Walden 《瓦尔登湖》，亨利•梭罗 (Henry David Thoreau)著 摘录三
2016-04-14 14:48阅读：
l Yet I experienced
sometimes that the most sweet and tender, the most innocent and
encouraging society may be found in any natural object, even for
the poor misanthrope and most melancholy man.
l While I enjoy the
friendship of the seasons I trust that nothing can make life a
burden to me.
l Sometimes when I compare
myself with other men, it seems as if I were more favored by the
gods than they, beyond any deserts that I am conscious of; as if I
had a warrant and surety at their hands which my fellows have not,
and were especially guided and guarded.
l Some of my pleasantest
hours were during the long rain-storms in the spring or fall, which
confined me to the house for the afternoon, as well as the
forenoon, soothed by their ceaseless roar and pelting; when an
early twilight ushered in a
long evening in which many thoughts had time to take root and
unfold themselves.
l In those driving
northeast rains which tried the village houses so, when the maids
stood ready with mop and pail in front entries to keep the
deluge洪水 out, I sat behind
my door in my little house, which was all entry, and thoroughly
enjoyed its protection.
l In one heavy
thunder-shower the lighting struck a large pitch pine across
the pond, making a very conspicuous and perfectly
regular spiral groove from top to bottom, an inch or more deep, and
four or five inches wide, as you would groove a
walking-stick.
l Men frequently say to me,
“I should think you would feel lonesome down there, and want to be
nearer to folks, rainy and snowy days and nights especially.” I am
tempted to reply to such—This whole earth
which we inhabit is but a point in space.
l How far apart, think you,
dwell the two most distant inhabitants of yonder star, the breadth
of whose disk cannot be appreciated by our instruments? Why should
I feel lonely? Is not our planet in the Milky Way? This is which
you put seems to me not to be the most important question. What
sort of space is that which separates a man from his fellows and
makes him solitary? I have found that no exertion of the legs can
bring two minds much nearer to one another. What do we want most to
dwell near to? Not to many men surely, the depot, the post-office,
the bar-room, the meeting-house, the school-house, the grocery,
Beacon Hill, or the Five Points, where men most congregate, but to
the perennial source of our life, whence in all our experience we
have found that to issue, as the willow stands near the water and
sends out its roots in that direction. This will vary with
different natures, but this is the place where a wise man will dig
his cellar…. I one evening overtook one of my townsmen, who has
accumulated what is called “a handsome
property”—on the Walden road, driving a
pair of cattle to market, who inquired of me how I could bring my
mind to give up so many of the comforts of life. I answered that I
was very sure I like it passably well; I was not joking. And so I
went home to my bed, and left him to pick his way through the
darkness and the mud to Brighton-or Brightown-which place he would
reach some time in the morning.
l How vast and profound is
the influence of the subtile powers of Heaven and of Earth! They
cause that in all the universe men purify and sanctify their
hearts, and clothe themselves in their holiday garments to offer
sacrifices and oblations to their ancestors. It is an ocean of
subtile intelligences. They are everywhere, above us, on our left,
on our right; they environ us on all sides.”
l We are the subjects of an
experiment which is not a little interesting to me. Can we not do
without the society of our gossips a little while under these
circumstances-have our own thoughts to cheer us? Confucius says
truly, “Virtue does not remain as an abandoned orphan; it must of
necessity have neighbors.”
l When the play, it may be
the tragedy, of life is over, the spectator goes his way. It was a
kind of fiction, a work of the imagination only, so far as he was
concerned.
l I find it wholesome to be
alone the greater part of the time. To be in company, even with the
best, is soon wearisome and dissipating. I love to be alone. I
never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude. We
are for the most part more lonely when we go abroad among men than
when we stay in our chambers. A man thinking or working is always
alone, let him be where he will. Solitude is not measured by the
miles of space that intervene between a man and his fellows. The
really diligent student in one of the crowded hives of Cambridge
College is as solitary as a dervish in the desert. The farmer can
work alone in the field or the woods all day, hoeing or chopping,
and not feel lonesome, because he is employed; but when he comes
home at night he cannot sit down in a room alone, at the mercy of
his thoughts, but must be where he can “see the folks,” and
recreate, and, as he thinks, remunerate himself for his day’s
solitude; and hence he wonders how the student can sit alone in the
house all night and most of the day without ennui and “the blues”;
but he does not realize that the student, though in the house, is
still at work in his field, and chopping in his woods, as the
farmer in his, and in turn seeks the same recreation and society
that the latter does though it may be a more condensed form of
it.
l We have had to agree on a
certain set of rules, called etiquette and politeness, to make this
frequent meeting tolerable and that we need not come to open war.
We meet at the post-office, and at the sociable, and about the
fireside every night; we live thick and are in each other’s way,
and stumble over one another, and I think that we thus lose some
respect for one another. Certainly less frequency would suffice for
all important and hearty communications.
l And yet it has not the
blue devils, but the blue angels in it, in the azure thin of tis
waters. The sun is alone, except in thick weather, when there
sometimes appear to be two, but one is mock sun. God is alone-but
the devil, he is far from being alone; he sees a great deal of
company; he is legion. I am no more lonely than a single mullein or
dandelion in a pasture, or a bean leaf, or sorrel, or a horsefly,
or a bumblebee. I am no more lonely than the Mill Brook or a
weathercock, or the north star, or the south wind, or an April
Shower, or a January thaw, or the first spider in a new
house.
I have occasional visits in the long winter
evenings, when the snow falls fast and the wind howls in the wood,
from an old settler and original proprietor, who is reported to
have dug Walden Pond, and stoned it, and fringed it with pine
woods; who tells me stories of old time an of new eternity; and
between us we manage to pass a cheerful evening with social mirth
and pleasant views of things, even without apples or cider-a most
wise and humorous friend, whom I love much, who keeps himself more
secret than ever did Goffe or Whalley; and though he is thought to
be dead, none can show where he is
buried.
A ruddy and lusty old dame, who delights in all
weathers and seasons, and is likely to outlive all her children
yet.
Morning air! If men will not drink of this at the
fountain-head of the day, why, then, we must even bottle up some
and sell it in the shops, for the benefit of those who have lost
their subscription ticket to morning time in this world. But
remember, it will not keep quite till noonday even in the coolest
cellar, but drive out the stopples long ere that and follow
westward the steps of Aurora.
I
am no worshipper of Hygeia, who was the daughter of that old
herb-doctor Aesculapius, and who is represented on monuments
holding a serpent in one hand, and in the other a cup out of which
the serpent sometimes drinks; but rather of Hebe, cup-bearer to
Jupiter, who was the daughter of Juno and wild lettuce, and who had
the power of restoring gods and men to the vigor of youth. She was
probably the only thoroughly sound-conditioned, healthy, and robust
young lady that ever walked the globe, and wherever she came it was
spring.
