br>For thou alone hast power with public peace <br>To aid mortality; since he who rules <br>The savage works of battle, puissant Mars, <br>How often to thy bosom flings his strength <br>O'ermastered by the eternal wound of love- <br>And there, with eyes and full throat backward thrown, <br>Gazing, my Goddess, open-mouthed at thee, <br>Pastures on love his greedy sight, his breath <br>Hanging upon thy lips. Him thus reclined <br>Fill with thy holy body, round, above! <br>Pour from those lips soft syllables to win <br>Peace for the Romans, glorious Lady, peace! <br>For in a season troublous to the state <br>Neither may I attend this task of mine <br>With thought untroubled, nor mid such events <br>The illustrious scion of the Memmian house <br>Neglect the civic cause. <br>Whilst human kind <br>Throughout the lands lay miserably crushed <br>Before all eyes beneath Religion- who <br>Would show her head along the region skies, <br>Glowering on mortals with her hideous face- <br>A Greek it was who first opposing dared <br>Raise mortal eyes that terror to withstand, <br>Whom nor the fame of Gods nor lightning's stroke <br>Nor threatening thunder of the ominous sky <br>Abashed; but rather chafed to angry zest <br>His dauntless heart to be the first to rend <br>The crossbars at the gates of Nature old. <br>And thus his will and hardy wisdom won; <br>And forward thus he fared afar, beyond <br>The flaming ramparts of the world, until <br>He wandered the unmeasurable All. <br>Whence he to us, a conqueror, reports <br>What things can rise to being, what cannot, <br>And by what law to each its scope prescribed, <br>Its boundary stone that clings so deep in Time. <br>Wherefore Religion now is under foot, <br>And us his victory now exalts to heaven. <br>I know how hard it is in Latian verse <br>To tell the dark discoveries of the Greeks, <br>Chiefly because our pauper-speech must find <br>Strange terms to fit the strangeness of the thing; <br>Yet worth of thine and the expected joy <br>Of thy sweet friendship do persuade me on <br>To bear all toil and wake the clear nights through, <br>Seeking with what of words and what of song <br>I may at last most gloriously uncloud <br>For thee the light beyond, wherewith to view <br>The core of being at the centre hid. <br>And for the rest, summon to judgments true, <br>Unbusied ears and singleness of mind <br>Withdrawn from cares; lest these my gifts, arranged <br>For thee with eager service, thou disdain <br>Before thou comprehendest: since for thee <br>I prove the supreme law of Gods and sky, <br>And the primordial germs of things unfold, <br>Whence Nature all creates, and multiplies <br>And fosters all, and whither she resolves <br>Each in the end when each is overthrown. <br>This ultimate stock we have devised to name <br>Procreant atoms, matter, seeds of things, <br>Or primal bodies, as primal to the world. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">I fear perhaps thou deemest that we fare <br>An impious road to realms of thought profane; <br>But 'tis that same religion oftener far <br>Hath bred the foul impieties of men: <br>As once at Aulis, the elected chiefs, <br>Foremost of heroes, Danaan counsellors, <br>Defiled Diana's altar, virgin queen, <br>With Agamemnon's daughter, foully slain. <br>She felt the chaplet round her maiden locks <br>And fillets, fluttering down on either cheek, <br>And at the altar marked her grieving sire, <br>The priests beside him who concealed the knife, <br>And all the folk in tears at sight of her. <br>With a dumb terror and a sinking knee <br>She dropped; nor might avail her now that first <br>'Twas she who gave the king a father's name. <br>They raised her up, they bore the trembling girl <br>On to the altar- hither led not now <br>With solemn rites and hymeneal choir, <br>But sinless woman, sinfully foredone, <br>A parent felled her on her bridal day, <br>Making his child a sacrificial beast <br>To give the ships auspicious winds for Troy: <br>Such are the crimes to which Religion leads. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">And there shall come the time when even thou, <br>Forced by the soothsayer's terror-tales, shalt seek <br>To break from us. Ah, many a dream even now <br>Can they concoct to rout thy plans of life, <br>And trouble all thy fortunes with base fears. <br>I own with reason: for, if men but knew <br>Some fixed end to ills, they would be strong <br>By some device unconquered to withstand <br>Religions and the menacings of seers. <br>But now nor skill nor instrument is theirs, <br>Since men must dread eternal pains in death. <br>For what the soul may be they do not know, <br>Whether 'tis born, or enter in at birth, <br>And whether, snatched by death, it die with us, <br>Or visit the shadows and the vasty caves <br>Of Orcus, or by some divine decree <br>Enter the brute herds, as our Ennius sang, <br>Who first from lovely Helicon brought down <br>A laurel wreath of bright perennial leaves, <br>Renowned forever among the Italian clans. <br>Yet Ennius too in everlasting verse <br>Proclaims those vaults of Acheron to be, <br>Though thence, he said, nor souls nor bodies fare, <br>But only phantom figures, strangely wan, <br>And tells how once from out those regions rose <br>Old Homer's ghost to him and shed salt tears <br>And with his words unfolded Nature's source. <br>Then be it ours with steady mind to clasp <br>The purport of the skies- the law behind <br>The wandering courses of the sun and moon; <br>To scan the powers that speed all life below; <br>But most to see with reasonable eyes <br>Of what the mind, of what the soul is made, <br>And what it is so terrible that breaks <br>On us asleep, or waking in disease, <br>Until we seem to mark and hear at hand <br>Dead men whose bones earth bosomed long ago.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=Lucretius">Lucretius</a><div class=q>
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<script type="text/javascript" src="//s7.addthis.com/js/300/addthis_widget.js#pubid=citatepedia" async="async"></script><div style="display:inline-block" class="addthis_sharing_toolbox" data-url="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=450279" data-title="Book I - Part 01 - Proem de Lucretius" data-description="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 th..."></div>
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