For, lo, besides that, when the frame's diseased,
     Soul sickens too, there cometh, many a time,
     That which torments it with the things to be,
     Keeps it in dread, and wearies it with cares;
     And even when evil acts are of the past,
     Still gnaw the old transgressions bitterly.
     Add, too, that frenzy, peculiar to the mind,
     And that oblivion of the things that were;
     Add its submergence in the murky waves
     Of drowse and torpor.

                           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.

     I wander afield, thriving in sturdy thought,
     Through unpathed haunts of the Pierides,
     Trodden by step of none before. I joy
     To come on undefiled fountains there,
     To drain them deep; I joy to pluck new flowers,
     To seek for this my head a signal crown
     From regions where the Muses never yet
     Have garlanded the temples of a man:
     First, since I teach concerning mighty things,
     And go right on to loose from round the mind
     The tightened coils of dread religion;
     Next, since, concerning themes so dark, I frame
     Song so pellucid, touching all throughout
     Even with the Muses' charm—which, as 'twould seem,
     Is not without a reasonable ground:
     For as physicians, when they seek to give
     Young boys the nauseous wormwood, first do touch
     The brim around the cup with the sweet juice
     And yellow of the honey, in order that
     The thoughtless age of boyhood be cajoled
     As far as the lips, and meanwhile swallow down
     The wormwood's bitter draught, and, though befooled,
     Be yet not merely duped, but rather thus
     Grow strong again with recreated health:
     So now I too (since this my doctrine seems
     In general somewhat woeful unto those
     Who've had it not in hand, and since the crowd
     Starts back from it in horror) have desired
     To expound our doctrine unto thee in song
     Soft-speaking and Pierian, and, as 'twere,
     To touch it with sweet honey of the Muse—
     If by such method haply I might hold
     The mind of thee upon these lines of ours,
     Till thou dost learn the nature of all things
     And understandest their utility.

     But since I've taught already of what sort
     The seeds of all things are, and how distinct
     In divers forms they flit of own accord,
     Stirred with a motion everlasting on,
     And in what mode things be from them create,
     And since I've taught what the mind's nature is,
     And of what things 'tis with the body knit
     And thrives in strength, and by what mode uptorn
     That mind returns to its primordials,
     Now will I undertake an argument—
     One for these matters of supreme concern—
     That there exist those somewhats which we call
     The images of things: these, like to films
     Scaled off the utmost outside of the things,
     Flit hither and thither through the atmosphere,
     And the same terrify our intellects,
     Coming upon us waking or in sleep,
     When oft we peer at wonderful strange shapes
     And images of people lorn of light,
     Which oft have horribly roused us when we lay
     In slumber—that haply nevermore may we
     Suppose that souls get loose from Acheron,
     Or shades go floating in among the living,
     Or aught of us is left behind at death,
     When body and mind, destroyed together, each
     Back to its own primordials goes away.

     And thus I say that effigies of things,
     And tenuous shapes from off the things are sent,
     From off the utmost outside of the things,
     Which are like films or may be named a rind,
     Because the image bears like look and form
     With whatso body has shed it fluttering forth—
     A fact thou mayst, however dull thy wits,
     Well learn from this: mainly, because we see
     Even 'mongst visible objects many be
     That send forth bodies, loosely some diffused—
     Like smoke from oaken logs and heat from fires—
     And some more interwoven and condensed—
     As when the locusts in the summertime
     Put off their glossy tunics, or when calves
     At birth drop membranes from their body's surface,
     Or when, again, the slippery serpent doffs
     Its vestments 'mongst the thorns—for oft we see
     The breres augmented with their flying spoils:
     Since such takes place, 'tis likewise certain too
     That tenuous images from things are sent,
     From off the utmost outside of the things.
     For why those kinds should drop and part from things,
     Rather than others tenuous and thin,
     No power has man to open mouth to tell;
     Especially, since on outsides of things
     Are bodies many and minute which could,
     In the same order which they had before,
     And with the figure of their form preserved,
     Be thrown abroad, and much more swiftly too,
     Being less subject to impediments,
     As few in number and placed along the front.
     For truly many things we see discharge
     Their stuff at large, not only from their cores
     Deep-set within, as we have said above,
     But from their surfaces at times no less—
     Their very colours too. And commonly
     The awnings, saffron, red and dusky blue,
     Stretched overhead in mighty theatres,
     Upon their poles and cross-beams fluttering,
     Have such an action quite; for there they dye
     And make to undulate with their every hue
     The circled throng below, and all the stage,
     And rich attire in the patrician seats.
     And ever the more the theatre's dark walls
     Around them shut, the more all things within
     Laugh in the bright suffusion of strange glints,
     The daylight being withdrawn. And therefore, since
     The canvas hangings thus discharge their dye
     From off their surface, things in general must
     Likewise their tenuous effigies discharge,
     Because in either case they are off-thrown
     From off the surface. So there are indeed
     Such certain prints and vestiges of forms
     Which flit around, of subtlest texture made,
     Invisible, when separate, each and one.
     Again, all odour, smoke, and heat, and such
     Streams out of things diffusedly, because,
     Whilst coming from the deeps of body forth
     And rising out, along their bending path
     They're torn asunder, nor have gateways straight
     Wherethrough to mass themselves and struggle abroad.
     But contrariwise, when such a tenuous film
     Of outside colour is thrown off, there's naught
     Can rend it, since 'tis placed along the front
     Ready to hand. Lastly those images
     Which to our eyes in mirrors do appear,
     In water, or in any shining surface,
     Must be, since furnished with like look of things,
     Fashioned from images of things sent out.
     There are, then, tenuous effigies of forms,
     Like unto them, which no one can divine
     When taken singly, which do yet give back,
     When by continued and recurrent discharge
     Expelled, a picture from the mirrors' plane.
     Nor otherwise, it seems, can they be kept
     So well conserved that thus be given back
     Figures so like each object.

                             Now then, learn
     How tenuous is the nature of an image.
     And in the first place, since primordials be
     So far beneath our senses, and much less
     E'en than those objects which begin to grow
     Too small for eyes to note, learn now in few
     How nice are the beginnings of all things—
     That this, too, I may yet confirm in proof:
     First, living creatures are sometimes so small
     That even their third part can nowise be seen;
     Judge, then, the size of any inward organ—
     What of their sphered heart, their eyes, their limbs,
     The skeleton?—How tiny thus they are!
     And what besides of those first particles
     Whence soul and mind must fashioned be?—Seest not
     How nice and how minute? Besides, whatever
     Exhales from out its body a sharp smell—
     The nauseous absinth, or the panacea,
     Strong southernwood, or bitter centaury—
     If never so lightly with thy [fingers] twain
     Perchance [thou touch] a one of them

     Then why not rather know that images
     Flit hither and thither, many, in many modes,
     Bodiless and invisible?

                                      But lest
     Haply thou holdest that those images
     Which come from objects are the sole that flit,
     Others indeed there be of own accord
     Begot, self-formed in earth's aery skies,
     Which, moulded to innumerable shapes,
     Are borne aloft, and, fluid as they are,
     Cease not to change appearance and to turn
     Into new outlines of all sorts of forms;
     As we behold the clouds grow thick on high
     And smirch the serene vision of the world,
     Stroking the air with motions. For oft are seen
     The giants' faces flying far along
     And trailing a spread of shadow; and at times
     The mighty mountains and mountain-sundered rocks
     Going before and crossing on the sun,
     Whereafter a monstrous beast dragging amain
     And leading in the other thunderheads.
     Now [hear] how easy and how swift they be
     Engendered, and perpetually flow off
     From things and gliding pass away....

     For ever every outside streams away
     From off all objects, since discharge they may;
     And when this outside reaches other things,
     As chiefly glass, it passes through; but where
     It reaches the rough rocks or stuff of wood,
     There 'tis so rent that it cannot give back
     An image. But when gleaming objects dense,
     As chiefly mirrors, have been set before it,
     Nothing of this sort happens. For it can't
     Go, as through glass, nor yet be rent—its safety,
     By virtue of that smoothness, being sure.
     'Tis therefore that from them the images
     Stream back to us; and howso suddenly
     Thou place, at any instant, anything
     Before a mirror, there an image shows;
     Proving that ever from a body's surface
     Flow off thin textures and thin shapes of things.
     Thus many images in little time
     Are gendered; so their origin is named
     Rightly a speedy. And even as the sun
     Must send below, in little time, to earth
     So many beams to keep all things so full
     Of light incessant; thus, on grounds the same,
     From things there must be borne, in many modes,
     To every quarter round, upon the moment,
     The many images of things; because
     Unto whatever face of things we turn
     The mirror, things of form and hue the same
     Respond. Besides, though but a moment since
     Serenest was the weather of the sky,
     So fiercely sudden is it foully thick
     That ye might think that round about all murk
     Had parted forth from Acheron and filled
     The mighty vaults of sky—so grievously,
     As gathers thus the storm-clouds' gruesome night,
     Do faces of black horror hang on high—
     Of which how small a part an image is
     There's none to tell or reckon out in words.

     Now come; with what swift motion they are borne,
     These images, and what the speed assigned
     To them across the breezes swimming on—
     So that o'er lengths of space a little hour
     Alone is wasted, toward whatever region
     Each with its divers impulse tends—I'll tell
     In verses sweeter than they many are;
     Even as the swan's slight note is better far
     Than that dispersed clamour of the cranes
     Among the southwind's aery clouds. And first,
     One oft may see that objects which are light
     And made of tiny bodies are the swift;
     In which class is the sun's light and his heat,
     Since made from small primordial elements
     Which, as it were, are forward knocked along
     And through the interspaces of the air
     To pass delay not, urged by blows behind;
     For light by light is instantly supplied
     And gleam by following gleam is spurred and driven.
     Thus likewise must the images have power
     Through unimaginable space to speed
     Within a point of time,—first, since a cause
     Exceeding small there is, which at their back
     Far forward drives them and propels, where, too,
     They're carried with such winged lightness on;
     And, secondly, since furnished, when sent off,
     With texture of such rareness that they can
     Through objects whatsoever penetrate
     And ooze, as 'twere, through intervening air.
     Besides, if those fine particles of things
     Which from so deep within are sent abroad,
     As light and heat of sun, are seen to glide
     And spread themselves through all the space of heaven
     Upon one instant of the day, and fly
     O'er sea and lands and flood the heaven, what then
     Of those which on the outside stand prepared,
     When they're hurled off with not a thing to check
     Their going out? Dost thou not see indeed
     How swifter and how farther must they go
     And speed through manifold the length of space
     In time the same that from the sun the rays
     O'erspread the heaven? This also seems to be
     Example chief and true with what swift speed
     The images of things are borne about:
     That soon as ever under open skies
     Is spread the shining water, all at once,
     If stars be out in heaven, upgleam from earth,
     Serene and radiant in the water there,
     The constellations of the universe—
     Now seest thou not in what a point of time
     An image from the shores of ether falls
     Unto the shores of earth? Wherefore, again,
     And yet again, 'tis needful to confess
     With wondrous...

     Bodies that strike the eyes, awaking sight.
     From certain things flow odours evermore,
     As cold from rivers, heat from sun, and spray
     From waves of ocean, eater-out of walls
     Around the coasts. Nor ever cease to flit
     The varied voices, sounds athrough the air.
     Then too there comes into the mouth at times
     The wet of a salt taste, when by the sea
     We roam about; and so, whene'er we watch
     The wormword being mixed, its bitter stings.
     To such degree from all things is each thing
     Borne streamingly along, and sent about
     To every region round; and nature grants
     Nor rest nor respite of the onward flow,
     Since 'tis incessantly we feeling have,
     And all the time are suffered to descry
     And smell all things at hand, and hear them sound.
     Besides, since shape examined by our hands
     Within the dark is known to be the same
     As that by eyes perceived within the light
     And lustrous day, both touch and sight must be
     By one like cause aroused. So, if we test
     A square and get its stimulus on us
     Within the dark, within the light what square
     Can fall upon our sight, except a square
     That images the things? Wherefore it seems
     The source of seeing is in images,
     Nor without these can anything be viewed.

     Now these same films I name are borne about
     And tossed and scattered into regions all.
     But since we do perceive alone through eyes,
     It follows hence that whitherso we turn
     Our sight, all things do strike against it there
     With form and hue. And just how far from us
     Each thing may be away, the image yields
     To us the power to see and chance to tell:
     For when 'tis sent, at once it shoves ahead
     And drives along the air that's in the space
     Betwixt it and our eyes. And thus this air
     All glides athrough our eyeballs, and, as 'twere,
     Brushes athrough our pupils and thuswise
     Passes across. Therefore it comes we see
     How far from us each thing may be away,
     And the more air there be that's driven before,
     And too the longer be the brushing breeze
     Against our eyes, the farther off removed
     Each thing is seen to be: forsooth, this work
     With mightily swift order all goes on,
     So that upon one instant we may see
     What kind the object and how far away.

     Nor over-marvellous must this be deemed
     In these affairs that, though the films which strike
     Upon the eyes cannot be singly seen,
     The things themselves may be perceived. For thus
     When the wind beats upon us stroke by stroke
     And when the sharp cold streams, 'tis not our wont
     To feel each private particle of wind
     Or of that cold, but rather all at once;
     And so we see how blows affect our body,
     As if one thing were beating on the same
     And giving us the feel of its own body
     Outside of us. Again, whene'er we thump
     With finger-tip upon a stone, we touch
     But the rock's surface and the outer hue,
     Nor feel that hue by contact—rather feel
     The very hardness deep within the rock.

     Now come, and why beyond a looking-glass
     An image may be seen, perceive. For seen
     It soothly is, removed far within.
     'Tis the same sort as objects peered upon
     Outside in their true shape, whene'er a door
     Yields through itself an open peering-place,
     And lets us see so many things outside
     Beyond the house. Also that sight is made
     By a twofold twin air: for first is seen
     The air inside the door-posts; next the doors,
     The twain to left and right; and afterwards
     A light beyond comes brushing through our eyes,
     Then other air, then objects peered upon
     Outside in their true shape. And thus, when first
     The image of the glass projects itself,
     As to our gaze it comes, it shoves ahead
     And drives along the air that's in the space
     Betwixt it and our eyes, and brings to pass
     That we perceive the air ere yet the glass.
     But when we've also seen the glass itself,
     Forthwith that image which from us is borne
     Reaches the glass, and there thrown back again
     Comes back unto our eyes, and driving rolls
     Ahead of itself another air, that then
     'Tis this we see before itself, and thus
     It looks so far removed behind the glass.
     Wherefore again, again, there's naught for wonder

     In those which render from the mirror's plane
     A vision back, since each thing comes to pass
     By means of the two airs. Now, in the glass
     The right part of our members is observed
     Upon the left, because, when comes the image
     Hitting against the level of the glass,
     'Tis not returned unshifted; but forced off
     Backwards in line direct and not oblique,—
     Exactly as whoso his plaster-mask
     Should dash, before 'twere dry, on post or beam,
     And it should straightway keep, at clinging there,
     Its shape, reversed, facing him who threw,
     And so remould the features it gives back:
     It comes that now the right eye is the left,
     The left the right. An image too may be
     From mirror into mirror handed on,
     Until of idol-films even five or six
     Have thus been gendered. For whatever things
     Shall hide back yonder in the house, the same,
     However far removed in twisting ways,
     May still be all brought forth through bending paths
     And by these several mirrors seen to be
     Within the house, since nature so compels
     All things to be borne backward and spring off
     At equal angles from all other things.
     To such degree the image gleams across
     From mirror unto mirror; where 'twas left
     It comes to be the right, and then again
     Returns and changes round unto the left.
     Again, those little sides of mirrors curved
     Proportionate to the bulge of our own flank
     Send back to us their idols with the right
     Upon the right; and this is so because
     Either the image is passed on along
     From mirror unto mirror, and thereafter,
     When twice dashed off, flies back unto ourselves;
     Or else the image wheels itself around,
     When once unto the mirror it has come,
     Since the curved surface teaches it to turn
     To usward. Further, thou might'st well believe
     That these film-idols step along with us
     And set their feet in unison with ours
     And imitate our carriage, since from that
     Part of a mirror whence thou hast withdrawn
     Straightway no images can be returned.

     Further, our eye-balls tend to flee the bright
     And shun to gaze thereon; the sun even blinds,
     If thou goest on to strain them unto him,
     Because his strength is mighty, and the films
     Heavily downward from on high are borne
     Through the pure ether and the viewless winds,
     And strike the eyes, disordering their joints.
     So piecing lustre often burns the eyes,
     Because it holdeth many seeds of fire
     Which, working into eyes, engender pain.
     Again, whatever jaundiced people view
     Becomes wan-yellow, since from out their bodies
     Flow many seeds wan-yellow forth to meet
     The films of things, and many too are mixed
     Within their eye, which by contagion paint
     All things with sallowness. Again, we view
     From dark recesses things that stand in light,
     Because, when first has entered and possessed
     The open eyes this nearer darkling air,
     Swiftly the shining air and luminous
     Followeth in, which purges then the eyes
     And scatters asunder of that other air
     The sable shadows, for in large degrees
     This air is nimbler, nicer, and more strong.
     And soon as ever 'thas filled and oped with light
     The pathways of the eyeballs, which before
     Black air had blocked, there follow straightaway
     Those films of things out-standing in the light,
     Provoking vision—what we cannot do
     From out the light with objects in the dark,
     Because that denser darkling air behind
     Followeth in, and fills each aperture
     And thus blockades the pathways of the eyes
     That there no images of any things
     Can be thrown in and agitate the eyes.

     And when from far away we do behold
     The squared towers of a city, oft
     Rounded they seem,—on this account because
     Each distant angle is perceived obtuse,
     Or rather it is not perceived at all;
     And perishes its blow nor to our gaze
     Arrives its stroke, since through such length of air
     Are borne along the idols that the air
     Makes blunt the idol of the angle's point
     By numerous collidings. When thuswise
     The angles of the tower each and all
     Have quite escaped the sense, the stones appear
     As rubbed and rounded on a turner's wheel—
     Yet not like objects near and truly round,
     But with a semblance to them, shadowily.
     Likewise, our shadow in the sun appears
     To move along and follow our own steps
     And imitate our carriage—if thou thinkest
     Air that is thus bereft of light can walk,
     Following the gait and motion of mankind.
     For what we use to name a shadow, sure
     Is naught but air deprived of light. No marvel:
     Because the earth from spot to spot is reft
     Progressively of light of sun, whenever
     In moving round we get within its way,
     While any spot of earth by us abandoned
     Is filled with light again, on this account
     It comes to pass that what was body's shadow
     Seems still the same to follow after us
     In one straight course. Since, evermore pour in
     New lights of rays, and perish then the old,
     Just like the wool that's drawn into the flame.
     Therefore the earth is easily spoiled of light
     And easily refilled and from herself
     Washeth the black shadows quite away.

     And yet in this we don't at all concede
     That eyes be cheated. For their task it is
     To note in whatsoever place be light,
     In what be shadow: whether or no the gleams
     Be still the same, and whether the shadow which
     Just now was here is that one passing thither,
     Or whether the facts be what we said above,
     'Tis after all the reasoning of mind
     That must decide; nor can our eyeballs know
     The nature of reality. And so
     Attach thou not this fault of mind to eyes,
     Nor lightly think our senses everywhere
     Are tottering. The ship in which we sail
     Is borne along, although it seems to stand;
     The ship that bides in roadstead is supposed
     There to be passing by. And hills and fields
     Seem fleeing fast astern, past which we urge
     The ship and fly under the bellying sails.
     The stars, each one, do seem to pause, affixed
     To the ethereal caverns, though they all
     Forever are in motion, rising out
     And thence revisiting their far descents
     When they have measured with their bodies bright
     The span of heaven. And likewise sun and moon
     Seem biding in a roadstead,—objects which,
     As plain fact proves, are really borne along.
     Between two mountains far away aloft
     From midst the whirl of waters open lies
     A gaping exit for the fleet, and yet
     They seem conjoined in a single isle.
     When boys themselves have stopped their spinning round,
     The halls still seem to whirl and posts to reel,
     Until they now must almost think the roofs
     Threaten to ruin down upon their heads.
     And now, when nature begins to lift on high
     The sun's red splendour and the tremulous fires,
     And raise him o'er the mountain-tops, those mountains—
     O'er which he seemeth then to thee to be,
     His glowing self hard by atingeing them
     With his own fire—are yet away from us
     Scarcely two thousand arrow-shots, indeed
     Oft scarce five hundred courses of a dart;
     Although between those mountains and the sun
     Lie the huge plains of ocean spread beneath
     The vasty shores of ether, and intervene
     A thousand lands, possessed by many a folk
     And generations of wild beasts. Again,
     A pool of water of but a finger's depth,
     Which lies between the stones along the pave,
     Offers a vision downward into earth
     As far, as from the earth o'erspread on high
     The gulfs of heaven; that thus thou seemest to view
     Clouds down below and heavenly bodies plunged
     Wondrously in heaven under earth.
     Then too, when in the middle of the stream
     Sticks fast our dashing horse, and down we gaze
     Into the river's rapid waves, some force
     Seems then to bear the body of the horse,
     Though standing still, reversely from his course,
     And swiftly push up-stream. And wheresoe'er
     We cast our eyes across, all objects seem
     Thus to be onward borne and flow along
     In the same way as we. A portico,
     Albeit it stands well propped from end to end
     On equal columns, parallel and big,
     Contracts by stages in a narrow cone,
     When from one end the long, long whole is seen,—
     Until, conjoining ceiling with the floor,
     And the whole right side with the left, it draws
     Together to a cone's nigh-viewless point.
     To sailors on the main the sun he seems
     From out the waves to rise, and in the waves
     To set and bury his light—because indeed
     They gaze on naught but water and the sky.
     Again, to gazers ignorant of the sea,
     Vessels in port seem, as with broken poops,
     To lean upon the water, quite agog;
     For any portion of the oars that's raised
     Above the briny spray is straight, and straight
     The rudders from above. But other parts,
     Those sunk, immersed below the water-line,
     Seem broken all and bended and inclined
     Sloping to upwards, and turned back to float
     Almost atop the water. And when the winds
     Carry the scattered drifts along the sky
     In the night-time, then seem to glide along
     The radiant constellations 'gainst the clouds
     And there on high to take far other course
     From that whereon in truth they're borne. And then,
     If haply our hand be set beneath one eye
     And press below thereon, then to our gaze
     Each object which we gaze on seems to be,
     By some sensation twain—then twain the lights
     Of lampions burgeoning in flowers of flame,
     And twain the furniture in all the house,
     Two-fold the visages of fellow-men,
     And twain their bodies. And again, when sleep
     Has bound our members down in slumber soft
     And all the body lies in deep repose,
     Yet then we seem to self to be awake
     And move our members; and in night's blind gloom
     We think to mark the daylight and the sun;
     And, shut within a room, yet still we seem
     To change our skies, our oceans, rivers, hills,
     To cross the plains afoot, and hear new sounds,
     Though still the austere silence of the night
     Abides around us, and to speak replies,
     Though voiceless. Other cases of the sort
     Wondrously many do we see, which all
     Seek, so to say, to injure faith in sense—
     In vain, because the largest part of these
     Deceives through mere opinions of the mind,
     Which we do add ourselves, feigning to see
     What by the senses are not seen at all.
     For naught is harder than to separate
     Plain facts from dubious, which the mind forthwith
     Adds by itself.

                     Again, if one suppose
     That naught is known, he knows not whether this
     Itself is able to be known, since he
     Confesses naught to know. Therefore with him
     I waive discussion—who has set his head
     Even where his feet should be. But let me grant
     That this he knows,—I question: whence he knows
     What 'tis to know and not-to-know in turn,
     And what created concept of the truth,
     And what device has proved the dubious
     To differ from the certain?—since in things
     He's heretofore seen naught of true. Thou'lt find
     That from the senses first hath been create
     Concept of truth, nor can the senses be
     Rebutted. For criterion must be found
     Worthy of greater trust, which shall defeat
     Through own authority the false by true;
     What, then, than these our senses must there be
     Worthy a greater trust? Shall reason, sprung
     From some false sense, prevail to contradict
     Those senses, sprung as reason wholly is
     From out the senses?—For lest these be true,
     All reason also then is falsified.
     Or shall the ears have power to blame the eyes,
     Or yet the touch the ears? Again, shall taste
     Accuse this touch or shall the nose confute
     Or eyes defeat it? Methinks not so it is:
     For unto each has been divided off
     Its function quite apart, its power to each;
     And thus we're still constrained to perceive
     The soft, the cold, the hot apart, apart
     All divers hues and whatso things there be
     Conjoined with hues. Likewise the tasting tongue
     Has its own power apart, and smells apart
     And sounds apart are known. And thus it is
     That no one sense can e'er convict another.
     Nor shall one sense have power to blame itself,
     Because it always must be deemed the same,
     Worthy of equal trust. And therefore what
     At any time unto these senses showed,
     The same is true. And if the reason be
     Unable to unravel us the cause
     Why objects, which at hand were square, afar
     Seemed rounded, yet it more availeth us,
     Lacking the reason, to pretend a cause
     For each configuration, than to let
     From out our hands escape the obvious things
     And injure primal faith in sense, and wreck
     All those foundations upon which do rest
     Our life and safety. For not only reason
     Would topple down; but even our very life
     Would straightaway collapse, unless we dared
     To trust our senses and to keep away
     From headlong heights and places to be shunned
     Of a like peril, and to seek with speed
     Their opposites! Again, as in a building,
     If the first plumb-line be askew, and if
     The square deceiving swerve from lines exact,
     And if the level waver but the least
     In any part, the whole construction then
     Must turn out faulty—shelving and askew,
     Leaning to back and front, incongruous,
     That now some portions seem about to fall,
     And falls the whole ere long—betrayed indeed
     By first deceiving estimates: so too
     Thy calculations in affairs of life
     Must be askew and false, if sprung for thee
     From senses false. So all that troop of words
     Marshalled against the senses is quite vain.

     And now remains to demonstrate with ease
     How other senses each their things perceive.

     Firstly, a sound and every voice is heard,
     When, getting into ears, they strike the sense
     With their own body. For confess we must
     Even voice and sound to be corporeal,
     Because they're able on the sense to strike.
     Besides voice often scrapes against the throat,
     And screams in going out do make more rough
     The wind-pipe—naturally enough, methinks,
     When, through the narrow exit rising up
     In larger throng, these primal germs of voice
     Have thus begun to issue forth. In sooth,
     Also the door of the mouth is scraped against
     [By air blown outward] from distended [cheeks].