章节正文
Serve them in vessels of jade and of shell,
Serve them with fruit and with song: --
Wines of pre-Adamite Sultans
Digged from beneath the black seas: --
New-gathered dew from the heavens
Dripped down from Heaven's sweet trees,
Cups from the angels' pale tables
That will make me both handsome and wise,
For I have beheld her, the princess,
Firelight and starlight her eyes.
Pauper I am, I would woo her.
And -- let me drink wine, to begin,
Though the Koran expressly forbids it."
"I AM YOUR SLAVE," said the Jinn.
"Plan me a dome," said Aladdin,
"That is drawn like the dawn of the MOON,
When the sphere seems to rest on the mountains,
Half-hidden, yet full-risen soon."
"Build me a dome," said Aladdin,
"That shall cause all young lovers to sigh,
The fullness of life and of beauty,
Peace beyond peace to the eye --
A palace of foam and of opal,
Pure moonlight without and within,
Where I may enthrone my sweet lady."
"I AM YOUR SLAVE," said the Jinn.
XV. The Strength of the Lonely
(What the Mendicant Said)
The moon's a monk, unmated,
Who walks his cell, the sky.
His strength is that of heaven-vowed men
Who all life's flames defy.
They turn to stars or shadows,
They go like snow or dew --
Leaving behind no sorrow --
Only the arching blue.
Fifth Section
War. September 1, 1914
Intended to be Read Aloud
I. Abraham Lincoln Walks at Midnight
(In Springfield, Illinois)
It is portentous, and a thing of state
That here at midnight, in our little town
A mourning figure walks, and will not rest,
Near the old court-house pacing up and down,
Or by his homestead, or in shadowed yards
He lingers where his children used to play,
Or through the market, on the well-worn stones
He stalks until the dawn-stars burn away.
A bronzed, lank man! His suit of ancient black,
A famous high top-hat and plain worn shawl
Make him the quaint great figure that men love,
The prairie-lawyer, master of us all.
He cannot sleep upon his hillside now.
He is among us: -- as in times before!
And we who toss and lie awake for long
Breathe deep, and start, to see him pass the door.
His head is bowed. He thinks on men and kings.
Yea, when the sick world cries, how can he sleep?
Too many peasants fight, they know not why,
Too many homesteads in black terror weep.
The sins of all the war-lords burn his heart.
He sees the dreadnaughts scouring every main.
He carries on his shawl-wrapped shoulders now
The bitterness, the folly and the pain.
He cannot rest until a spirit-dawn
Shall come; -- the shining hope of Europe free:
The league of sober folk, the Workers' Earth,
Bringing long peace to Cornland, Alp and Sea.
It breaks his heart that kings must murder still,
That all his hours of travail here for men
Seem yet in vain. And who will bring white peace
That he may sleep upon his hill again?
II. A Curse for Kings
A curse upon each king who leads his state,
No matter what his plea, to this foul game,
And may it end his wicked dynasty,
And may he die in exile and black shame.
If there is vengeance in the Heaven of Heavens,
What punishment could Heaven devise for these
Who fill the rivers of the world with dead,
And turn their murderers loose on all the seas!
Put back the clock of time a thousand years,
And make our Europe, once the world's proud Queen,
A shrieking strumpet, furious fratricide,
Eater of entrails, wallowing obscene
In pits where millions foam and rave and bark,
Mad dogs and idiots, thrice drunk with strife;
While Science towers above; -- a witch, red-winged:
Science we looked to for the light of life.
Curse me the men who make and sell iron ships,
Who walk the floor in thought, that they may find
Each powder prompt, each steel with fearful edge,
Each deadliest device against mankind.
Curse me the sleek lords with their plumes and spurs,
May Heaven give their land to peasant spades,
Give them the brand of Cain, for their pride's sake,
And felon's stripes for medals and for braids.
Curse me the fiddling, twiddling diplomats,
Haggling here, plotting and hatching there,
Who make the kind world but their game of cards,
Till millions die at turning of a hair.
What punishment will Heaven devise for these
Who win by others' sweat and hardihood,
Who make men into stinking vultures' meat,
Saying to evil still "Be thou my good"?
Ah, he who starts a million souls toward death
Should burn in utmost hell a million years!
-- Mothers of men go on the destined wrack
To give them life, with anguish and with tears: --
Are all those childbed sorrows sneered away?
Yea, fools laugh at the humblechristenings,
And cradle-joys are mocked of the fat lords:
These mothers' sons made dead men for the Kings!
All in the name of this or that grim flag,
No angel-flags in all the rag-array --
Banners the demons love, and all Hell sings
And plays wild harps. Those flags march forth to-day!
III. Who Knows?
They say one king is mad. Perhaps. Who knows?
They say one king is doddering and grey.
They say one king is slack and sick of mind,
A puppet for hid strings that twitch and play.
Is Europe then to be their sprawling-place?
Their mad-house, till it turns the wide world's bane?
Their place of maudlin, slavering conference
Till every far-off farmstead goes insane?
IV. To Buddha
Awake again in Asia, Lord of Peace,
Awake and preach, for her far swordsmen rise.
And would they sheathe the sword before you, friend,
Or scorn your way, while looking in your eyes?
Good comrade and philosopher and prince,
Thoughtful and thoroughbred and strong and kind,
Dare they to move against your pride benign,
Lord of the Law, high chieftain of the mind?
* * * * *
But what can Europe say, when in your name
The throats are cut, the lotus-ponds turn red?
And what can Europe say, when with a laugh
Old Asia heaps her hecatombs of dead?
V. The Unpardonable Sin
This is the sin against the Holy Ghost: --
To speak of bloody power as right divine,
And call on God to guard each vile chief's house,
And for such chiefs, turn men to wolves and swine: --
To go forth killing in White Mercy's name,
Making the trenches stink with spattered brains,
Tearing the nerves and arteries apart,
Sowing with flesh the unreaped golden plains.
In any Church's name, to sack fair towns,
And turn each home into a screaming sty,
To make the little children fugitive,
And have their mothers for a quick death cry, --
This is the sin against the Holy Ghost:
This is the sin no purging can atone: --
To send forth rapine in the name of Christ: --
To set the face, and make the heart a stone.
VI. Above the Battle's Front
St. Francis, Buddha, Tolstoi, and St. John --
Friends, if you four, as pilgrims, hand in hand,
Returned, the hate of earth once more to dare,
And walked upon the water and the land,
If you, with words celestial, stopped these kings
For sober conclave, ere their battle great,
Would they for one deep instant then discern
Their crime, their heart-rot, and their fiend's estate?
If you should float above the battle's front,
Pillars of cloud, of fire that does not slay,
Bearing a fifth within your regal train,
The Son of David in his strange array --
If, in his majesty, he towered toward Heaven,
Would they have hearts to see or understand?
. . . Nay, for he hovers there to-night we know,
Thorn-crowned above the water and the land.
VII. Epilogue. Under the Blessing of Your Psyche Wings
Though I have found you like a snow-drop pale,
On sunny days have found you weak and still,
Though I have often held your girlish head
Drooped on my shoulder, faint from little ill: --
Under the blessing of your Psyche-wings
I hide to-night like one small broken bird,
So soothed I half-forget the world gone mad: --
And all the winds of war are now unheard.
My heaven-doubting pennons feel your hands
With touch most delicate so circling round,
That for an hour I dream that God is good.
And in your shadow, Mercy's ways abound.
I thought myself the guard of your frail state,
And yet I come to-night a helpless guest,
Hiding beneath your giant Psyche-wings,
Against the pallor of your wondrous breast.
[End of original text.]
Biographical Note:
Nicholas Vachel Lindsay (1879-1931):
(Vachel is pronounced Vay-chul, that is, it rhymes with `Rachel').
"The Eagle that is Forgotten" and "The Congo" are two of his best-known poems,
and appear in his first two volumes of verse, "General William Booth
Enters into Heaven" (1913) and "The Congo" (1914).
Lindsay himself considered his drawings and his prose writings
to be as important as his verse, all coming together to form a whole.
Serve them with fruit and with song: --
Wines of pre-Adamite Sultans
Digged from beneath the black seas: --
New-gathered dew from the heavens
Dripped down from Heaven's sweet trees,
Cups from the angels' pale tables
That will make me both handsome and wise,
For I have beheld her, the princess,
Firelight and starlight her eyes.
Pauper I am, I would woo her.
And -- let me drink wine, to begin,
Though the Koran expressly forbids it."
"I AM YOUR SLAVE," said the Jinn.
"Plan me a dome," said Aladdin,
"That is drawn like the dawn of the MOON,
When the sphere seems to rest on the mountains,
Half-hidden, yet full-risen soon."
"Build me a dome," said Aladdin,
"That shall cause all young lovers to sigh,
The fullness of life and of beauty,
Peace beyond peace to the eye --
A palace of foam and of opal,
Pure moonlight without and within,
Where I may enthrone my sweet lady."
"I AM YOUR SLAVE," said the Jinn.
XV. The Strength of the Lonely
(What the Mendicant Said)
The moon's a monk, unmated,
Who walks his cell, the sky.
His strength is that of heaven-vowed men
Who all life's flames defy.
They turn to stars or shadows,
They go like snow or dew --
Leaving behind no sorrow --
Only the arching blue.
Fifth Section
War. September 1, 1914
Intended to be Read Aloud
I. Abraham Lincoln Walks at Midnight
(In Springfield, Illinois)
It is portentous, and a thing of state
That here at midnight, in our little town
A mourning figure walks, and will not rest,
Near the old court-house pacing up and down,
Or by his homestead, or in shadowed yards
He lingers where his children used to play,
Or through the market, on the well-worn stones
He stalks until the dawn-stars burn away.
A bronzed, lank man! His suit of ancient black,
A famous high top-hat and plain worn shawl
Make him the quaint great figure that men love,
The prairie-lawyer, master of us all.
He cannot sleep upon his hillside now.
He is among us: -- as in times before!
And we who toss and lie awake for long
Breathe deep, and start, to see him pass the door.
His head is bowed. He thinks on men and kings.
Yea, when the sick world cries, how can he sleep?
Too many peasants fight, they know not why,
Too many homesteads in black terror weep.
The sins of all the war-lords burn his heart.
He sees the dreadnaughts scouring every main.
He carries on his shawl-wrapped shoulders now
The bitterness, the folly and the pain.
He cannot rest until a spirit-dawn
Shall come; -- the shining hope of Europe free:
The league of sober folk, the Workers' Earth,
Bringing long peace to Cornland, Alp and Sea.
It breaks his heart that kings must murder still,
That all his hours of travail here for men
Seem yet in vain. And who will bring white peace
That he may sleep upon his hill again?
II. A Curse for Kings
A curse upon each king who leads his state,
No matter what his plea, to this foul game,
And may it end his wicked dynasty,
And may he die in exile and black shame.
If there is vengeance in the Heaven of Heavens,
What punishment could Heaven devise for these
Who fill the rivers of the world with dead,
And turn their murderers loose on all the seas!
Put back the clock of time a thousand years,
And make our Europe, once the world's proud Queen,
A shrieking strumpet, furious fratricide,
Eater of entrails, wallowing obscene
In pits where millions foam and rave and bark,
Mad dogs and idiots, thrice drunk with strife;
While Science towers above; -- a witch, red-winged:
Science we looked to for the light of life.
Curse me the men who make and sell iron ships,
Who walk the floor in thought, that they may find
Each powder prompt, each steel with fearful edge,
Each deadliest device against mankind.
Curse me the sleek lords with their plumes and spurs,
May Heaven give their land to peasant spades,
Give them the brand of Cain, for their pride's sake,
And felon's stripes for medals and for braids.
Curse me the fiddling, twiddling diplomats,
Haggling here, plotting and hatching there,
Who make the kind world but their game of cards,
Till millions die at turning of a hair.
What punishment will Heaven devise for these
Who win by others' sweat and hardihood,
Who make men into stinking vultures' meat,
Saying to evil still "Be thou my good"?
Ah, he who starts a million souls toward death
Should burn in utmost hell a million years!
-- Mothers of men go on the destined wrack
To give them life, with anguish and with tears: --
Are all those childbed sorrows sneered away?
Yea, fools laugh at the humblechristenings,
And cradle-joys are mocked of the fat lords:
These mothers' sons made dead men for the Kings!
All in the name of this or that grim flag,
No angel-flags in all the rag-array --
Banners the demons love, and all Hell sings
And plays wild harps. Those flags march forth to-day!
III. Who Knows?
They say one king is mad. Perhaps. Who knows?
They say one king is doddering and grey.
They say one king is slack and sick of mind,
A puppet for hid strings that twitch and play.
Is Europe then to be their sprawling-place?
Their mad-house, till it turns the wide world's bane?
Their place of maudlin, slavering conference
Till every far-off farmstead goes insane?
IV. To Buddha
Awake again in Asia, Lord of Peace,
Awake and preach, for her far swordsmen rise.
And would they sheathe the sword before you, friend,
Or scorn your way, while looking in your eyes?
Good comrade and philosopher and prince,
Thoughtful and thoroughbred and strong and kind,
Dare they to move against your pride benign,
Lord of the Law, high chieftain of the mind?
* * * * *
But what can Europe say, when in your name
The throats are cut, the lotus-ponds turn red?
And what can Europe say, when with a laugh
Old Asia heaps her hecatombs of dead?
V. The Unpardonable Sin
This is the sin against the Holy Ghost: --
To speak of bloody power as right divine,
And call on God to guard each vile chief's house,
And for such chiefs, turn men to wolves and swine: --
To go forth killing in White Mercy's name,
Making the trenches stink with spattered brains,
Tearing the nerves and arteries apart,
Sowing with flesh the unreaped golden plains.
In any Church's name, to sack fair towns,
And turn each home into a screaming sty,
To make the little children fugitive,
And have their mothers for a quick death cry, --
This is the sin against the Holy Ghost:
This is the sin no purging can atone: --
To send forth rapine in the name of Christ: --
To set the face, and make the heart a stone.
VI. Above the Battle's Front
St. Francis, Buddha, Tolstoi, and St. John --
Friends, if you four, as pilgrims, hand in hand,
Returned, the hate of earth once more to dare,
And walked upon the water and the land,
If you, with words celestial, stopped these kings
For sober conclave, ere their battle great,
Would they for one deep instant then discern
Their crime, their heart-rot, and their fiend's estate?
If you should float above the battle's front,
Pillars of cloud, of fire that does not slay,
Bearing a fifth within your regal train,
The Son of David in his strange array --
If, in his majesty, he towered toward Heaven,
Would they have hearts to see or understand?
. . . Nay, for he hovers there to-night we know,
Thorn-crowned above the water and the land.
VII. Epilogue. Under the Blessing of Your Psyche Wings
Though I have found you like a snow-drop pale,
On sunny days have found you weak and still,
Though I have often held your girlish head
Drooped on my shoulder, faint from little ill: --
Under the blessing of your Psyche-wings
I hide to-night like one small broken bird,
So soothed I half-forget the world gone mad: --
And all the winds of war are now unheard.
My heaven-doubting pennons feel your hands
With touch most delicate so circling round,
That for an hour I dream that God is good.
And in your shadow, Mercy's ways abound.
I thought myself the guard of your frail state,
And yet I come to-night a helpless guest,
Hiding beneath your giant Psyche-wings,
Against the pallor of your wondrous breast.
[End of original text.]
Biographical Note:
Nicholas Vachel Lindsay (1879-1931):
(Vachel is pronounced Vay-chul, that is, it rhymes with `Rachel').
"The Eagle that is Forgotten" and "The Congo" are two of his best-known poems,
and appear in his first two volumes of verse, "General William Booth
Enters into Heaven" (1913) and "The Congo" (1914).
Lindsay himself considered his drawings and his prose writings
to be as important as his verse, all coming together to form a whole.
- beheld [bi´held]
behold的过去式(分词) (初中英语单词) - moonlight [´mu:nlait] n.&a.月光(的) (初中英语单词)
- midnight [´midnait] n.午夜；漆黑 (初中英语单词)
- mourning [´mɔ:niŋ] n.悲伤；治丧；戴孝 (初中英语单词)
- hillside [´hilsaid] n.山腰 (初中英语单词)
- terror [´terə] n.恐怖；惊骇 (初中英语单词)
- league [li:g] n.同盟；社团 (初中英语单词)
- wicked [´wikid] a.邪恶的；不道德的 (初中英语单词)
- punishment [´pʌniʃmənt] n.罚，刑罚 (初中英语单词)
- furious [´fjuəriəs] a.狂怒的；猛烈的 (初中英语单词)
- fearful [´fiəfəl] a.可怕的；担心的 (初中英语单词)
- device [di´vais] n.装置；器具；策略 (初中英语单词)
- peasant [´pezənt] n.农民；庄稼人 (初中英语单词)
- utmost [´ʌtməust] a.最大的 n.极端 (初中英语单词)
- humble [´hʌmbəl] a.谦卑的 vt.贬抑 (初中英语单词)
- preach [pri:tʃ] v.宣扬；鼓吹 n.训诫 (初中英语单词)
- bloody [´blʌdi] a.(流)血的；血腥的 (初中英语单词)
- christ [kraist] n.基督 int.天啊! (初中英语单词)
- instant [´instənt] a.立即的 n.紧迫；瞬间 (初中英语单词)
- majesty [´mædʒisti] n.壮丽；崇高；尊严 (初中英语单词)
- blessing [´blesiŋ] n.祝福 (初中英语单词)
- delicate [´delikət] a.精美的；微妙的 (初中英语单词)
- helpless [´helpləs] a.无助的，无依靠的 (初中英语单词)
- sphere [sfiə] n.圆体；天体；范围 (高中英语单词)
- quaint [kweint] a.离奇的；奇妙的 (高中英语单词)
- bitterness [´bitənis] n.苦味；辛酸；苦难 (高中英语单词)
- vengeance [´vendʒəns] n.报复，复仇 (高中英语单词)
- devise [di´vaiz] vt.设计，发明 (高中英语单词)
- prompt [prɔmpt] a.敏捷的 vt.促使 (高中英语单词)
- anguish [´æŋgwiʃ] n.(极度的)痛苦；苦恼 (高中英语单词)
- philosopher [fi´lɔsəfə] n.哲学家；思想家；哲人 (高中英语单词)
- celestial [si´lestiəl] a.天空的，天的 (高中英语单词)
- pronounced [prə´naunst] a.发出音的；显著的 (高中英语单词)
- fullness [´fulnis] n.满；充实；彻底 (英语四级单词)
- lincoln [´liŋkən] n.林肯 (英语四级单词)
- homestead [´həumsted] n.家宅，宅基 (英语四级单词)
- thrice [θrais] ad.三倍地；三次 (英语四级单词)
- twitch [twitʃ] v.&n.(使)抽动；急拉 (英语四级单词)
- far-off [´fɑ:rɔ:f] a.远方的，遥远的 (英语四级单词)
- wondrous [´wʌndrəs] a.极好的 ad.惊人地 (英语四级单词)
- starlight [´stɑ:lait] n.星光 (英语六级单词)
- expressly [ik´spresli] ad.明白地；特意地 (英语六级单词)
- puppet [´pʌpit] n.木偶；傀儡 (英语六级单词)
- chieftain [´tʃi:ftən] n.(强盗)首领；族长 (英语六级单词)
- psyche [´saiki] n.心灵；灵魂；精神 (英语六级单词)
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章节正文
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