De Rerum Natura

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