LUCRETIUS

LUCILIA, wedded to Lucretius, found
Her master cold; for when the morning flush
Of passion and the first embrace had died
Between them, tho' he lov'd her none the less,
Yet often when the woman heard his foot
Return from pacings in the field, and ran
Το greet him with a kiss, the master took
Small notice, or austerely, for-his mind
Half buried in some weightier argument,
Or fancy-borne perhaps upon the rise
And long roll of the Hexameter-he past
To turn and ponder those three hundred scrolls
Left by the Teacher, whom he held divine.
She brook'd it not; but wrathful, petulant,
Dreaming some rival, sought and found a witch
Who brew'd the philtre which had power, they
said,

To lead an errant passion home again.

And this, at times, she mingled with his drink,
And this destroy'd him; for the wicked broth
Confused the chemic labour of the blood,
And tickling the brute brain within the man's

Made havock among those tender cells, and check'd

His power to shape: he loathed himself; and

once

After a tempest woke upon a morn

That mock'd him with returning calm, and cried :

'Storm in the night! for thrice I heard the rain

Rushing; and once the flash of a thunderboltMethought I never saw so fierce a fork

Struck out the streaming mountain-side, and show'd

A riotous confluence of watercourses
Blanching and billowing in a hollow of it,
Where all but yester-eve was dusty-dry.

'Storm, and what dreams, ye holy Gods,

what dreams!

For thrice I waken'd after dreams.

Perchance We do but recollect the dreams that come Just ere the waking: terrible! for it seem'd A void was made in Nature; all her bonds Crack'd; and I saw the flaring atom-streams And torrents of her myriad universe, Ruining along the illimitable inane, Fly on to clash together again, and make Another and another frame of things

For ever that was mine, my dream, I knew it—

Of and belonging to me, as the dog
With inward yelp and restless forefoot plies
His function of the woodland: but the next!
I thought that all the blood by Sylla shed
Came driving rainlike down again on earth,
And where it dash'd the reddening meadow,
sprang

No dragon warriors from Cadmean teeth,

For these I thought my dream would show to me,
But girls, Hetairai, curious in their art,
Hired animalisms, vile as those that made
The mulberry-faced Dictator's orgies worse
Than aught they fable of the quiet Gods.
And hands they mixt, and yell'd and round me
drove

In narrowing circles till I yell'd again
Half-suffocated, and sprang up,
and saw-
Was it the first beam of my latest day?

'Then, then, from utter gloom stood out the breasts,

The breasts of Helen, and hoveringly a sword
Now over and now under, now direct,

Pointed itself to pierce, but sank down shamed
At all that beauty; and as I stared, a fire,
The fire that left a roofless Ilion,

Shot out of them, and scorch'd me that I woke.

'Is this thy vengeance, holy Venus, thine, Because I would not one of thine own doves,

Not ev❜n a rose, were offer'd to thee? thine,
Forgetful how my rich proœmion makes
Thy glory fly along the Italian field,
In lays that will outlast thy Deity?

'Deity? nay, thy worshippers. My tongue Trips, or I speak profanely. Which of these Angers thee most, or angers thee at all? Not if thou be'st of those who, far aloof From envy, hate and pity, and spite and scorn, Live the great life which all our greatest fain Would follow, center'd in eternal calm.

'Nay, if thou canst, O Goddess, like ourselves Touch, and be touch'd, then would I cry to thee To kiss thy Mavors, roll thy tender arms

Round him, and keep him from the lust of blood That makes a steaming slaughter-house of Rome.

'Ay, but I meant not thee; I meant not her, Whom all the pines of Ida shook to see Slide from that quiet heaven of hers, and tempt The Trojan, while his neat-herds were abroad; Nor her that o'er her wounded hunter wept Her Deity false in human-amorous tears; Nor whom her beardless apple-arbiter Decided fairest. Rather, O ye Gods, Poet-like, as the great Sicilian called Calliope to grace his golden verse— Ay, and this Kypris also did I take

That popular name of thine to shadow forth
The all-generating powers and genial heat
Of Nature, when she strikes thro' the thick blood
Of cattle, and light is large, and lambs are glad
Nosing the mother's udder, and the bird

Makes his heart voice amid the blaze of flowers:
Which things appear the work of mighty Gods.

'The Gods! and if I go my work is left
Unfinish'd-if I go. The Gods, who haunt
The lucid interspace of world and world,
Where never creeps a cloud, or moves a wind,
Nor ever falls the least white star of snow,
Nor ever lowest roll of thunder moans,
Nor sound of human sorrow mounts to mar
Their sacred everlasting calm! and such,
Not all so fine, nor so divine a calm,
Not such, nor all unlike it, man may gain
Letting his own life go. The Gods, the Gods!
If all be atoms, how then should the Gods
Being atomic not be dissoluble,

Not follow the great law? My master held
That Gods there are, for all men so believe.
I prest my footsteps into his, and meant
Surely to lead my Memmius in a train
Of flowery clauses onward to the proof
That Gods there are, and deathless. Meant? I
meant ?

I have forgotten what I meant : my mind
Stumbles, and all my faculties are lamed.