評論
打印
We have to think of them as forever bailing, setting and hauling, while the North East lowers over shallow banks unchanging and erosionless
我們應該想起他們一如既往在戽水，在張網和拉網，當那東北風勢減弱吹過永不變化也永不銷蝕的淺提，
Or drawing their money, drying sails at dockage;
或者在船塢領取魚錢，曬晾風帆；
Not as making a trip that will be unpayable
而不應該想象他們在作一次毫無收益的出航，
For a haul that will not bear examination.
打一網經不起審查的捕撈。
There is no end of it, the voiceless wailing,
那無聲的嗚咽永無窮期，
No end to the withering of withered flowers,
那秋花的謝去，
To the movement of pain that is painless and motionless,
沒有痛苦也沒有運動的痛苦的運動，
To the drift of the sea and the drifting wreckage,
海的沖卷和漂流的沉船殘骸，
The bone's prayer to Death its God.
白骨向它的上帝死神的祈求，這一切都永無窮期。
Only the hardly, barely prayable prayer of the one Annunciation.
只有圣母報喜節那一聲幾乎是不可能卻又是唯一苦難祈求的祈求。
It seems, as one becomes older, that the past has another pattern, and ceases to be a mere sequence —
當你年歲漸老，那過去仿佛已有了另一種模式，不再只是一個結果——
Or even development: the latter a partial fallacy encouraged by superficial notions of evolution,
或者甚至是一種發展：后者是部分的謬誤，受到膚淺的進化論思想的慫恿，
Which becomes, in the popular mind, a means of disowning the past.
而在常人的心目中變成否認自己的過去的一種手段。
The moments of happiness — not the sense of well-being,
賞心樂事的瞬間——不是康泰之感，
Fruition, fulfilment, security or affection, or even a very good dinner, but the sudden illumination —
功成名就，夙愿已償，無憂無慮或感受到親人之愛，甚至不是享用一頓豐美酒宴，而是猛地或然徹悟——
We had the experience but missed the meaning,
我們有過這種經驗，但沒有領會其中涵義，
And approach to the meaning restores the experience in a different form, beyond any meaning We can assign to happiness.
而懂得涵義就是在我們能賦予幸福以任何意義之外，在不同的形式中恢復以往的經驗。
