On the Nature of Things

Front Cover
H.G. Bohn, 1851
 

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Contents

I
1
II
53
III
97
IV
143
V
191
VI
243
VII
301
VIII
330
IX
359
X
387
XI
449

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Page 101 - Men fear death as children fear to go in the dark : and as that natural fear in children is increased with tales, so is the other. Certainly, the contemplation of death, as the wages of sin and passage to another world, is holy and religious ; but the fear of it, as a tribute due unto nature, is weak. Yet in religious meditations there is sometimes mixture of vanity and of superstition. You shall read in some of the friars...
Page 199 - A part how small of the terraqueous globe Is tenanted by man? the rest a waste; Rocks, deserts, frozen seas, and burning sands! Wild haunts of monsters, poisons, stings, and death Such is earth's melancholy map! but, far 'More sad! this earth is a true map of man: So bounded are its haughty lord's delights To woe's wide empire, where deep troubles toss.
Page 195 - Roll on, ye stars ! exult in youthful prime, Mark with bright curves the printless steps of time ; Near and more near your beamy cars approach, And lessening orbs on lessening orbs encroach ; Flowers of the sky ! ye, too, to age must yield. Frail as your silken sisters of the field ! Star after star from heaven's high arch shall rush, Suns sink on suns, and systems systems crush, Headlong, extinct, to one dark centre fall, And death, and night, and chaos mingle all...
Page 299 - In a damp, hot, stagnating air, this African fever is generated from the putrefaction of animal substances, and especially from the swarms of locusts, not less destructive to mankind in their death than in their lives.
Page xvi - Till o'er the wreck, emerging from the storm, Immortal NATURE lifts her changeful form, Mounts from her funeral pyre on wings of flame, And soars and shines, another and the same.
Page 260 - And bended dolphins play ; part, huge of bulk, Wallowing unwieldy, enormous in their gait, Tempest the ocean...
Page xi - ... the two commonest of qualities : an Irish peasant with a little whiskey in his head will imagine and invent more than would furnish forth a modern poem. If Lucretius had not been spoiled by the Epicurean system, we should have had a far superior poem to any now in existence. As mere poetry, it is the first of Latin poems. What then has ruined it? His ethics. Pope has not this defect ; his moral is as pure as his poetry is glorious.
Page xii - I am not mistaken, the distinguishing character of Lucretius (I mean of his soul and genius) is a certain kind of noble pride, and positive assertion of his opinions. He is everywhere confident of his own reason, and assuming an absolute command, not only over his vulgar reader, but even his patron Memmius. For he is always bidding him attend, as if he had the rod over him ; and using a magisterial authority, while he instructs him.
Page 101 - To th' course of nature, but its own : The courage of the bravest daunt, And turn poltroons as valiant : For men as resolute appear, With too much as too little fear ; And, when they're out of hopes of flying, Will run away from death by dying ; Or turn again to stand it out, And those they fled, like lions, rout.
Page xii - But for Lucretius, he seems to disdain all manner of replies, and is so confident of his cause, that he is before-hand with his antagonists ; urging for them whatever he imagined they could say, and leaving them, as he supposes, without an...

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