De Rerum Natura

And rein them round to front the foe. With spring

The infuriate she-lions would up-leap

Now here, now there; and whoso came apace

Against them, these they'd rend across the face;

And others unwitting from behind they'd tear

Down from their mounts, and twining round them, bring

Tumbling to earth, o'ermastered by the wound,

And with those powerful fangs and hooked claws

Fasten upon them. Bulls would toss their friends,

And trample under foot, and from beneath

Rip flanks and bellies of horses with their horns,

And with a threat'ning forehead jam the sod;

And boars would gore with stout tusks their allies,

Splashing in fury their own blood on spears

Splintered in their own bodies, and would fell

In rout and ruin infantry and horse.

For there the beasts-of-saddle tried to scape

The savage thrusts of tusk by shying off,

Or rearing up with hoofs a-paw in air.

In vain- since there thou mightest see them sink,

Their sinews severed, and with heavy fall

Bestrew the ground. And such of these as men

Supposed well-trained long ago at home,

Were in the thick of action seen to foam

In fury, from the wounds, the shrieks, the flight,

The panic, and the tumult; nor could men

Aught of their numbers rally. For each breed

And various of the wild beasts fled apart

Hither or thither, as often in wars to-day

Flee those Lucanian oxen, by the steel

Grievously mangled, after they have wrought

Upon their friends so many a dreadful doom.

(If 'twas, indeed, that thus they did at all:

But scarcely I'll believe that men could not

With mind foreknow and see, as sure to come,

Such foul and general disaster.- This

We, then, may hold as true in the great All,

In divers worlds on divers plan create,-

Somewhere afar more likely than upon

One certain earth.) But men chose this to do

Less in the hope of conquering than to give

Their enemies a goodly cause of woe,

Even though thereby they perished themselves,

Since weak in numbers and since wanting arms.

Now, clothes of roughly inter-plaited strands

Were earlier than loom-wove coverings;

The loom-wove later than man's iron is,

Since iron is needful in the weaving art,

Nor by no other means can there be wrought

Such polished tools- the treadles, spindles, shuttles,

And sounding yarn-beams. And nature forced the men,

Before the woman kind, to work the wool:

For all the male kind far excels in skill,

And cleverer is by much- until at last

The rugged farmer folk jeered at such tasks,

And so were eager soon to give them o'er

To women's hands, and in more hardy toil

To harden arms and hands.

But nature herself,

Mother of things, was the first seed-sower

And primal grafter; since the berries and acorns,

Dropping from off the trees, would there beneath

Put forth in season swarms of little shoots;

Hence too men's fondness for ingrafting slips

Upon the boughs and setting out in holes

The young shrubs o'er the fields. Then would they try

Ever new modes of tilling their loved crofts,

And mark they would how earth improved the taste

Of the wild fruits by fond and fostering care.

And day by day they'd force the woods to move

Still higher up the mountain, and to yield

The place below for tilth, that there they might,

On plains and uplands, have their meadow-plats,

Cisterns and runnels, crops of standing grain,

And happy vineyards, and that all along

O'er hillocks, intervales, and plains might run

The silvery-green belt of olive-trees,

Marking the plotted landscape; even as now

Thou seest so marked with varied loveliness

All the terrain which men adorn and plant

With rows of goodly fruit-trees and hedge round

With thriving shrubberies sown.

But by the mouth

To imitate the liquid notes of birds

Was earlier far 'mongst men than power to make,

By measured song, melodious verse and give

Delight to ears. And whistlings of the wind

Athrough the hollows of the reeds first taught

The peasantry to blow into the stalks

Of hollow hemlock-herb. Then bit by bit

They learned sweet plainings, such as pipe out-pours,

Beaten by finger-tips of singing men,

When heard through unpathed groves and forest deeps

And woodsy meadows, through the untrod haunts

Of shepherd folk and spots divinely still.

Thus time draws forward each and everything

Little by little unto the midst of men,

And reason uplifts it to the shores of light.

These tunes would soothe and glad the minds of mortals

When sated with food,- for songs are welcome then.