No More Learning

Then o'er the pastures glad
The wild herds bound, and swim the rapid streams.
Thy glamour captures them, and yearningly
They follow where Thou willest to lead on.
Yea, over seas and hills and sweeping floods,
And leafy homes of birds and grassy leas,
Striking fond love into the heart of all,
Thou mak'st each race desire to breed its kind.
Since Thou dost rule alone o'er nature's realm,
Since without Thee naught wins the hallowed shores
Of light, and naught is glad, and naught is fair,
Fain would I crave Thine aid for poesy
Which seeks to grasp the essence of the world.

On the high system of the heavens and gods
I will essay to speak, and primal germs
Reveal, whence nature giveth birth to all,
And growth and nourishment, and unto which
Nature resolves them back when quite outworn.
These, when we treat their system, we are wont
To view asm "matter," "bodies which produce,"
And name them "seeds of things," "first bodies" too,
Since from them at the first all things do come.


THE TYRANNY OF RELIGION AND THE REVOLT OF EPICURUS

When human life lay foully on the earth
Before all eyes, 'neath Superstition crushed,
Who from the heavenly quarters showed her head
And with appalling aspect lowered on men,
Then did a Greek dare first lift eyes to hers--
First brave her face to face. Him neither myth
Of gods, nor thunderbolt; nor sky with roar
And threat could quell; nay, chafed with more resolve
His valiant soul that he should yearn to be
First man to burst the bars of nature's gates.
So vivid verve of mind prevailed. He fared
Far o'er the flaming ramparts of the world,
And traversed the immeasurable All
In mind and soul: and thence a conqueror
Returns to tell what can, what cannot rise,
And on what principle each thing, in brief,
Hath powers defined and deep-set boundary.
Religion, then, is cast to earth in turn
And trampled. Triumph matches man with heaven.

The profoundest speculations on the nature of things are not impious.
Let not the reader feel that in such an inquiry he is on guilty
ground. It is, rather, true that religion has caused foul crimes.
An
instance is the agonising sacrifice of sweet Iphigenia, slain at the
altar to appease divine wrath.

"Religion could such wickedness suggest. " Tales of eternal punishment
frighten only those ignorant of the real nature of the soul. This
ignorance can be dispelled by inquiring into the phenomena of heaven
and earth, and stating the laws of nature.


_II. --First Principles and a Theory of the Universe_

Of these the first is that nothing is made of nothing; the second,
that nothing is reduced to nothing. This indestructibility of matter
may be illustrated by the joyous and constantly renewed growth that is
in nature. There are two fundamental postulates required to explain
nature--atoms and void. These constitute the universe. There is no
_tertium quid_. All other things are but properties and accidents of
these two. Atoms are solid, "without void"; they are indestructible,
"eternal"; they are indivisible. To appreciate the physical theory of
Epicurus, it is necessary to note the erroneous speculations of other
Greek thinkers, whether, like Heraclitus, they deduced all things
from one such fundamental element as fire, or whether they postulated
four elements. From a criticism of the theories of Empedocles and
Anaxagoras, the poet, return to the main subject.


A HARD TASK AND THREEFOLD TITLE TO FAME

How dark my theme, I know within my mind;
Yet hath high hope of praise with thyrsus keen
Smitten my heart and struck into my breast
Sweet passion for the Muses, stung wherewith
In lively thought I traverse pathless haunts
Pierian, untrodden yet by man.
I love to visit those untasted springs
And quaff; I love to cull fresh blooms, and whence
The Muses never veiled the brows of man
To seek a wreath of honour for my head:
First, for that lofty is the lore I teach;
Then, cramping knots of priestcraft I would loose;
And next because of mysteries I sing clear,
Decking my poems with the Muses' charm.