贝壳电子书 > 英文原著电子书 > the home book of verse-1 >

第79章

the home book of verse-1-第79章

小说: the home book of verse-1 字数: 每页4000字

按键盘上方向键 ← 或 → 可快速上下翻页,按键盘上的 Enter 键可回到本书目录页,按键盘上方向键 ↑ 可回到本页顶部!
————未阅读完?加入书签已便下次继续阅读!




The Master work; and catch

Hints of the proper craft; tricks of the tool's true play。



As it was better; youth

Should strive; through acts uncouth;

Toward making; than repose on aught found made:

So; better; age; exempt

From strife; should know; than tempt

Further。  Thou waitedest age: wait death nor be afraid!



Enough now; if the Right

And Good and Infinite

Be named here; as thou callest thy hand thine own;

With knowledge absolute;

Subject to no dispute

From fools that crowded youth; nor let thee feel alone。



Be there; for once and all;

Severed great minds from small;

Announced to each his station in the Past!

Was I; the world arraigned;

Were they; my soul disdained;

Right?  Let age speak the truth and give us peace at last!



Now; who shall arbitrate?

Ten men love what I hate;

Shun what I follow; slight what I receive;

Ten; who in ears and eyes

Match me: we all surmise;

They this thing; and I that: whom shall my soul believe?



Not on the vulgar mass

Called 〃work;〃 must sentence pass;

Things done; that took the eye and had the price;

O'er which; from level stand;

The low world laid its hand;

Found straightway to its mind; could value in a trice:



But all; the world's coarse thumb

And finger failed to plumb;

So passed in making up the main account;

All instincts immature;

All purposes unsure;

That weighed not as his work; yet swelled the man's amount:



Thoughts hardly to be packed

Into a narrow act;

Fancies that broke through language and escaped;

All I could never be;

All; men ignored in me;

This; I was worth to God; whose wheel the pitcher shaped。



Ay; note that Potter's wheel;

That metaphor! and feel

Why time spins fast; why passive lies our clay; …

Thou; to whom fools propound;

When the wine makes its round;

〃Since life fleets; all is change; the Past gone; seize to…day?〃



Fool!  All that is; at all;

Lasts ever; past recall;

Earth changes; but thy soul and God stand sure:

What entered into thee;

That was; is; and shall be:

Time's wheel runs back or stops: Potter and clay endure。



He fixed thee 'mid this dance

Of plastic circumstance;

This Present; thou; forsooth; would fain arrest:

Machinery just meant

To give thy soul its bent;

Try thee and turn thee forth; sufficiently impressed。



What though the earlier grooves

Which ran the laughing loves

Around thy base; no longer pause and press?

What though; about thy rim;

Scull…things in order grim

Grow out; in graver mood; obey the sterner stress?



Look not thou down but up!

To uses of a cup;

The festal board; lamp's flash and trumpet's peal;

The new wine's foaming flow;

The Master's lips a…glow!

Thou; heaven's consummate cup; what needest thou with earth's wheel?



But I need; now as then;

Thee; God; who mouldest men;

And since; not even while the whirl was worst;

Did I … to the wheel of life

With shapes and colors rife;

Bound dizzily; … mistake my end; to slake thy thirst:



So; take and use thy work:

Amend what flaws may lurk;

What strain o' the stuff; what warpings past the aim!

My times be in thy hand!

Perfect the cup as planned!

Let age approve of youth; and death complete the same!



Robert Browning '1812…1889'





HUMAN LIFE



Sad is our youth; for it is ever going;

Crumbling away beneath our very feet;

Sad is our life; for onward it is flowing;

In current unperceived because so fleet;

Sad are our hopes for they were sweet in sowing;

But tares; self…sown; have overtopped the wheat;

Sad are our joys; for they were sweet in blowing;

And still; O still; their dying breath is sweet:

And sweet is youth; although it hath bereft us

Of that which made our childhood sweeter still;

And sweet our life's decline; for it hath left us

A nearer Good to cure an older Ill:

And sweet are all things; when we learn to prize them

Not for their sake; but His who grants them or denies them。



Aubrey Thomas de Vere '1814…1902'





YOUNG AND OLD

From 〃The Water Babies〃



When all the world is young; lad;

And all the trees are green;

And every goose a swan; lad;

And every lass a queen;

Then hey for boot and horse; lad;

And round the world away;

Young blood must have its course; lad;

And every dog his day。



When all the world is old; lad;

And all the trees are brown;

And all the sport is stale; lad;

And all the wheels run down:

Creep home; and take your place there;

The spent and maimed among:

God grant you find one face there

You loved when all was young。



Charles Kingsley '1819…1875'





THE ISLE OF THE LONG AGO



Oh; a wonderful stream is the River Time;

As it flows through the realm of Tears;

With a faultless rhythm and a musical rhyme;

And a broader sweep and a surge sublime

As it blends with the ocean of Years。



How the winters are drifting like flakes of snow!

And the summers like buds between;

And the year in the sheaf … so they come and they go

On the River's breast with its ebb and flow;

As they glide in the shadow and sheen。



There's a magical Isle up the River Time

Where the softest of airs are playing;

There's a cloudless sky and a tropical clime;

And a voice as sweet as a vesper chime;

And the Junes with the roses are staying。



And the name of this Isle is the Long Ago;

And we bury our treasures there;

There are brows of beauty and bosoms of snow …

They are heaps of dust; but we loved them so!

There are trinkets and tresses of hair。



There are fragments of song that nobody sings;

And a part of an infant's prayer;

There's a harp unswept and a lute without strings;

There are broken vows and pieces of rings;

And the garments that she used to wear。



There are hands that are waved when the fairy shore

By the mirage is lifted in air;

And we sometimes hear through the turbulent roar

Sweet voices we heard in the days gone before;

When the wind down the River is fair。



Oh; remembered for aye be the blessed Isle

All the day of our life till night;

And when evening comes with its beautiful smile;

And our eyes are closing in slumber awhile;

May that 〃Greenwood〃 of soul be in sight。



Benjamin Franklin Taylor '1819…1887'





GROWING OLD



What is it to grow old?

Is it to lose the glory of the form;

The lustre of the eye?

Is it for beauty to forego her wealth?

… Yes; but not this alone。



Is it to feel our strength …

Not our bloom only; but our strength … decay?

Is it to feel each limb

Grow stiffer; every function less exact;

Each nerve more loosely strung?



Yes; this; and more; but not …

Ah; 'tis not what in youth we dreamed 'twould be!

'Tis not to have our life

Mellowed and softened as with sunset glow;

A golden day's decline。



'Tis not to see the world

As from a height; with rapt prophetic eyes;

And heart profoundly stirred;

And weep; and feel the fulness of the past;

The years that are no more。



It is to spend long days

And not once feel that we were ever young;

It is to add; immured

In the hot prison of the present; month

To month with weary pain。



It is to suffer this;

And feel but half; and feebly; what we feel。

Deep in our hidden heart

Festers the dull remembrance of a change;

But no emotion … none。



It is! … last stage of all …

When we are frozen up within; and quite

The phantom of ourselves;

To hear the world applaud the hollow ghost

Which blessed the living man。



Matthew Arnold '1822…1888'





PAST



The clocks are chiming in my heart

Their cobweb chime;

Old murmurings of days that die;

The sob of things a…drifting by。

The clocks are chiming in my heart!



The stars have twinkled; and gone out …

Fair candles blown!

The hot desires burn low; and wan

Those ashy fires; that flamed anon。

The stars have twinkled; and gone out!



John Galsworthy '1867…1933'





TW

返回目录 上一页 下一页 回到顶部 0 0

你可能喜欢的