第 3 节
作者:热带雨淋      更新:2021-02-18 21:58      字数:9321
  As if it would stay;
  But he goes his way;
  And shuts a distant door。
  So I wait for another morn
  And another night
  In this soul…sick blight;
  And I wonder much
  As I sit; why such
  A woman as I was born!
  〃MY SPIRIT WILL NOT HAUNT THE MOUND〃
  My spirit will not haunt the mound
  Above my breast;
  But travel; memory…possessed;
  To where my tremulous being found
  Life largest; best。
  My phantom…footed shape will go
  When nightfall grays
  Hither and thither along the ways
  I and another used to know
  In backward days。
  And there you'll find me; if a jot
  You still should care
  For me; and for my curious air;
  If otherwise; then I shall not;
  For you; be there。
  WESSEX HEIGHTS (1896)
  There are some heights in Wessex; shaped as if by a kindly hand
  For thinking; dreaming; dying on; and at crises when I stand;
  Say; on Ingpen Beacon eastward; or on Wylls…Neck westwardly;
  I seem where I was before my birth; and after death may be。
  In the lowlands I have no comrade; not even the lone man's friend …
  Her who suffereth long and is kind; accepts what he is too weak to
  mend:
  Down there they are dubious and askance; there nobody thinks as I;
  But mind…chains do not clank where one's next neighbour is the sky。
  In the towns I am tracked by phantoms having weird detective ways …
  Shadows of beings who fellowed with myself of earlier days:
  They hang about at places; and they say harsh heavy things …
  Men with a frigid sneer; and women with tart disparagings。
  Down there I seem to be false to myself; my simple self that was;
  And is not now; and I see him watching; wondering what crass cause
  Can have merged him into such a strange continuator as this;
  Who yet has something in common with himself; my chrysalis。
  I cannot go to the great grey Plain; there's a figure against the
  moon;
  Nobody sees it but I; and it makes my breast beat out of tune;
  I cannot go to the tall…spired town; being barred by the forms now
  passed
  For everybody but me; in whose long vision they stand there fast。
  There's a ghost at Yell'ham Bottom chiding loud at the fall of the
  night;
  There's a ghost in Froom…side Vale; thin lipped and vague; in a
  shroud of white;
  There is one in the railway…train whenever I do not want it near;
  I see its profile against the pane; saying what I would not hear。
  As for one rare fair woman; I am now but a thought of hers;
  I enter her mind and another thought succeeds me that she prefers;
  Yet my love for her in its fulness she herself even did not know;
  Well; time cures hearts of tenderness; and now I can let her go。
  So I am found on Ingpen Beacon; or on Wylls…Neck to the west;
  Or else on homely Bulbarrow; or little Pilsdon Crest;
  Where men have never cared to haunt; nor women have walked with me;
  And ghosts then keep their distance; and I know some liberty。
  IN DEATH DIVIDED
  I
  I shall rot here; with those whom in their day
  You never knew;
  And alien ones who; ere they chilled to clay;
  Met not my view;
  Will in your distant grave…place ever neighbour you。
  II
  No shade of pinnacle or tree or tower;
  While earth endures;
  Will fall on my mound and within the hour
  Steal on to yours;
  One robin never haunt our two green covertures。
  III
  Some organ may resound on Sunday noons
  By where you lie;
  Some other thrill the panes with other tunes
  Where moulder I;
  No selfsame chords compose our common lullaby。
  IV
  The simply…cut memorial at my head
  Perhaps may take
  A Gothic form; and that above your bed
  Be Greek in make;
  No linking symbol show thereon for our tale's sake。
  V
  And in the monotonous moils of strained; hard…run
  Humanity;
  The eternal tie which binds us twain in one
  No eye will see
  Stretching across the miles that sever you from me。
  THE PLACE ON THE MAP
  I
  I look upon the map that hangs by me …
  Its shires and towns and rivers lined in varnished artistry …
  And I mark a jutting height
  Coloured purple; with a margin of blue sea。
  II
  'Twas a day of latter summer; hot and dry;
  Ay; even the waves seemed drying as we walked on; she and I;
  By this spot where; calmly quite;
  She informed me what would happen by and by。
  III
  This hanging map depicts the coast and place;
  And resuscitates therewith our unexpected troublous case
  All distinctly to my sight;
  And her tension; and the aspect of her face。
  IV
  Weeks and weeks we had loved beneath that blazing blue;
  Which had lost the art of raining; as her eyes to…day had too;
  While she told what; as by sleight;
  Shot our firmament with rays of ruddy hue。
  V
  For the wonder and the wormwood of the whole
  Was that what in realms of reason would have joyed our double soul
  Wore a torrid tragic light
  Under order…keeping's rigorous control。
  VI
  So; the map revives her words; the spot; the time;
  And the thing we found we had to face before the next year's prime;
  The charted coast stares bright;
  And its episode comes back in pantomime。
  WHERE THE PICNIC WAS
  Where we made the fire;
  In the summer time;
  Of branch and briar
  On the hill to the sea
  I slowly climb
  Through winter mire;
  And scan and trace
  The forsaken place
  Quite readily。
  Now a cold wind blows;
  And the grass is gray;
  But the spot still shows
  As a burnt circleaye;
  And stick…ends; charred;
  Still strew the sward
  Whereon I stand;
  Last relic of the band
  Who came that day!
  Yes; I am here
  Just as last year;
  And the sea breathes brine
  From its strange straight line
  Up hither; the same
  As when we four came。
  … But two have wandered far
  From this grassy rise
  Into urban roar
  Where no picnics are;
  And onehas shut her eyes
  For evermore。
  THE SCHRECKHORN
  (With thoughts of Leslie Stephen)
  (June 1897)
  Aloof; as if a thing of mood and whim;
  Now that its spare and desolate figure gleams
  Upon my nearing vision; less it seems
  A looming Alp…height than a guise of him
  Who scaled its horn with ventured life and limb;
  Drawn on by vague imaginings; maybe;
  Of semblance to his personality
  In its quaint glooms; keen lights; and rugged trim。
  At his last change; when Life's dull coils unwind;
  Will he; in old love; hitherward escape;
  And the eternal essence of his mind
  Enter this silent adamantine shape;
  And his low voicing haunt its slipping snows
  When dawn that calls the climber dyes them rose?
  A SINGER ASLEEP
  (Algernon Charles Swinburne; 1837…1909)
  I
  In this fair niche above the unslumbering sea;
  That sentrys up and down all night; all day;
  From cove to promontory; from ness to bay;
  The Fates have fitly bidden that he should be Pillowed eternally。
  II
  … It was as though a garland of red roses
  Had fallen about the hood of some smug nun
  When irresponsibly dropped as from the sun;
  In fulth of numbers freaked with musical closes;
  Upon Victoria's formal middle time
  His leaves of rhythm and rhyme。
  III
  O that far morning of a summer day
  When; down a terraced street whose pavements lay
  Glassing the sunshine into my bent eyes;
  I walked and read with a quick glad surprise
  New words; in classic guise; …
  IV
  The passionate pages of his earlier years;
  Fraught with hot sighs; sad laughters; kisses; tears;
  Fresh…fluted notes; yet from a minstrel who
  Blew them not naively; but as one who knew
  Full well why thus he blew。
  V
  I still can hear the brabble and the roar
  At those thy tunes; O still one; now passed through
  That fitful fire of tongues then entered new!
  Their power is spent like spindrift on this shore;
  Thine swells yet more and more。
  VI
  … His singing…mistress verily was no other
  Than she the Lesbian; she the music…mother
  Of all the tribe that feel in melodies;
  Who leapt; love…anguished; from the Leucadian steep
  Into the rambling world…encircling deep
  Which hides her where none sees。
  VII
  And one can hold in thought that nightly here
  His phantom may draw down to the water's brim;
  And hers come up to meet it; as a dim
  Lone shine upon the heaving hydrosphere;
  And mariners wonder as they traverse near;
  Unknowing of her and him。
  VIII
  One dreams him sighing to her spectral form:
  〃O teacher; where lies hid thy burning line;
  Where are those songs; O poetess divine
  Whose very arts are love incarnadine?〃
  And her smile back:  〃Disciple true and warm;
  Sufficient now are thine。〃 。 。 。
  IX
  So here; beneath the waking constellations;
  Where the waves peal their everlasting strains;
  And their dull subterrene reverberations
  Shake him when storms make mountains of their plains …
  Him once their peer in sad improvisations;
  And deft as wind to cleave their frothy manes …
  I leave him; while the daylight gleam declines
  Upon the capes and chines。
  BONCHURCH; 1910。
  A PLAINT TO MAN
  When you slowly emerged from the den of Time;
  And gained percipience as you grew;
  And fleshed you fair out of shapeless slime;
  Wherefore; O Man; did there come to you
  The unhappy need of creating me …
  A form like your ownfor praying to?
  My virtue; power; utility;
  Within my maker must all abide;
  Since