【英文读物】The Song of the Stone Wall.docx

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1、【英文读物】The Song of the Stone WallDEDICATION When I began The Song of the Stone Wall, Dr. Edward Everett Hale was still among us, and it was my intention to dedicate the poem to him if it should be deemed worthy of publication. I fancied that he would like it; for he loved the old walls and the tradit

2、ions that cling about them. As I tried to image the men who had built the walls long ago, it seemed to me that Dr. Hale was the living embodiment of whatever was heroic in the founders of New England. He was a great American. He was also a great Puritan. Was not the zeal of his ancestors upon his li

3、ps, and their courage in his heart? Had they not bequeathed to him their torch-like faith, their patient fervor of toil and their creed of equality? But his bright spirit had inherited no trace of their harshness and gloom. The windows of his soul opened to the sunlight of a joyous faith. His optimi

4、sm and genial humor inspired gladness and good sense in others. With an old story he prepared their minds to receive new ideas, and with a parable he opened their hearts to generous feelings. All men loved him because he loved them. They knew that his heart was in their happiness, and that his human

5、ity embraced their sorrows. In him the weak found a friend, the unprotected, a champion. Though a herald and proclaimer of peace, he could fight stubbornly and passionately on the side of justice. His was a lovable, uplifting greatness which drew all men near and ever nearer to God and to each other

6、. Like his ancestors, he dreamed of a land of freedom founded on the love of God and the brotherhood of man, a land where each man shall achieve his share of happiness and learn the work of manhoodto rule himself and lend a hand. Thoughts like these were often in my mind as the poem grew and took fo

7、rm. It is fitting, therefore, that I should dedicate it to him, and in so doing I give expression to the love and reverence which I have felt for him ever since he called me his little cousin, more than twenty years ago. HELEN KELLERWrentham, Massachusetts,January, 1910.THE SONG OF THE STONE WALL Co

8、me walk with me, and I will tellWhat I have read in this scroll of stone;I will spell out this writing on hill and meadow.It is a chronicle wrought by praying workmen,The forefathers of our nationLeagues upon leagues of sealed history awaiting an interpreter.This is New Englands tapestry of stoneAli

9、ve with memories that throb and quiverAt the core of the agesAs the prophecies of old at the heart of Gods Word.The walls have many things to tell me,And the days are long. I come and listen:My hand is upon the stones, and the tale I fain would hearIs of the men who built the walls,And of the God wh

10、o made the stones and the workers.With searching feet I walk beside the wall;I plunge and stumble over the fallen stones;I follow the windings of the wallOver the heaving hill, down by the meadow-brook,Beyond the scented fields, by the marsh where rushes grow.On I trudge through pine woods fragrant

11、and coolAnd emerge amid clustered pools and by rolling acres of rye.The wall is builded of field-stones great and small,Tumbled about by frost and storm,Shaped and polished by ice and rain and sun;Some flattened, grooved, and chiseledBy the inscrutable sculpture of the weather;Some with clefts and r

12、ough edges harsh to the touch.Gracious Time has glorified the wallAnd covered the historian stones with a mantle of green.Sunbeams flit and waver in the rifts,Vanish and reappear, linger and sleep,Conquer with radiance the obdurate angles,Filter between the naked rents and wind-bleached jags.I under

13、stand the triumph and the truthWrought into these walls of rugged stone.They are a miracle of patient hands,They are a victory of suffering, a paean of pain;All pangs of death, all cries of birth,Are in the mute, moss-covered stones;They are eloquent to my hands.O beautiful, blind stones, inarticula

14、te and dumb!In the deep gloom of their hearts there is a gleamOf the primeval sun which looked upon themWhen they were begotten.So in the heart of man shines foreverA beam from the everlasting sun of God.Rude and unresponsive are the stones;Yet in them divine things lie concealed;I hear their impris

15、oned chant:We are fragments of the universe,Chips of the rock whereon God laid the foundation of the world:Out of immemorial chaos He wrought us.Out of the sun, out of the tempest, out of the travail of the earth we grew.We are wonderfully mingled of life and death;We serve as crypts for innumerable

16、, unnoticed, tiny forms.We are manifestations of the MightThat rears the granite hills unto the cloudsAnd sows the tropic seas with coral isles.We are shot through and through with hidden color;A thousand hues are blended in our gray substance.Sapphire, turquoise, ruby, opal,Emerald, diamond, amethy

17、st, are our sisters from the beginning,And our brothers are iron, lead, zinc,Copper and silver and gold.We are the dust of continents past and to come,We are a deathless frieze carved with mans destiny;In us is the record sibylline of far events.We are as old as the world, our birth was before the h

18、ills.We are the cup that holds the seaAnd the framework of the peak that parts the sky.When Chaos shall again return,And endless Night shall spread her wings upon a rained world,We alone shall stand up from the shattered earth,Indestructible, invincible witnesses of Gods eternal purpose.In reflectiv

19、e mood by the wall I wander;The hoary stones have set my heart astir;My thoughts take shape and move beside me in the guiseOf the stern men who built the wall in early olden days.One by one the melancholy phantoms go stepping from me,And I follow them in and out among the stones.I think of the days

20、long gone,Flown like birds beyond the ramparts of the world.The patient, sturdy men who piled the stonesHave vanished, like the days, beyond the boundsOf earth and mortal things.From their humble, steadfast lives has sprung the greatness of my nation.I am bone of their bone, breath of their breath,T

21、heir courage is in my soul.The wall is an Iliad of granite: it chants to meOf pilgrims of the perilous deep,Of fearless journeyings and old forgotten things.The blood of grim ancestors warms the fingersThat trace the letters of their story;My pulses beat in unison with pulses that are stilled;The fi

22、re of their zeal inspires meIn my struggle with darkness and pain.These embossed books, unobliterated by the tears and laughter of Time,Are signed with the vital hands of undaunted men.I love these monoliths, so crudely imprintedWith their stalwart, cleanly, frugal lives.From my seat among the stone

23、s I stretch my hand and touchMy friend the elm, urnlike, lithesome, tall.Far above the reach of my exploring fingersBirds are singing and winging joyouslyThrough leafy billows of green.The elm-trees song is wondrous sweet;The words are the ancientest language of treesThey tell of how earth and air a

24、nd lightAre wrought anew to beauty and to fruitfulness.I feel the glad stirrings under her rough bark;Her living sap mounts up to bring forth leaves;Her great limbs thrill beneath the wand of spring.This wall was builded in our fathers daysValorous days when life was lusty and the land was new.Resem

25、ble the walls the builders, buffeted, stern, and worn.To us they left the law,Order, simplicity, obedience,And the wall is the bond they gave the nationAt its birth of courage and unflinching faith.Before the epic here inscribed began,They wrote their course upon a trackless sea.O, tiny craft, beari

26、ng a nations seed!Frail shallop, quick with unborn states!Autumn was mellow in the fatherland when they set sail,And winter deepened as they neared the West.Out of the desert sea they came at last,And their hearts warmed to see that frozen land.O, first gray dawn that filtered through the dark!Bleak

27、, glorious birth-hour of our northern states!They stood upon the shore like new created men;On barren solitudes of sand they stood,The conquered sea behind, the unconquered wilderness before.Some died that year beneath the cruel cold,And some for heartsick longing and the pangOf homes remembered and

28、 souls torn asunder.That spring the new-plowed field for bread of lifeBordered the new-dug acre marked for death;Beside the springing corn they laid in the sweet, dark earthThe young man, strong and free, the maiden fair and trustful,The little child, and the uncomplaining mother.Across the meadow,

29、by the ancient pines,Where I, the child of life that lived that spring,Drink in the fragrances of the young year,The field-wall meets one grimly squared and straight.Beyond it rise the old tombs, gray and restful,And the upright slates record the generations.Stiffly aslant before the northern blasts

30、,Like the steadfast, angular beliefsOf those whom they commemorate, the headstones stand,Cemented deep with moss and invisible roots.The rude inscriptions charged with faith and love,Graceless as Death himself, yet sweet as Death,Are half erased by the impartial storms.As children lisping words whic

31、h move to laughterAre themselves poems of unconscious melody,So the old gravestones with their crabbed museAre beautiful for their halting words of faith,Their groping love that had no gift of song.But all the broken tragedy of lifeAnd all the yearning mystery of deathAre celebrated in sweet epitaph

32、s of vines and violets.Close by the wall a peristyle of pinesSings requiem to all the dead that sleep.Beyond the village churchyard, still and calm,Steeped in the sweetness of eternal morn,The wall runs down in crumbling cadenceBeside the brook which playsThrough the land like a silver harp.A wind o

33、f ancient romance blows across the field,A sweet disturbance thrills the air;The silken skirts of Spring go rustling by,And the earth is astir with joy.Up the hill, romping and shaking their golden heads,Come the little children of the wood.From ecstasy to ecstasy the year mounts upward.Up from the

34、south come the odor-laden winds,Angels and ministers of life,Dropping seeds of fruitfulnessInto the bosoms of flowers.Elusive, alluring secrets hide in wood and hedgeLike the first thoughts of loveIn the breast of a maiden;The witchery of love is in rock and tree.Across the pasture, star-sown with d

35、aisies,I see a young girlthe spirit of spring she seems,Sister of the winds that run through the rippling daisies.Sweet and clear her voice calls father and brother,And one whose name her shy lips will not utter.But a chorus of leaves and grasses speaks her heartAnd tells his name: the birches flutt

36、er by the wall;The wild cherry-tree shakes its plumy headAnd whispers his name; the mapleOpens its rosy lips and murmurs his name;The marsh-marigold sends the rumorDown the winding stream, and the blue flagSpread the gossip to the lilies in the lake:All Natures eyes and tongues conspireIn the unfold

37、ing of the taleThat Adam and Eve beneath the blossoming rose-treeTold each other in the Garden of Eden.Once more the wind blows from the walls,And I behold a fair young mother;She stands at the lilac-shaded doorWith her baby at her breast;She looks across the twilit fields and smilesAnd whispers to

38、her child: Thy father comes!Life triumphed over many-weaponed Death.Sorrow and toil and the wilderness thwarted their stout invasion;But with the ship that sailed again went no retreating soul!Stubborn, unvanquished, clinging to the skirts of Hope,They kept their narrow foothold on the land,And the

39、ship sailed home for more.With yearlong striving they fought their way into the forest;Their axes echoed where I sit, a score of miles from the sea.Slowly, slowly the wilderness yieldedTo smiling grass-plots and clearings of yellow corn;And while the logs of their cabins were still moistWith odorous

40、 sap, they set upon the hillThe shrine of liberty for mans mind,And by it the shrine of liberty for mans soul,The school-house and the church.The apple-tree by the wall sheds its blossom about meA shower of petals of light upon darkness.From Natures brimming cup I drink a thousand scents;At noon the

41、 wizard sun stirs the hot soil under the pines.I take the top stone of the wall in my handsAnd the sun in my heart;I feel the rippling land extend to right and left,Bearing up a receptive surface to my uncertain feet;I clamber up the hill and beyond the grassy sweep;I encounter a chaos of tumbled ro

42、cks.Piles of shadow they seem, huddling close to the land.Here they are scattered like sheep,Or like great birds at rest,There a huge block juts from the giant wave of the hill.At the foot of the aged pines the maidens moccasinsTrack the sod like the noiseless sandals of Spring.Out of chinks in the

43、wall delicate grasses wave,As beauty grew out of the crannies of these hard souls.Joyously, gratefully, after their long wrestlingWith the bitter cold and the harsh white winter,They heard the step of Spring on the edge of melting snow-drifts;Gladly, with courage that flashed from their life-beaten

44、souls,As the fire-sparks fly from the hammered stone,They hailed the fragrant arbutus;Its sweetness trailed beside the path that they cut through the forest,And they gave it the name of their ship Mayflower. Beauty was at their feet, and their eyes beheld it;The earth cried out for labor, and they g

45、ave it.But ever as they saw the budding spring,Ever as they cleared the stubborn field,Ever as they piled the heavy stones,In mystic vision they saw, the eternal spring;They raised their hardened hands above the earth,And beheld the walls that are not built of stone,The portals opened by angels whos

46、e garments are of light;And beyond the radiant walls of living stonesThey dreamed vast meadows and hills of fadeless green.In the old house across the roadWith weather-beaten front, like the furrowed face of an old man,The lights are out forever, the windows are broken,And the oaken posts are warped

47、;The storms beat into the rooms as the passion of the worldRacked and buffeted those who once dwelt in them.The psalm and the morning prayer are silent.But the walls remain visible witnesses of faithThat knew no wavering or shadow of turning.They have withstood sun and northern blast,They have outlasted the unceasing strifeOf forces leagued to tear them down.Under the stars and the clouds, under the summer sun,Beaten by rain and wind, covered with tender vines,The walls stand symbols of a granite race,The measure and translation of olden times.In the rough epic of their life, their toil,