No More Learning

" It was immensely popular on its appearance, Emerson
declaring it "sweet and wholesome as maize. " If the poem lacks veracity
as an account of savage life, it nevertheless overflows with the beauty
of the author's own nature, and is typical of those elements in his
poetry which have endeared his name to the English-speaking world. With
the exception of "Evangeline," it is the most popular of Longfellow's
works.




LUCRETIUS[V]




On the Nature of Things


_I. --The Invocation and the Theme_

Mother of Romans, joy of men and gods,
Kind Venus, who 'neath gliding signs of heaven
Dost haunt the main where sail our argosies,
Dost haunt the land that yieldeth crops of grain,
Since 'tis of thee that every kind of breath
Is born and riseth to behold the light;
Before Thee, Lady, flit the winds; and clouds
Part at thine advent, and deft-fingered earth
Yields Thee sweet blooms; for Thee the sea hath smiles,
And heaven at peace doth gleam with floods of light.
Soon as the fair spring face of day is shown
And zephyr kind to birth is loosed in strength;
First do the fowls of air give sign of Thee,
Lady, and of Thy entrance, smit at heart
By power of Thine. 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_.