Lucius Seneca - Yale Required Reading - Collected Works (Vol. 2)

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.

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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.

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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