麦加菲美国语文读本中的诗歌

CXXVII. LINES TO A WATERFOWL.

Whither 'midst falling dew,
While glow the heavens with the last steps of day,
Far, through their rosy depths, dost thou pursue
Thy solitary way?

Vainly the fowler's eye
Might mark thy distant flight to do thee wrong,
As, darkly painted on the crimson sky,
Thy figure floats along.

Seek'st thou the plashy brink
Of weedy lake, or marge of river wide,
Or where the rocky billows rise and sink
On the chafed ocean side?

There is a Power whose care
Teaches thy way along that pathless coast.
The desert and illimitable air,
Lone wandering, but not lost.

All day, thy wings have fanned,
At that far height, the cold, thin atmosphere,
Yet stoop not, weary, to the welcome land
Though the dark night is near.

And soon that toil shall end,
Soon shalt thou find a summer home, and rest,
And scream among thy fellows; reeds shall bend,
Soon, o'er thy sheltered nest.

Thou'rt gone; the abyss of heaven
Hath swallowed up thy form; yet, on my heart,
Deeply has sunk the lesson thou hast given,
And shall not soon depart.

He, who, from zone to zone,
Guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight,
In the long way that I must tread alone,
Will lead my steps aright.
--Bryant.布莱恩特.

CXXXII. THE SOLITARY REAPER.

William Wordsworth, 1770-1850, the founder of the "Lake School" of poets, was born at Cockermouth, Cumberland, England. From his boy¬hood he was a great lover and student of nature, and it is to his beautiful descriptions of landscape, largely, that he owes his fame. He was a graduate of Cambridge University, and while there commenced the study of Chaucer, Spenser, Milton, and Shakespeare, as models for his own writings. Two legacies having been bequeathed him, Wordsworth determined to make poetry the aim of his life, and in 1795 located at Racedown with his sister Dorothy, where he commenced the tragedy of "The Borderers." A visit from Coleridge at this period made the two poets friends for life. In 1802 Wordsworth married Miss Mary Hutchinson, and in 1813 he settled at Rydal Mount, on Lake Windermere, where he passed the remainder of his life.
Wordsworth's poetry is remarkable for its extreme simplicity of language. At first his efforts were almost universally ridiculed, and in 1819 his entire income from literary work had not amounted to 140 Pounds. In 1830 his merit began to be recognized; in 1839 Oxford University conferred upon him the degree of D. C. L.; and in 1843 he was made poet laureate.
"The Excursion" is by far the most beautiful and the most important of Wordsworth's productions. "Salisbury Plain," "The White Doe of Rylstone," "Yarrow Revisited," and many of his sonnets and minor poems are also much admired.

Behold her, single in the field,
Yon solitary Highland lass!
Reaping and singing by herself;
Stop here, or gently pass!
Alone she cuts and binds the grain,
And sings a melancholy strain;
Oh listen! for the vale profound
Is overflowing with the sound.

No nightingale did ever chant
More welcome notes to weary bands
Of travelers in some shady haunt,
Among Arabian sands:
A voice so thrilling ne'er was heard
In springtime from the cuckoo bird,
Breaking the silence of the seas
Among the farthest Hebrides.

Will no one tell me what she sings?¬
Perhaps the plaintive numbers flow
For old, unhappy, far-off things,
And battles long ago:
Or is it some more humble lay,
Familiar matter of to-day?
Some natural sorrow, loss, or pain,
That has been, and may be again?

Whate'er the theme, the maiden sang
As if her song could have no ending;
I saw her singing at her work,
And o'er the sickle bending;--
I listened motionless and still;
And, as I mounted up the hill,
The music in my heart I bore,
Long after it was heard no more..

CXXXIV. HAPPINESS.

Alexander Pope, 1688-1744, was the shining literary light of the so-¬called Augustan reign of Queen Anne, the poetry of which was distinguished by the highest degree of polish and elegance. Pope was the son of a retired linen draper, who lived in a pleasant country house near the Windsor Forest. He was so badly deformed that his life was "one long disease;" he was remarkably precocious, and had a most intelligent face, with great, flaming, tender eyes. In disposition Pope was the reverse of admirable. He was extremely sensitive, petulant, and supercilious; fierce and even coarse in his attacks on opponents; boastful of his self-acquired wealth and of his intimacy with the nobility. The great redeeming feature of his character was his tender devotion to his aged parents.
As a poet, however, Pope challenges the highest admiration. At the age of sixteen he commenced his "Pastorals," and when only twenty-one published his "Essay on Criticism," pronounced "the finest piece of argumentative and reasoning poetry in the English language." His reputation was now firmly established, and his literary activity ceased only at his death; although, during the latter portion of his life, he was so weak physically that he was unable to dress himself or even to rise from bed without assistance. Pope's great admiration was Dryden, whose style he studied and copied. He lacks the latter's strength, but in elegance and polish he remains unequaled.
Pope's most remarkable work is "The Rape of the Lock;" his greatest, the translation into English verse of Homer's "Iliad" and "Odyssey." His "Epistle of Eloisa to Abelard," "The Dunciad," and the "Essay On Man" are also famous productions. He published an edition of "Shake¬speare," which was awaited with great curiosity, and received with equal disappointment. During the three years following its appearance, he united with Swift and Arbuthnot in writing the "Miscellanies," an extensive satire on the abuses of learning and the extravagances of philosophy. His "Epistles," addressed to various distinguished men, and covering a period of four years, were copied after those of Horace; they were marked by great clearness, neatness of diction, and good sense, and by Pope's usual elegance and grace. His "Imitations of Horace" was left unfin¬ished at his death.
The following selection is an extract from the "Essay on Man;"

Oh, sons of earth! attempt ye still to rise,
By mountains piled on mountains, to the skies?
Heaven still with laughter the vain toil surveys,
And buries madmen in the heaps they raise.
Know all the good that individuals find,
Or God and nature meant to mere mankind.
Reason's whole pleasure, all the joys of sense,
Lie in three words,--health, peace, and competence.

But health consists with temperance alone;
And peace, O virtue! peace is all thy own.
The good or bad the gifts of fortune gain;
But these less taste them as they worse obtain.
Say, in pursuit of profit or delight,
Who risk the most, that take wrong means or right?
Of vice or virtue, whether blest or curst,
Which meets contempt, or which compassion first?

Count all th' advantage prosperous vice attains,
'T is but what virtue flies from and disdains:
And grant the bad what happiness they would,
One they must want, which is, to pass for good.
Oh, blind to truth, and God's whole scheme below,
Who fancy bliss to vice, to virtue woe!
Who sees and follows that great scheme the best,
Best knows the blessing, and will most be blest.

But fools the good alone unhappy call,
For ills or accidents that chance to all.
Think we, like some weak prince, the Eternal Cause,
Prone for his favorites to reverse his laws?
Shall burning AEtna, if a sage requires,
Forget to thunder, and recall her fires?
When the loose mountain trembles from on high,
Shall gravitation cease, if you go by?

"But sometimes virtue starves while vice is fed."
What, then? Is the reward of virtue bread?
That, vice may merit, 't is the price of toil;
The knave deserves it when he tills the soil,
The knave deserves it when he tempts the main,
Where folly fights for kings or dives for gain.
Honor and shame from no condition rise;
Act well your part, there all the honor lies.

Worth makes the man, and want of it the fellow;
The rest is all but leather or prunella.
A wit's a feather, and a chief a rod,
An honest man's the noblest work of God.
One self-approving hour whole years outweighs
Of stupid starers, and of loud huzzas.

Know then this truth (enough for man to know),
"Virtue alone is happiness below."
The only point where human bliss stands still,
And tastes the good without the fall to ill;
Where only merit constant pay receives,
Is blest in what it takes and what it gives..

CXXXVI. A COMMON THOUGHT.

Henry Timrod, 1829-1867, was born at Charleston, South Carolina. He inherited his father's literary taste and ability, and had the advantages of a liberal education. He entered the University of Georgia before he was seventeen years of age, and while there commenced his career as a poet. Poverty and ill health compelled him to leave the university without taking a degree; he then commenced the study of law, and for ten years taught in various private families. At the outbreak of the war, in 1860, he warmly espoused the Southern cause, and wrote many stirring war lyrics. In 1863 he joined the Army of the West, as correspondent of the Charleston "Mercury," and in 1864 he became editor of the "South Carolinian," published first at Columbia and later at Charleston. He also served for a time as assistant secretary to Governor Orr. The advance of Sherman's army reduced him to poverty, and he was compelled to the greatest drudgery in order to earn a bare living. His health soon broke down, and he died of hemorrhage of the lungs. The following little poem seems, almost, to have been written under a presentiment, so accurately does it describe the closing incidents of the poet's life.
The first volume of Timrod's poems appeared in 1860. A later edition, with a memoir of the author, was published in New York in 1873.

Somewhere on this earthly planet
In the dust of flowers that be,
In the dewdrop, in the sunshine,
Sleeps a solemn day for me.

At this wakeful hour of midnight
I behold it dawn in mist,
And I hear a sound of sobbing
Through the darkness,--Hist! oh, hist!

In a dim and musky chamber,
I am breathing life away;
Some one draws a curtain softly,
And I watch the broadening day.

As it purples in the zenith,
As it brightens on the lawn,
There's a hush of death about me,
And a whisper, "He is gone!".

CXXXVIII. ODE TO MT. BLANC.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 1772-1834, was born in Devonshire, England, and was educated at Christ's Hospital and Cambridge University. Through poverty he was compelled to enlist in the army, but his literary attainments soon brought him into notice, and he was enabled to withdraw from the distasteful life.
Coleridge's fame arises chiefly from his poems, of which the "Rime of the Ancient Mariner," "Genevieve," and "Christabel" may be classed among the best of English poetry. He also wrote a number of dramas, besides numerous essays on religious and political topics. As a conversationalist Coleridge had a remarkable reputation, and among his ardent admirers and friends may be ranked Southey, Wordsworth, Lovell, Lamb, and De Quincey. He and his friends Southey and Lovell married sisters, and talked at one time of founding a community on the banks of the Susquehanna. Although possessing such brilliant natural gifts, Coleridge fell far short of what he might have attained, through a great lack of energy and application, increased by an excessive use of opium.

Hast thou a charm to stay the morning star
In his steep course? So long he seems to pause
On thy bald, awful head, O sovran Blanc!
The Arve and Arveiron at thy base
Rave ceaselessly; but thou, most awful Form,
Risest from forth thy silent sea of pines,
How silently! Around thee and above,
Deep is the air and dark, substantial, black--
¬An ebon mass: methinks thou piercest it,
As with a wedge! But when I look again,
It is thine own calm home, thy crystal shrine,
Thy habitation from eternity!
O dread and silent Mount! I gazed upon thee
Till thou, still present to the bodily sense,
Didst vanish from my thoughts: entranced in prayer,
I worshiped the Invisible alone.

Yet, like some sweet, beguiling melody,
So sweet we know not we are listening to it,
Thou, the meanwhile, wast blending with my thought--
¬Yea, with my life and life's own secret joy

Till the dilating soul, enrapt, transfused,
Into the mighty vision passing--there,
As in her natural form, swelled vast to Heaven!

Awake, my soul! not only passive praise
Thou owest! not alone these swelling tears,
Mute thanks and secret ecstasy! Awake,
Voice of sweet song! Awake, my heart, awake!
Green vales and icy cliffs, all join my hymn.

Thou first and chief, sole sovran of the vale!
Oh, struggling with the darkness all the night,
And visited all night by troops of stars,
Or when they climb the sky, or when they sink--
¬Companion of the morning star at dawn,
Thyself Earth's rosy star, and of the dawn
Coherald--wake, oh wake, and utter praise!
Who sank thy sunless pillars deep in earth?
Who filled thy countenance with rosy light?
Who made thee parent of perpetual streams?

And you, ye five wild torrents fiercely glad!
Who called you forth from night and utter death,
From dark and icy caverns called you forth,
Down those precipitous, black, jagged rocks,
Forever shattered, and the same forever?
Who gave you your invulnerable life,
Your strength, your speed, your fury, and your joy,
Unceasing thunder, and eternal foam?
And who commanded (and the silence came),
Here let the billows stiffen, and have rest?

Ye icefalls! ye that from the mountain's brow
Adown enormous ravines slope amain--
Torrents, methinks, that heard a mighty voice,
And stopped at once amid their maddest plunge!

Motionless torrents! silent cataracts!
Who made you glorious as the gates of Heaven
Beneath the keen full moon? Who bade the sun
Clothe you with rainbows? Who, with living flowers
Of loveliest blue, spread garlands at your feet?¬
God!--let the torrents, like a shout of nations,
Answer! and let the ice plains echo, God!
God! sing ye meadow streams with gladsome voice!
Ye pine groves, with your soft and soul-like sounds!
And they, too, have a voice, yon piles of snow,
And in their perilous fall shall thunder, God!

Ye living flowers that skirt the eternal frost!
Ye wild goats sporting round the eagle's nest!
Ye eagles, playmates of the mountain storm!
Ye lightnings, the dread arrows of the clouds!
Ye signs and wonders of the elements!
Utter forth, God, and fill the hills with praise!

Thou, too, hoar Mount! with thy sky-pointing peaks,
Oft from whose feet the avalanche, unheard,
Shoots downward, glittering through the pure serene,
Into the depth of clouds that veil thy breast--
¬Thou too again, stupendous Mountain! thou
That as I raise my head, awhile bowed low
In adoration, upward from thy base,
Slow traveling, with dim eyes suffused with tears,
Solemnly seemest, like a vapory cloud,
To rise before me.--Rise, oh ever rise!
Rise like a cloud of incense from the Earth!
Thou kingly spirit throned among the hills,
Thou dread embassador from Earth to Heaven,
Great Hierarch! tell thou the silent sky,
And tell the stars, and tell yon rising sun,
Earth, with her thousand voices, praises God.
                                      柯勒律治.

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