章节正文
Since then my steps have visited that flood
Along whose shore the numerous footfalls cease,
The voices and the tears of life expire.
Thither the prints go down, the hero's way
Trod large upon the sand, the trembling maid's:
Nimrod that wound his trumpet in the wood,
And the poor, dreaming child, hunter of flowers,
That here his hunting closes with the great:
So one and all go down, nor aught returns.
For thee, for us, the sacred river waits,
For me, the unworthy, thee, the perfect friend;
There Blame desists, there his unfaltering dogs
He from the chase recalls, and homeward rides;
Yet Praise and Love pass over and go in.
So when, beside that margin, I discard
My more than mortalweakness, and with thee
Through that still land unfearing I advance:
If then at all we keep the touch of joy
Thou shalt rejoice to find me altered - I,
O Felix, to behold thee still unchanged.
XXI
THE morning drum-call on my eager ear
Thrills unforgotten yet; the morning dew
Lies yet undried along my field of noon.
But now I pause at whiles in what I do,
And count the bell, and tremble lest I hear
(My work untrimmed) the sunset gun too soon.
XXII
I HAVE trod the upward and the downward slope;
I have endured and done in days before;
I have longed for all, and bid farewell to hope;
And I have lived and loved, and closed the door.
XXIII
HE hears with gladdened heart the thunder
Peal, and loves the falling dew;
He knows the earth above and under -
Sits and is content to view.
He sits beside the dying ember,
God for hope and man for friend,
Content to see, glad to remember,
Expectant of the certain end.
XXIV
FAREWELL, fair day and fading light!
The clay-born here, with westward sight,
Marks the huge sun now downward soar.
Farewell. We twain shall meet no more.
Farewell. I watch with bursting sigh
My late contemned occasion die.
I lingeruseless in my tent:
Farewell, fair day, so foully spent!
Farewell, fair day. If any God
At all consider this poor clod,
He who the fair occasion sent
Prepared and placed the impediment.
Let him diviner vengeance take -
Give me to sleep, give me to wake
Girded and shod, and bid me play
The hero in the coming day!
XXV - IF THIS WERE FAITH
GOD, if this were enough,
That I see things bare to the buff
And up to the buttocks in mire;
That I ask nor hope nor hire,
Nut in the husk,
Nor dawn beyond the dusk,
Nor life beyond death:
God, if this were faith?
Having felt thy wind in my face
Spit sorrow and disgrace,
Having seen thine evil doom
In Golgotha and Khartoum,
And the brutes, the work of thine hands,
Fill with injustice lands
And stain with blood the sea:
If still in my veins the glee
Of the black night and the sun
And the lost battle, run:
If, an adept,
The iniquitous lists I still accept
With joy, and joy to endure and be withstood,
And still to battle and perish for a dream of good:
God, if that were enough?
If to feel, in the ink of the slough,
And the sink of the mire,
Veins of glory and fire
Run through and transpierce and transpire,
And a secret purpose of glory in every part,
And the answering glory of battle fill my heart;
To thrill with the joy of girded men
To go on for ever and fail and go on again,
And be mauled to the earth and arise,
And contend for the shade of a word and a thing not seen with
the eyes:
With the half of a broken hope for a pillow at night
That somehow the right is the right
And the smooth shall bloom from the rough:
Lord, if that were enough?
XXVI - MY WIFE
TRUSTY, dusky, vivid, true,
With eyes of gold and bramble-dew,
Steel-true and blade-straight,
The great artificer
Made my mate.
Honour, anger, valour, fire;
A love that life could never tire,
Death quench or evil stir,
The mighty master
Gave to her.
Teacher, tender, comrade, wife,
A fellow-farer true through life,
Heart-whole and soul-free
The august father
Gave to me.
XXVII - TO THE MUSE
RESIGN the rhapsody, the dream,
To men of larger reach;
Be ours the quest of a plain theme,
The piety of speech.
As monkish scribes from morning break
Toiled till the close of light,
Nor thought a day too long to make
One line or letter bright:
We also with an ardent mind,
Time, wealth, and fame forgot,
Our glory in our patience find
And skim, and skim the pot:
Till last, when round the house we hear
The evensong of birds,
One corner of blue heaven appear
In our clear well of words.
Leave, leave it then, muse of my heart!
Sans finish and sans frame,
Leave unadorned by needless art
The picture as it came.
XXVIII - TO AN ISLAND PRINCESS
SINCE long ago, a child at home,
I read and longed to rise and roam,
Where'er I went, whate'er I willed,
One promised land my fancy filled.
Hence the long roads my home I made;
Tossed much in ships; have often laid
Below the uncurtained sky my head,
Rain-deluged and wind-buffeted:
And many a thousand hills I crossed
And corners turned - Love's labour lost,
Till, Lady, to your isle of sun
I came, not hoping; and, like one
Snatched out of blindness, rubbed my eyes,
And hailed my promised land with cries.
Yes, Lady, here I was at last;
Here found I all I had forecast:
The long roll of the sapphire sea
That keeps the land's virginity;
The stalwart giants of the wood
Laden with toys and flowers and food;
The precious forest pouring out
To compass the whole town about;
The town itself with streets of lawn,
Loved of the moon, blessed by the dawn,
Where the brown children all the day
Keep up a ceaseless noise of play,
Play in the sun, play in the rain,
Nor ever quarrel or complain; -
And late at night, in the woods of fruit,
Hark! do you hear the passing flute?
I threw one look to either hand,
And knew I was in Fairyland.
And yet one point of being so
I lacked. For, Lady (as you know),
Whoever by his might of hand,
Won entrance into Fairyland,
Found always with admiring eyes
A Fairy princess kind and wise.
It was not long I waited; soon
Upon my threshold, in broad noon,
Gracious and helpful, wise and good,
The Fairy Princess Moe stood.
Tantira, Tahiti, Nov. 5, 1888.
XXIX - TO KALAKAUA (With a present of a Pearl)
THE Silver Ship, my King - that was her name
In the bright islands whence your fathers came -
The Silver Ship, at rest from winds and tides,
Below your palace in your harbour rides:
And the seafarers, sitting safe on shore,
Like eager merchants count their treasures o'er.
One gift they find, one strange and lovely thing,
Now doubly precious since it pleased a king.
The right, my liege, is ancient as the lyre
For bards to give to kings what kings admire.
'Tis mine to offer for Apollo's sake;
And since the gift is fitting, yours to take.
To golden hands the golden pearl I bring:
The ocean jewel to the island king.
Honolulu, Feb. 3, 1889.
XXX - TO PRINCESS KAIULANI
[Written in April to Kaiulani in the April of her age; and at
Waikiki, within easy walk of Kaiulani's banyan! When she comes to my
land and her father's, and the rain beats upon the window (as I fear
it will), let her look at this page; it will be like a weed gathered
and pressed at home; and she will remember her own islands, and the
shadow of the mighty tree; and she will hear the peacocks screaming
Along whose shore the numerous footfalls cease,
The voices and the tears of life expire.
Thither the prints go down, the hero's way
Trod large upon the sand, the trembling maid's:
Nimrod that wound his trumpet in the wood,
And the poor, dreaming child, hunter of flowers,
That here his hunting closes with the great:
So one and all go down, nor aught returns.
For thee, for us, the sacred river waits,
For me, the unworthy, thee, the perfect friend;
There Blame desists, there his unfaltering dogs
He from the chase recalls, and homeward rides;
Yet Praise and Love pass over and go in.
So when, beside that margin, I discard
My more than mortalweakness, and with thee
Through that still land unfearing I advance:
If then at all we keep the touch of joy
Thou shalt rejoice to find me altered - I,
O Felix, to behold thee still unchanged.
XXI
THE morning drum-call on my eager ear
Thrills unforgotten yet; the morning dew
Lies yet undried along my field of noon.
But now I pause at whiles in what I do,
And count the bell, and tremble lest I hear
(My work untrimmed) the sunset gun too soon.
XXII
I HAVE trod the upward and the downward slope;
I have endured and done in days before;
I have longed for all, and bid farewell to hope;
And I have lived and loved, and closed the door.
XXIII
HE hears with gladdened heart the thunder
Peal, and loves the falling dew;
He knows the earth above and under -
Sits and is content to view.
He sits beside the dying ember,
God for hope and man for friend,
Content to see, glad to remember,
Expectant of the certain end.
XXIV
FAREWELL, fair day and fading light!
The clay-born here, with westward sight,
Marks the huge sun now downward soar.
Farewell. We twain shall meet no more.
Farewell. I watch with bursting sigh
My late contemned occasion die.
I lingeruseless in my tent:
Farewell, fair day, so foully spent!
Farewell, fair day. If any God
At all consider this poor clod,
He who the fair occasion sent
Prepared and placed the impediment.
Let him diviner vengeance take -
Give me to sleep, give me to wake
Girded and shod, and bid me play
The hero in the coming day!
XXV - IF THIS WERE FAITH
GOD, if this were enough,
That I see things bare to the buff
And up to the buttocks in mire;
That I ask nor hope nor hire,
Nut in the husk,
Nor dawn beyond the dusk,
Nor life beyond death:
God, if this were faith?
Having felt thy wind in my face
Spit sorrow and disgrace,
Having seen thine evil doom
In Golgotha and Khartoum,
And the brutes, the work of thine hands,
Fill with injustice lands
And stain with blood the sea:
If still in my veins the glee
Of the black night and the sun
And the lost battle, run:
If, an adept,
The iniquitous lists I still accept
With joy, and joy to endure and be withstood,
And still to battle and perish for a dream of good:
God, if that were enough?
If to feel, in the ink of the slough,
And the sink of the mire,
Veins of glory and fire
Run through and transpierce and transpire,
And a secret purpose of glory in every part,
And the answering glory of battle fill my heart;
To thrill with the joy of girded men
To go on for ever and fail and go on again,
And be mauled to the earth and arise,
And contend for the shade of a word and a thing not seen with
the eyes:
With the half of a broken hope for a pillow at night
That somehow the right is the right
And the smooth shall bloom from the rough:
Lord, if that were enough?
XXVI - MY WIFE
TRUSTY, dusky, vivid, true,
With eyes of gold and bramble-dew,
Steel-true and blade-straight,
The great artificer
Made my mate.
Honour, anger, valour, fire;
A love that life could never tire,
Death quench or evil stir,
The mighty master
Gave to her.
Teacher, tender, comrade, wife,
A fellow-farer true through life,
Heart-whole and soul-free
The august father
Gave to me.
XXVII - TO THE MUSE
RESIGN the rhapsody, the dream,
To men of larger reach;
Be ours the quest of a plain theme,
The piety of speech.
As monkish scribes from morning break
Toiled till the close of light,
Nor thought a day too long to make
One line or letter bright:
We also with an ardent mind,
Time, wealth, and fame forgot,
Our glory in our patience find
And skim, and skim the pot:
Till last, when round the house we hear
The evensong of birds,
One corner of blue heaven appear
In our clear well of words.
Leave, leave it then, muse of my heart!
Sans finish and sans frame,
Leave unadorned by needless art
The picture as it came.
XXVIII - TO AN ISLAND PRINCESS
SINCE long ago, a child at home,
I read and longed to rise and roam,
Where'er I went, whate'er I willed,
One promised land my fancy filled.
Hence the long roads my home I made;
Tossed much in ships; have often laid
Below the uncurtained sky my head,
Rain-deluged and wind-buffeted:
And many a thousand hills I crossed
And corners turned - Love's labour lost,
Till, Lady, to your isle of sun
I came, not hoping; and, like one
Snatched out of blindness, rubbed my eyes,
And hailed my promised land with cries.
Yes, Lady, here I was at last;
Here found I all I had forecast:
The long roll of the sapphire sea
That keeps the land's virginity;
The stalwart giants of the wood
Laden with toys and flowers and food;
The precious forest pouring out
To compass the whole town about;
The town itself with streets of lawn,
Loved of the moon, blessed by the dawn,
Where the brown children all the day
Keep up a ceaseless noise of play,
Play in the sun, play in the rain,
Nor ever quarrel or complain; -
And late at night, in the woods of fruit,
Hark! do you hear the passing flute?
I threw one look to either hand,
And knew I was in Fairyland.
And yet one point of being so
I lacked. For, Lady (as you know),
Whoever by his might of hand,
Won entrance into Fairyland,
Found always with admiring eyes
A Fairy princess kind and wise.
It was not long I waited; soon
Upon my threshold, in broad noon,
Gracious and helpful, wise and good,
The Fairy Princess Moe stood.
Tantira, Tahiti, Nov. 5, 1888.
XXIX - TO KALAKAUA (With a present of a Pearl)
THE Silver Ship, my King - that was her name
In the bright islands whence your fathers came -
The Silver Ship, at rest from winds and tides,
Below your palace in your harbour rides:
And the seafarers, sitting safe on shore,
Like eager merchants count their treasures o'er.
One gift they find, one strange and lovely thing,
Now doubly precious since it pleased a king.
The right, my liege, is ancient as the lyre
For bards to give to kings what kings admire.
'Tis mine to offer for Apollo's sake;
And since the gift is fitting, yours to take.
To golden hands the golden pearl I bring:
The ocean jewel to the island king.
Honolulu, Feb. 3, 1889.
XXX - TO PRINCESS KAIULANI
[Written in April to Kaiulani in the April of her age; and at
Waikiki, within easy walk of Kaiulani's banyan! When she comes to my
land and her father's, and the rain beats upon the window (as I fear
it will), let her look at this page; it will be like a weed gathered
and pressed at home; and she will remember her own islands, and the
shadow of the mighty tree; and she will hear the peacocks screaming
- hunter [´hʌntə]
n.猎人；猎狗；猎马 (初中英语单词) - sacred [´seikrid] a.神圣的；庄严的 (初中英语单词)
- weakness [´wi:knis] n.虚弱；弱点，缺点 (初中英语单词)
- rejoice [ri´dʒɔis] v.(使)高兴；欢庆 (初中英语单词)
- sunset [´sʌnset] n.日落；晚霞 (初中英语单词)
- upward [´ʌpwəd] a.&ad.向上(的)；以上 (初中英语单词)
- farewell [feə´wel] int.再见 n.&a.告别 (初中英语单词)
- linger [´liŋgə] v.逗留；留恋；拖延 (初中英语单词)
- useless [´ju:sləs] a.无用的，无价值的 (初中英语单词)
- endure [in´djuə] vt.忍耐，忍受；坚持 (初中英语单词)
- perish [´periʃ] v.灭亡；消灭；(使)死去 (初中英语单词)
- thrill [θril] v.震惊；激动；刺激 (初中英语单词)
- wealth [welθ] n.财富，财产 (初中英语单词)
- patience [´peiʃəns] n.忍耐(力)；耐心；坚韧 (初中英语单词)
- compass [´kʌmpəs] n.指南针；圆规 (初中英语单词)
- complain [kəm´plein] vi.抱怨，叫屈；控诉 (初中英语单词)
- princess [,prin´ses] n.公主；王妃；亲王夫人 (初中英语单词)
- trumpet [´trʌmpit] n.喇叭；小号 (高中英语单词)
- homeward [´həumwəd] ad.&a.回家(的) (高中英语单词)
- margin [´mɑ:dʒin] n.边缘；空白；余地 (高中英语单词)
- mortal [´mɔ:tl] a.致命的 n.凡人 (高中英语单词)
- downward [´daunwəd] a.下降的，向下的 (高中英语单词)
- westward [´westwəd] a.向西的 n.西方；西部 (高中英语单词)
- vengeance [´vendʒəns] n.报复，复仇 (高中英语单词)
- injustice [in´dʒʌstis] n.不公正，不公平 (高中英语单词)
- contend [kən´tend] v.竞争；斗争；争论 (高中英语单词)
- quench [kwentʃ] v.熄灭；平息；压制 (高中英语单词)
- mighty [´maiti] a.强有力的 ad.很 (高中英语单词)
- needless [´ni:dləs] a.不必要的；无用的 (高中英语单词)
- threshold [´θreʃhəuld] n.门槛；入门；开端 (高中英语单词)
- unworthy [ʌn´wə:ði] a.不值得的；不足道的 (英语四级单词)
- valour [´vælə] n.英勇，勇猛 (英语四级单词)
- ardent [´ɑ:dənt] a.热心的；热情洋溢的 (英语四级单词)
- blindness [´blaindnis] n.失明；愚味，文盲 (英语四级单词)
- sapphire [´sæfaiə] n.蓝宝石 a.深蓝色的 (英语四级单词)
- blessed [´blesid] a.享福的；神圣的 (英语四级单词)
- whence [wens] ad.从何处；从那里 (英语四级单词)
- hunting [´hʌntiŋ] n.打猎 (英语六级单词)
- august [ɔ:´gʌst] a.尊严的；威严的 (英语六级单词)
- ceaseless [´si:slis] a.不绝的，不停的 (英语六级单词)
- doubly [´dʌbli] ad.加倍地，双重地 (英语六级单词)
- fitting [´fitiŋ] a.适当的 n.试衣 (英语六级单词)
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章节正文
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