Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
Is hung with bloom along the bough,
And stands about the woodland ride
Wearing white for Eastertide. Now, of my threescore years and ten,
Twenty will not come again,
And take from seventy springs a score,
It only leaves me fifty more. And since to look at things in bloom
Fifty springs are little room,
About the woodlands I will go
To see the cherry hung with snow.
注1:阿尔弗列德·爱德华·霍斯曼
(Alfred Edward
Housman),英国诗人和学者,伦敦大学拉丁文教授,后来被选为剑桥大学三一学院拉丁语系“‘肯尼迪’系主任”(the
Kennedy Chair of Latin at
Cambridge)。他创作的一些篇幅短小的作品为他赢得了极大的荣誉。他的最初两本著作花了他二十五年时间。霍斯曼德诗歌语言极其简朴、精炼和自然,这可能与他古典文学修养和拉丁文的简练有关。他的诗篇的主题大多与消逝的春天和青春以及生命的短暂有关,充满悲剧情调。 霍斯曼在英国文学史上地位很高,有人甚至认为他“不但是他那个时代唯一伟大的英国古典学者,而且也是任何时代、任何地方少有的伟大学者之一。”('a
man who turned out to be not only the great English
classical scholar of his time but also one of
the few real and great scholarsanywhereat
any time'. Charles Oscar Brink, English
Classical Scholarship: Historical
reflections on Bentley, Porson and Housman,James
Clarke & Co,Oxford,
Oxford University
Press, New York, 1986
p.149) 注2:“在我一生的七十年中”,来自于《圣经·诗篇90》:“我们的一生有三个二十加十年”
(“The days of our
years are three score years and
ten”)。