颂诗译选

第二次来临

凌风 译

盘旋复盘旋圈子越来越大
鹰不再受蓄鹰者的驭使；
事务散盘了；中心失去控制；
成为只是乱民的世界，
贫血的潮流氾滥，到处
对清白的尊重被淹沒了；
最好的人全然缺乏信念，但最坏的
卻满有強烈的热情。
定然是某种启示临近了；
定然是第二次来临近了。
第二次来临！这句话刚完
就有一个巨大的形象灵感
出现使我不安：在某地荒漠散沙中间
一个狮身人首的模样，
像太阳漠然无怜悯的注视，
它的腿缓慢的移动，在它的周围
是沙漠群鸟畏缩的影子。
黑暗又降临；但现在我知道
二十个世纪的沉睡
苦恼的被搖篮搖成噩梦，
那么粗暴的兽，它的时刻终於来临，
懒散的走向伯利恆出生。

叶慈（1865-1939）是爱尔兰诗人，剧作家，並国会议员，获1923年诺贝尔文学奖。

The Second Coming

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot bear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

1921

William Butler Yeats（1865-1939）
Irish poet, dramatist, and senator,
winner of Nobel Prize for Literature in 1923.