TO WORDSWORTH——Shelly

chinesepoet

TO WORDSWORTH.
[Published with “Alastor”, 1816.]
Poet of Nature, thou hast wept to know
That things depart which never may return:?
Childhood and youth, friendship and love’s first glow,
Have fled like sweet dreams, leaving thee to mourn.?
These common woes I feel.? One loss is mine5
Which thou too feel’st, yet I alone deplore.?
Thou wert as a lone star, whose light did shine
On some frail bark in winter’s midnight roar:?
Thou hast like to a rock-built refuge stood
Above the blind and battling multitude:?10
In honoured poverty thy voice did weave
Songs consecrate to truth and liberty,—-
Deserting these, thou leavest me to grieve,
Thus having been, that thou shouldst cease to be.

mu

Poet of Nature?

怀抱花朵的孩子

其实那个时代的大诗人们对WORDSWORTH的感情很复杂.我读过一本书<<A perface to Wordsworth >>.那里面讲到Shelly曾经给人写信说WORDSWORTH年轻时很伟大,但是后期却很Dull.
我读John keats　写的信．里面有这样一段：I enquired of the waiter for Wordsworth—he said he knew him, and that he had been here a few days ago, canvassing for the Lowthers. What think you of that—Wordsworth versus　Brougham!! Sad—sad—sad—and yet the family has been his friend always. When can we say? We are now about seven miles from Rydale, and expect to see him tomorrow. You shall hear all about our visit.
就是这个＂canvassing for the Lowthers＂使很多人都认为华兹华斯是革命的叛徒,大诗人罗博特.布朗宁专门写了首<<The lost leader>>来表达自己的愤怒和失望:
      
       JUST for a handful of silver he left us,  
       Just for a ribbon to stick in his coat—  
       Found the one gift of which fortune bereft us,  
       Lost all the others she lets us devote;  
       They, with the gold to give, dol’d him out silver,         
       So much was theirs who so little allow’d;  
       How all our copper had gone for his service!  
       Rags—were they purple, his heart had been proud!  
       We that had lov’d him so, follow’d him, honor’d him,  
       Liv’d in his mild and magnificent eye,         
       Learn’d his great language, caught his clear accents,  
       Made him our pattern to live and to die!  
       Shakespeare was of us, Milton was for us,  
       Burns, Shelley, were with us,—they watch from their graves!  
       He alone breaks from the van and the freemen,         
       He alone sinks to the rear and the slaves!

WORDSWORTH是浪漫主义诗人们的精神父亲和偶像，但是他晚年的政治倾向受到指责和抨击，他晚年的诗歌被认为Dull.
而他转变的原因也很发人深思.在他弟弟溺海身亡时他写过一首诗:
ELEGIAC STANZAS, SUGGESTED BY A PICTURE OF PEELE CASTLE, IN A STORM, PAINTED BY SIR GEORGE BEAUMONT
I WAS thy neighbour once, thou rugged Pile!
Four summer weeks I dwelt in sight of thee:
I saw thee every day; and all the while
Thy Form was sleeping on a glassy sea.
So pure the sky, so quiet was the air!
So like, so very like, was day to day!
Whene'er I looked, thy Image still was there ;
It trembled, but it never passed away.

How perfect was the calm! it seemed no sleep ;
No mood, which season takes away, or brings:
I could have fancied that the might Deep
Was even the gentlest of all gentle Things.

Ah ! THEN, if mine had been the Painter's hand,
To express what then I saw; and add the gleam,
The light that never was, on sea or land,
The consecration, and the Poet's dream;

I would have planted thee, thou hoary Pile
Amid a world how different from this!
Beside a sea that could not cease to smile;
On tranquil land, beneath a sky of bliss.

Thou shouldst have seemed a treasure-house divine
Of peaceful years; a chronicle of heaven;
Of all the sunbeams that did ever shine
The very sweetest had to thee been given.

A Picture had it been of lasting ease,
Elysian quiet, without toil or strife;
No motion but the moving tide, a breeze.
Or merely silent Nature's breathing life.

Such, in the fond illusion of my heart,
Such Picture would I at that time have made:
And seen the soul of truth in every part,
A steadfast peace that might not be betrayed.

So once it would have been,-'tis so no more;
1 have submitted to a new control
A power is gone, which nothing can re-store;
A deep distress hath humanised my Soul.

Not for a moment could I now behold
A smiling sea, and be what I have been
The feeling of my loss will ne'er be old;
This, Which I know, I speak with mind serene.

Then, Beaumont, Friend! who would have been the Friend,
if he had lived, of Him whom I deplore,
This work of thine I blame not, but commend;
This sea in anger, and that dismal shore.

O 'tis a passionate Work!-yet wise and well,
Well chosen is the spirit that is here;
That Hulk which labours in the deadly swell,
This rueful sky, this pageantry of fear !

And this huge Castle, standing here sublime,
I love to see the look with which it braves,
Cased in the unfeeling armour of old time,
The lightning, the fierce wind, and trampling waves.

Farewell, farewell the heart that lives alone,
Housed in a dream, at distance from the Kind !
Such happiness, wherever it be known,
Is to be pitied; for 'tis surely blind.

But welcome fortitude, and patient cheer,
And frequent sights of what is to be borne!
Such sights, or worse, as are before me here.-
Not without hope we suffer and we mourn.

诗里有这样一段:
So once it would have been,-'tis so no more;
1 have submitted to a new control
A power is gone, which nothing can re-store;
A deep distress hath humanised my Soul
这首诗是他人生和创作转变的开始,真的像他说的那样:"A power is gone".他后来的诗再没有了之前的清新灵动."A deep distress hath humanised my Soul"
我常常在想为什么他弟弟的死会让一个那样伟大的诗人改变那么多,几乎改变了整个英国文学史.不管拜伦怎样嘲笑WORDSWORTH,也永远无法摆脱WORDSWORTH的影响.或者说反抗就是真正的认可.

[ 本帖最后由 怀抱花朵的孩子 于 2006-5-17 23:35 编辑 ]

Eternity's

wordsworth was a natural poet though he was beaten by the goverment