Walking

I wish to speak a word for Nature, for absolute Freedom and Wildness, as contrasted with a freedom and culture merely civil,—to regard man as an inhabitant, or a part and parcel of Nature, rather than a member of society. I wish to make an extreme statement, if so I may make an emphatic one, for there are enough champions of civilization: the minister and the school committee and every one of you will take care of that.

我想为自然说一句话，为绝对的自由与野性说一句话，以区别于那种仅仅属于市民的自由与教养；我想把人看作自然的居民，看作自然的一部分，而不是社会的一员。我想作一番极端的陈述，但愿这样能说得有力些，因为为文明鼓吹的人已经够多了：牧师、学校委员会，还有你们每一位，都会照管好这件事。

It is true, we are but faint-hearted crusaders, even the walkers, nowadays, who undertake no persevering, never-ending enterprises. Our expeditions are but tours, and come round again at evening to the old hearth-side from which we set out. Half the walk is but retracing our steps. We should go forth on the shortest walk, perchance, in the spirit of undying adventure, never to return,—prepared to send back our embalmed hearts only as relics to our desolate kingdoms. If you are ready to leave father and mother, and brother and sister, and wife and child and friends, and never see them again,—if you have paid your debts, and made your will, and settled all your affairs, and are a free man; then you are ready for a walk.

确实，如今我们只是些胆怯的十字军，连散步的人也是，我们不肯承担坚持不懈、永无止境的事业。我们的远征不过是游览，到了傍晚又绕回我们出发时的那个老炉边。散步有一半只是在重走来路。也许，我们哪怕去走最短的一段路，也应当怀着不朽的冒险精神出发，永不回头，准备好只把我们经过防腐处理的心，作为遗物送回我们荒凉的王国。如果你准备好离开父母、兄弟姐妹、妻儿和朋友，永不再见；如果你已经还清了债务，立好了遗嘱，安排好了一切事务，是一个自由的人，那么你就可以去散步了。

To come down to my own experience, my companion and I, for I sometimes have a companion, take pleasure in fancying ourselves knights of a new, or rather an old, order—not Equestrians or Chevaliers, not Ritters or Riders, but Walkers, a still more ancient and honorable class, I trust. The chivalric and heroic spirit which once belonged to the Rider seems now to reside in, or perchance to have subsided into, the Walker—not the Knight, but Walker Errant. He is a sort of fourth estate, outside of Church and State and People.

说到我自己的经验，我和我的同伴（因为我有时有个同伴）喜欢把自己想象成一个新的、或者不如说是古老的骑士团的骑士：不是骑马者（Equestrians），不是骑士（Chevaliers），不是骑手（Ritters、Riders），而是步行者（Walkers），我相信这是一个更古老、更可敬的阶层。曾经属于骑马者的那种骑士精神与英雄精神，如今似乎寓于、或者沉降到了步行者身上：不是游侠骑士，而是游侠步行者。他是一种第四等级，在教会、国家和人民之外。

“When he came to grene wode, / In a mery mornynge, / There he herde the notes small / Of byrdes mery syngynge.

“他来到绿林之中， / 在一个快活的早晨， / 他听见细细的音符， / 是鸟儿快活的歌声。

“It is ferre gone, sayd Robyn, / That I was last here; / Me lyste a lytell for to shote / At the donne dere.”

“罗宾说，自从我上回来到这里， / 已经过去很久很久； / 我想稍稍射上一射 / 那褐色的鹿。”

I think that I cannot preserve my health and spirits, unless I spend four hours a day at least—and it is commonly more than that—sauntering through the woods and over the hills and fields, absolutely free from all worldly engagements. You may safely say, A penny for your thoughts, or a thousand pounds. When sometimes I am reminded that the mechanics and shopkeepers stay in their shops not only all the forenoon, but all the afternoon too, sitting with crossed legs, so many of them—as if the legs were made to sit upon, and not to stand or walk upon—I think that they deserve some credit for not having all committed suicide long ago.

我想，我若不是每天至少花四个小时——通常还不止——在林间、在山冈和田野上闲逛，完全摆脱一切俗务，就无法保持身体和精神的健康。你尽可以放心地说：“一便士买你的心思”，说一千镑也行。有时我想起，那些手艺人和店主不但整个上午、而且整个下午都待在店里，那么多人盘着腿坐着——仿佛腿生来是用来坐的，而不是用来站、用来走的——我就觉得，他们没有早就统统自杀，倒是值得称道的。

I, who cannot stay in my chamber for a single day without acquiring some rust, and when sometimes I have stolen forth for a walk at the eleventh hour of four o’clock in the afternoon, too late to redeem the day, when the shades of night were already beginning to be mingled with the daylight, have felt as if I had committed some sin to be atoned for,—I confess that I am astonished at the power of endurance, to say nothing of the moral insensibility, of my neighbors who confine themselves to shops and offices the whole day for weeks and months, aye, and years almost together. I know not what manner of stuff they are of—sitting there now at three o’clock in the afternoon, as if it were three o’clock in the morning. Bonaparte may talk of the three-o’clock-in-the-morning courage, but it is nothing to the courage which can sit down cheerfully at this hour in the afternoon over against one’s self whom you have known all the morning, to starve out a garrison to whom you are bound by such strong ties of sympathy. I wonder that about this time, or say between four and five o’clock in the afternoon, too late for the morning papers and too early for the evening ones, there is not a general explosion heard up and down the street, scattering a legion of antiquated and house-bred notions and whims to the four winds for an airing—and so the evil cure itself.

我这个人，在屋里待上一天就不能不生些锈；有时拖到下午四点，那已是“第十一个钟头”，才偷偷溜出去散步，已经太晚，挽回不了这一天，夜的阴影已开始混进日光里，我便觉得仿佛犯了什么须要赎还的罪过——我承认，我对邻居们的忍耐力感到惊讶，更不必说他们道德上的麻木了：他们一连几个星期、几个月，啊，差不多一连几年，整天把自己关在店铺和办公室里。我不知道他们是什么材料做成的——下午三点钟坐在那里，仿佛那是凌晨三点。波拿巴尽可以谈论凌晨三点钟的勇气，但那比起另一种勇气来就算不了什么：在下午的这个时辰，高高兴兴地坐下来，面对着整个上午你都已认识的那个自己，去困死一支你和它有着那样深厚的同情纽带的守军。我奇怪的是，在这个时候，或者说在下午四五点之间，晨报已嫌太晚、晚报又嫌太早的时候，街头巷尾竟没有响起一声总爆炸，把一大群陈旧的、在屋里养大的念头和怪癖吹散到四面八方去透透气——于是这病也就自己治好了。

How womankind, who are confined to the house still more than men, stand it I do not know; but I have ground to suspect that most of them do not stand it at all. When, early in a summer afternoon, we have been shaking the dust of the village from the skirts of our garments, making haste past those houses with purely Doric or Gothic fronts, which have such an air of repose about them, my companion whispers that probably about these times their occupants are all gone to bed. Then it is that I appreciate the beauty and the glory of architecture, which itself never turns in, but forever stands out and erect, keeping watch over the slumberers.

女人比男人更被困在家里，她们怎样忍受得了，我不知道；但我有理由怀疑，她们大多数根本就忍受不了。夏日午后，时候还早，我们抖落衣襟上村子的尘土，匆匆走过那些纯粹多立克式或哥特式门面的房子，它们周身带着那样一种安歇的气息，我的同伴便低声说，大概这个时候，屋里的人都上床睡觉去了。正是在这时，我领会到了建筑的美与荣耀：它自己从不上床，而是永远在外面挺立着，为睡着的人守夜。

No doubt temperament, and, above all, age, have a good deal to do with it. As a man grows older, his ability to sit still and follow indoor occupations increases. He grows vespertinal in his habits as the evening of life approaches, till at last he comes forth only just before sundown, and gets all the walk that he requires in half an hour.

毫无疑问，气质，尤其是年龄，与此大有关系。人越老，静坐不动、从事室内工作的本事就越大。随着人生的傍晚临近，他的习性也越来越属于黄昏，直到最后，他只在日落之前才出门，半个小时就走够了他需要走的路。

But the walking of which I speak has nothing in it akin to taking exercise, as it is called, as the sick take medicine at stated hours—as the swinging of dumb-bells or chairs; but is itself the enterprise and adventure of the day. If you would get exercise, go in search of the springs of life. Think of a man’s swinging dumb-bells for his health, when those springs are bubbling up in far-off pastures unsought by him!

但我所说的散步，和所谓的锻炼毫无相似之处，不像病人定时吃药，不像挥舞哑铃或者椅子；散步本身就是一天的事业和冒险。如果你想锻炼，就去寻找生命的泉源吧。想想看，一个人为了健康挥舞着哑铃，而那些泉水正在远方的牧场上汩汩涌出，他却不去寻找！

Moreover, you must walk like a camel, which is said to be the only beast which ruminates when walking. When a traveler asked Wordsworth’s servant to show him her master’s study, she answered, “Here is his library, but his study is out of doors.”

此外，你得像骆驼那样散步，据说骆驼是唯一一种边走边反刍的牲口。有位旅人请华兹华斯的女仆领他去看看主人的书房，她回答说：“这里是他的藏书室，可他的书房在外头。”

Living much out of doors, in the sun and wind, will no doubt produce a certain roughness of character—will cause a thicker cuticle to grow over some of the finer qualities of our nature, as on the face and hands, or as severe manual labor robs the hands of some of their delicacy of touch. So staying in the house, on the other hand, may produce a softness and smoothness, not to say thinness of skin, accompanied by an increased sensibility to certain impressions. Perhaps we should be more susceptible to some influences important to our intellectual and moral growth, if the sun had shone and the wind blown on us a little less; and no doubt it is a nice matter to proportion rightly the thick and thin skin. But methinks that is a scurf that will fall off fast enough—that the natural remedy is to be found in the proportion which the night bears to the day, the winter to the summer, thought to experience. There will be so much the more air and sunshine in our thoughts. The callous palms of the laborer are conversant with finer tissues of self-respect and heroism, whose touch thrills the heart, than the languid fingers of idleness. That is mere sentimentality that lies abed by day and thinks itself white, far from the tan and callus of experience.

多在户外，在阳光和风里生活，无疑会使性格生出某种粗糙——会使我们天性中某些较精细的品质上长出一层较厚的表皮，就像脸上和手上那样，又像繁重的体力劳动会夺去双手的一些细腻触感。反过来，待在屋里，也许会使人柔软光滑，更不必说皮肤变薄，同时对某些印象更加敏感。如果阳光少照我们一些，风少吹我们一些，我们对某些于智力和道德的成长十分要紧的影响，或许会更易感受；毫无疑问，把厚皮和薄皮调配得恰到好处，是件微妙的事。但我想，那是一层很快就会脱落的皮屑——天然的疗法，就在夜之于昼、冬之于夏、思想之于经验的比例之中。这样，我们的思想里便会多一些空气和阳光。劳动者长满老茧的手掌，比游手好闲者软绵绵的手指，更熟悉自尊与英雄气概那些更精细的纹理，它们一触，就叫人心头颤动。那种白天躺在床上、自以为白皙、远离经验的晒痕和老茧的东西，不过是多愁善感罢了。

When we walk, we naturally go to the fields and woods: what would become of us, if we walked only in a garden or a mall? Even some sects of philosophers have felt the necessity of importing the woods to themselves, since they did not go to the woods. “They planted groves and walks of Platanes,” where they took subdiales ambulationes in porticos open to the air. Of course it is of no use to direct our steps to the woods, if they do not carry us thither. I am alarmed when it happens that I have walked a mile into the woods bodily, without getting there in spirit. In my afternoon walk I would fain forget all my morning occupations and my obligations to society. But it sometimes happens that I cannot easily shake off the village. The thought of some work will run in my head and I am not where my body is—I am out of my senses. In my walks I would fain return to my senses. What business have I in the woods, if I am thinking of something out of the woods? I suspect myself, and cannot help a shudder when I find myself so implicated even in what are called good works—for this may sometimes happen.

我们散步，自然会走向田野和树林：要是只在花园里或林荫道上散步，我们会变成什么样子呢？甚至有些哲学派别也觉得有必要把树林引到自己身边来，因为他们不到树林里去。“他们种下了小树林和悬铃木的步道”，在向天空敞开的柱廊里作露天的散步（subdiales ambulationes）。当然，如果我们的脚步不能把我们带到树林里去，把脚步引向树林也是枉然。有时我的身体已经走进树林一英里了，精神却还没有到那里，这时我便感到惊慌。在午后的散步中，我很想忘掉上午所有的事务，忘掉我对社会的义务。可有时我很难甩掉村子。某件工作的念头会在我脑子里打转，我不在身体所在的地方——我神不守舍了。我散步，正是想回过神来，回到自己的感官里。如果我想的是树林以外的事，我到树林里来做什么呢？当我发现自己竟被牵扯进哪怕是所谓的善行里——因为这有时也会发生——我就怀疑起自己来，忍不住打个寒战。

Nowadays almost all man’s improvements, so called, as the building of houses and the cutting down of the forest and of all large trees, simply deform the landscape, and make it more and more tame and cheap. A people who would begin by burning the fences and let the forest stand! I saw the fences half consumed, their ends lost in the middle of the prairie, and some worldly miser with a surveyor looking after his bounds, while heaven had taken place around him, and he did not see the angels going to and fro, but was looking for an old post-hole in the midst of paradise. I looked again, and saw him standing in the middle of a boggy Stygian fen, surrounded by devils, and he had found his bounds without a doubt, three little stones, where a stake had been driven, and looking nearer, I saw that the Prince of Darkness was his surveyor.

如今，人类几乎所有所谓的改良，比如盖房子、砍伐森林和所有的大树，都只是让风景变形，让它越来越驯顺、越来越廉价。要是有一个民族，一开始就把篱笆烧掉，让森林留着，那该多好！我看见篱笆烧掉了一半，它们的尽头消失在草原中央；某个俗气的守财奴带着一个测量员在查看他的地界，而天堂已经在他周围降临，他却看不见天使们来来往往，只顾在乐园中央找一个旧桩洞。我再看时，看见他站在一片冥河般的泥沼中央，四周全是魔鬼；他无疑找到了他的地界，三块小石头，那里曾经打下过一根木桩；再走近些看，我看见黑暗之王正是他的测量员。

I can easily walk ten, fifteen, twenty, any number of miles, commencing at my own door, without going by any house, without crossing a road except where the fox and the mink do: first along by the river, and then the brook, and then the meadow and the wood-side. There are square miles in my vicinity which have no inhabitant. From many a hill I can see civilization and the abodes of man afar. The farmers and their works are scarcely more obvious than woodchucks and their burrows. Man and his affairs, church and state and school, trade and commerce, and manufactures and agriculture even politics, the most alarming of them all,—I am pleased to see how little space they occupy in the landscape. Politics is but a narrow field, and that still narrower highway yonder leads to it. I sometimes direct the traveler thither. If you would go to the political world, follow the great road,—follow that market-man, keep his dust in your eyes, and it will lead you straight to it; for it, too, has its place merely, and does not occupy all space. I pass from it as from a bean field into the forest, and it is forgotten. In one half hour I can walk off to some portion of the earth’s surface where a man does not stand from one year’s end to another, and there, consequently, politics are not, for they are but as the cigar smoke of a man.

我能轻轻松松地走上十英里、十五英里、二十英里，多少英里都行，从自家门口出发，不经过一所房子，除了狐狸和水貂过路的地方，也不穿过一条道路：先沿着河，再沿着小溪，然后是草地和林边。我家附近有好几平方英里的地方没有一个居民。从许多座山冈上，我能看见远处的文明和人的住所。农夫和他们的劳作，并不比土拨鼠和它们的洞穴更显眼。人和人的事务，教会、国家和学校，贸易和商业，制造业和农业，甚至政治，这一切当中最叫人惊恐的东西——我很高兴地看到，它们在风景中只占那么一点地方。政治不过是一块狭窄的田地，而那边那条更窄的大路通向它。我有时给旅人指那条路。如果你要去政治的世界，就沿着大路走——跟着那个赶集的人，让他扬起的尘土迷着你的眼，它就会把你径直领到那里；因为政治也只有它自己的一块地方，并没有占满一切空间。我离开它，就像从一块豆田走进森林，转眼就把它忘了。只要半个小时，我就能走到地球表面的某个地方，那里一年到头都没有人站立，因此那里也就没有政治，因为政治不过像一个人吐出的雪茄烟。

The village is the place to which the roads tend, a sort of expansion of the highway, as a lake of a river. It is the body of which roads are the arms and legs—a trivial or quadrivial place, the thoroughfare and ordinary of travelers. The word is from the Latin villa which together with via, a way, or more anciently ved and vella, Varro derives from veho, to carry, because the villa is the place to and from which things are carried. They who got their living by teaming were said vellaturam facere. Hence, too, apparently the Latin word vilis and our vile; also villain. This suggests what kind of degeneracy villagers are liable to. They are wayworn by the travel that goes by and over them, without traveling themselves.

村子是道路所趋向的地方，是大路的一种扩展，就像湖是河的扩展。它是身体，道路是它的胳膊和腿——一个三岔路口或四岔路口的地方（trivial or quadrivial），是旅人的通衢和客栈。这个词来自拉丁文 villa；瓦罗把它和 via（道路），或者更古老的 ved 和 vella 一起，推源于 veho，意思是运送，因为 villa 是东西运来运去的地方。靠赶车谋生的人，被说成是 vellaturam facere。由此，显然也来了拉丁文的 vilis（卑贱）和我们的 vile；还有 villain（恶棍）。这让人想到，村民容易陷入哪一种堕落。从他们身边、从他们身上经过的旅行把他们磨得疲惫不堪，他们自己却从不旅行。

However, there are a few old roads that may be trodden with profit, as if they led somewhere now that they are nearly discontinued. There is the Old Marlborough Road, which does not go to Marlborough now, methinks, unless that is Marlborough where it carries me. I am the bolder to speak of it here, because I presume that there are one or two such roads in every town.

不过，有几条老路还是走一走有好处的，如今它们差不多已经废弃，倒仿佛真通向什么地方似的。有一条老马尔伯勒路，我想，如今它已经不通往马尔伯勒了，除非它把我带去的地方就是马尔伯勒。我之所以敢在这里说起它，是因为我猜每个镇上都有一两条这样的路。

The Old Marlborough Road.

老马尔伯勒路

Where they once dug for money, / But never found any; / Where sometimes Martial Miles / Singly files, / And Elijah Wood, / I fear for no good: / No other man, / Save Elisha Dugan— / O man of wild habits, / Partridges and rabbits, / Who hast no cares / Only to set snares, / Who liv’st all alone, / Close to the bone; / And where life is sweetest / Constantly eatest. / When the spring stirs my blood / With the instinct to travel, / I can get enough gravel / On the Old Marlborough Road. / Nobody repairs it, / For nobody wears it; / It is a living way, / As the Christians say. / Not many there be / Who enter therein, / Only the guests of the / Irishman Quin. / What is it, what is it / But a direction out there, / And the bare possibility / Of going somewhere? / Great guide boards of stone, / But travelers none; / Cenotaphs of the towns / Named on their crowns. / It is worth going to see / Where you might be. / What king / Did the thing, / I am still wondering; / Set up how or when, / By what selectmen, / Gourgas or Lee, / Clark or Darby? / They’re a great endeavor / To be something forever; / Blank tablets of stone, / Where a traveler might groan, / And in one sentence / Grave all that is known / Which another might read, / In his extreme need. / I know one or two / Lines that would do, / Literature that might stand / All over the land, / Which a man could remember / Till next December, / And read again in the spring, / After the thawing. / If with fancy unfurled / You leave your abode, / You may go round the world / By the Old Marlborough Road.

那里人们曾经挖过钱， / 却从没挖到一个子儿； / 那里有时马歇尔·迈尔斯 / 独自走过， / 还有以利亚·伍德， / 我怕他没干好事： / 再没有别的人， / 除了以利沙·杜根—— / 啊，你这习性野放的人， / 山鹑和野兔， / 你没有别的心事， / 只管去下套子， / 你独自一人过活， / 紧贴着骨头； / 哪里日子最甜， / 就在哪里吃个不停。 / 当春天搅动我的血， / 生出远行的本能， / 我就能踩够砂砾， / 在老马尔伯勒路上。 / 没有人修它， / 因为没有人走它； / 它是一条活路， / 正像基督徒说的那样。 / 那里没有多少人 / 从这门进去， / 只有那个 / 爱尔兰人奎因的客人。 / 它是什么，它是什么， / 不过是那边的一个方向， / 和一点点可能， / 通往某个地方？ / 巨大的石头路牌， / 却不见一个旅人； / 是那些城镇的空墓碑， / 名字刻在它们的顶上。 / 值得去看一看， / 你可能会在哪里。 / 是哪一位国王 / 做了这件事， / 我至今还在纳闷； / 怎样立起、何时立起， / 由哪几位镇务委员， / 古尔加斯还是李， / 克拉克还是达比？ / 它们是一番伟大的努力， / 要永远成为点什么； / 空白的石板， / 旅人可以在那里叹息， / 并用一句话 / 刻下所知的一切， / 好让另一个人去读， / 在他万分需要的时候。 / 我知道一两 / 行诗正合用， / 那样的文字可以立遍 / 这整片土地， / 一个人可以把它记着， / 直到来年十二月， / 到了春天再读一遍， / 在冰雪消融以后。 / 如果你展开想象， / 离开你的住处， / 你就可以环游世界， / 沿着老马尔伯勒路。

At present, in this vicinity, the best part of the land is not private property; the landscape is not owned, and the walker enjoys comparative freedom. But possibly the day will come when it will be partitioned off into so-called pleasure grounds, in which a few will take a narrow and exclusive pleasure only,—when fences shall be multiplied, and man traps and other engines invented to confine men to the public road, and walking over the surface of God’s earth shall be construed to mean trespassing on some gentleman’s grounds. To enjoy a thing exclusively is commonly to exclude yourself from the true enjoyment of it. Let us improve our opportunities, then, before the evil days come.

目前，在这一带，最好的土地还不是私有财产；风景不归谁所有，散步的人享有相对的自由。但也许有一天，这些土地会被分割成所谓的游乐园，只有少数人能在里面享受一种狭隘而排他的乐趣——到那时，篱笆会越来越多，人们会发明捕人的陷阱和别的机关，把人限制在公路上，而在上帝的大地上行走，会被解释成擅闯某位绅士的领地。独享一样东西，通常就是把自己排除在对它的真正享受之外。那么，让我们在坏日子到来之前，好好利用我们的机会吧。

What is it that makes it so hard sometimes to determine whither we will walk? I believe that there is a subtle magnetism in Nature, which, if we unconsciously yield to it, will direct us aright. It is not indifferent to us which way we walk. There is a right way; but we are very liable from heedlessness and stupidity to take the wrong one. We would fain take that walk, never yet taken by us through this actual world, which is perfectly symbolical of the path which we love to travel in the interior and ideal world; and sometimes, no doubt, we find it difficult to choose our direction, because it does not yet exist distinctly in our idea.

是什么使我们有时那样难以决定往哪里走呢？我相信自然中有一种微妙的磁力，如果我们不自觉地顺从它，它就会把我们引上正路。往哪条路走，对我们并不是无所谓的。有一条正确的路；但我们很容易因为粗心和愚蠢而走上错路。我们很想走这样一条路：在这个现实的世界里我们还从未走过，而它恰恰完美地象征着我们在内在的、理想的世界里喜爱走的那条路；有时，我们无疑难以选择方向，因为那条路在我们的观念中还没有清晰地存在。

When I go out of the house for a walk, uncertain as yet whither I will bend my steps, and submit myself to my instinct to decide for me, I find, strange and whimsical as it may seem, that I finally and inevitably settle southwest, toward some particular wood or meadow or deserted pasture or hill in that direction. My needle is slow to settle—varies a few degrees, and does not always point due southwest, it is true, and it has good authority for this variation, but it always settles between west and south-southwest. The future lies that way to me, and the earth seems more unexhausted and richer on that side. The outline which would bound my walks would be, not a circle, but a parabola, or rather like one of those cometary orbits which have been thought to be non-returning curves, in this case opening westward, in which my house occupies the place of the sun. I turn round and round irresolute sometimes for a quarter of an hour, until I decide, for a thousandth time, that I will walk into the southwest or west. Eastward I go only by force; but westward I go free. Thither no business leads me. It is hard for me to believe that I shall find fair landscapes or sufficient wildness and freedom behind the eastern horizon. I am not excited by the prospect of a walk thither; but I believe that the forest which I see in the western horizon stretches uninterruptedly toward the setting sun, and there are no towns nor cities in it of enough consequence to disturb me. Let me live where I will, on this side is the city, on that the wilderness, and ever I am leaving the city more and more, and withdrawing into the wilderness. I should not lay so much stress on this fact, if I did not believe that something like this is the prevailing tendency of my countrymen. I must walk toward Oregon, and not toward Europe. And that way the nation is moving, and I may say that mankind progress from east to west. Within a few years we have witnessed the phenomenon of a southeastward migration, in the settlement of Australia; but this affects us as a retrograde movement, and, judging from the moral and physical character of the first generation of Australians, has not yet proved a successful experiment. The eastern Tartars think that there is nothing west beyond Thibet. “The world ends there,” say they; “beyond there is nothing but a shoreless sea.” It is unmitigated East where they live.

当我出门散步，还拿不准要往哪里去，便听凭本能替我决定，我发现——这也许显得古怪而任性——我最后总是不可避免地落定在西南方，朝着那个方向的某一片树林、草地、荒废的牧场或山冈走去。我的指针落定得很慢——会偏几度，确实并不总是指向正西南，而它这样偏也自有可靠的根据，但它总是落定在正西和西南偏南之间。对我来说，未来就在那边，那一侧的大地似乎更未被耗尽，也更丰饶。框住我散步范围的轮廓，不是一个圆，而是一条抛物线，或者更像那些被认为是一去不回的曲线的彗星轨道，在这里它向西张开，而我的房子占据着太阳的位置。我有时犹豫不决地转来转去，转上一刻钟，直到第一千次决定，我要往西南或者往西走。往东，我只是被迫才去；往西，我才是自由地去。没有什么事务把我引到那边。我很难相信，在东边的地平线后面，我会找到美丽的风景，或是足够的野性与自由。想到要往那边散步，我并不兴奋；但我相信，我在西边地平线上看见的那片森林，一直不间断地向着落日延伸，其中没有哪座城镇重要到足以打扰我。随我住在哪里吧：这一边是城市，那一边是荒野，而我总是越来越远地离开城市，退入荒野。如果我不相信这正是我的同胞们普遍的倾向，我就不会这样强调这个事实。我必须朝俄勒冈走，而不是朝欧洲走。整个国家正朝那个方向移动，我可以说，人类是从东向西前进的。这些年里，我们目睹了一次向东南的迁徙，即澳大利亚的拓殖；但在我们看来这是一种倒退的运动，而且从第一代澳大利亚人的道德和体格来判断，还没有证明是一次成功的试验。东方的鞑靼人认为，西藏以西什么也没有。“世界在那里就到了尽头，”他们说，“再过去只有一片无岸的海。”他们住的地方，是十足的东方。

I know not how significant it is, or how far it is an evidence of singularity, that an individual should thus consent in his pettiest walk with the general movement of the race; but I know that something akin to the migratory instinct in birds and quadrupeds,—which, in some instances, is known to have affected the squirrel tribe, impelling them to a general and mysterious movement, in which they were seen, say some, crossing the broadest rivers, each on its particular chip, with its tail raised for a sail, and bridging narrower streams with their dead,—that something like the furor which affects the domestic cattle in the spring, and which is referred to a worm in their tails,—affects both nations and individuals, either perennially or from time to time. Not a flock of wild geese cackles over our town, but it to some extent unsettles the value of real estate here, and, if I were a broker, I should probably take that disturbance into account.

一个人竟在他最微不足道的散步里，也这样与人类的总体运动相一致，这有多大意义，在多大程度上证明他与众不同，我不知道；但我知道，某种类似鸟兽迁徙本能的东西——据说在某些时候，它曾影响到松鼠一族，驱使它们作一次普遍而神秘的移动，有人说曾看见它们渡过最宽的河流，每只各乘一片木屑，竖起尾巴当帆，又用同伴的尸体在较窄的溪流上架起桥来——某种类似春天里侵袭家畜的那种狂躁的东西，人们把它归咎于家畜尾巴里的一条虫——无论是常年地还是时不时地，影响着民族，也影响着个人。每当一群野雁在我们镇子上空嘎嘎飞过，总要在某种程度上动摇这里地产的价值；我要是个经纪人，大概会把这种扰动考虑进去。

“Than longen folk to gon on pilgrimages, / And palmeres for to seken strange strondes.”

“那时人们就渴望去朝圣， / 持棕枝的香客要去寻访异乡的海滨。”

Columbus felt the westward tendency more strongly than any before. He obeyed it, and found a New World for Castile and Leon. The herd of men in those days scented fresh pastures from afar.

哥伦布比以前任何人都更强烈地感到了向西的倾向。他顺从了它，为卡斯蒂利亚和莱昂找到了一个新世界。那时候的人群，从远处就嗅到了新鲜的牧场。

“And now the sun had stretched out all the hills, / And now was dropped into the western bay; / At last he rose, and twitched his mantle blue; / To-morrow to fresh woods and pastures new.”

“此刻太阳已把群山的影子全都拉长， / 此刻已沉入西边的海湾； / 他终于起身，抖了抖他蓝色的斗篷； / 明天去往新鲜的树林和新的牧场。”

Where on the globe can there be found an area of equal extent with that occupied by the bulk of our States, so fertile and so rich and varied in its productions, and at the same time so habitable by the European, as this is? Michaux, who knew but part of them, says that “the species of large trees are much more numerous in North America than in Europe; in the United States there are more than one hundred and forty species that exceed thirty feet in height; in France there are but thirty that attain this size.” Later botanists more than confirm his observations. Humboldt came to America to realize his youthful dreams of a tropical vegetation, and he beheld it in its greatest perfection in the primitive forests of the Amazon, the most gigantic wilderness on the earth, which he has so eloquently described. The geographer Guyot, himself a European, goes further—further than I am ready to follow him; yet not when he says: “As the plant is made for the animal, as the vegetable world is made for the animal world, America is made for the man of the Old World.... The man of the Old World sets out upon his way. Leaving the highlands of Asia, he descends from station to station towards Europe. Each of his steps is marked by a new civilization superior to the preceding, by a greater power of development. Arrived at the Atlantic, he pauses on the shore of this unknown ocean, the bounds of which he knows not, and turns upon his footprints for an instant.” When he has exhausted the rich soil of Europe, and reinvigorated himself, “then recommences his adventurous career westward as in the earliest ages.” So far Guyot.

在地球上什么地方，能找到一块和我们大部分州所占的面积相当的地区，像这里这样肥沃，物产这样丰富多样，同时又这样适合欧洲人居住呢？米肖只了解其中一部分，他说：“北美的大树种类比欧洲多得多；在合众国，高度超过三十英尺的树种有一百四十多种；在法国，能长到这样高的只有三十种。”后来的植物学家不止证实了他的观察。洪堡来到美洲，是为了实现他青年时代对热带植物的梦想；他在亚马孙的原始森林里看到了它最完美的样子，那是地球上最巨大的荒野，他曾那样雄辩地描写过它。地理学家居约本人就是欧洲人，他走得更远——比我准备跟随他的还要远；不过当他这样说时，我是跟着他的：“正如植物是为动物而造，植物界是为动物界而造，美洲是为旧世界的人而造的……旧世界的人踏上他的路。他离开亚洲的高地，一站一站地向欧洲下行。他的每一步都以一种新的文明为标志，比前一种更高，有更大的发展力量。到了大西洋，他在这片未知的大洋岸边停下来，他不知道它的边界在哪里，于是回过身，看了一会儿自己的脚印。”等他耗尽了欧洲的沃土，重新恢复了元气，“就像在最早的年代那样，再次开始他向西的冒险生涯”。居约就说到这里。

From this western impulse coming in contact with the barrier of the Atlantic sprang the commerce and enterprise of modern times. The younger Michaux, in his Travels West of the Alleghanies in 1802, says that the common inquiry in the newly settled West was, “‘From what part of the world have you come?’ As if these vast and fertile regions would naturally be the place of meeting and common country of all the inhabitants of the globe.”

这股向西的冲动碰上大西洋的阻隔，便产生了近代的商业与事业。小米肖在他的《1802 年阿勒格尼山以西游记》里说，在新开拓的西部，人们常问的是：“‘你从世界的哪一处来？’仿佛这些广袤肥沃的地区，自然而然就会成为地球上所有居民相聚的地方和共同的国家。”

To use an obsolete Latin word, I might say, Ex oriente lux; ex occidente FRUX. From the East light; from the West fruit.

借用一个已经废弃的拉丁词，我可以说：Ex oriente lux; ex occidente FRUX。光从东方来；果实从西方来。

Sir Francis Head, an English traveler and a Governor-General of Canada, tells us that “in both the northern and southern hemispheres of the New World, Nature has not only outlined her works on a larger scale, but has painted the whole picture with brighter and more costly colors than she used in delineating and in beautifying the Old World.... The heavens of America appear infinitely higher, the sky is bluer, the air is fresher, the cold is intenser, the moon looks larger, the stars are brighter the thunder is louder, the lightning is vivider, the wind is stronger, the rain is heavier, the mountains are higher, the rivers longer, the forests bigger, the plains broader.” This statement will do at least to set against Buffon’s account of this part of the world and its productions.

英国旅行家、做过加拿大总督的弗朗西斯·黑德爵士告诉我们：“在新世界的北半球和南半球，大自然不仅把她的作品勾勒得规模更大，而且给整幅画涂上了比她描绘和装点旧世界时更明亮、更昂贵的色彩……美洲的天显得无限地更高，天空更蓝，空气更清新，寒冷更凛冽，月亮看上去更大，星星更亮，雷声更响，闪电更耀眼，风更猛，雨更大，山更高，河更长，森林更大，平原更广。”这番话至少可以拿来抵消布丰对世界这一部分及其物产的描述。

Linnæus said long ago, “Nescio quæ facies læta, glabra plantis Americanis” (I know not what there is of joyous and smooth in the aspect of American plants); and I think that in this country there are no, or at most very few, Africanæ bestiæ, African beasts, as the Romans called them, and that in this respect also it is peculiarly fitted for the habitation of man. We are told that within three miles of the center of the East Indian city of Singapore, some of the inhabitants are annually carried off by tigers; but the traveler can lie down in the woods at night almost anywhere in North America without fear of wild beasts.

林奈很久以前就说过：“Nescio quæ facies læta, glabra plantis Americanis”（我不知道美洲植物的样子里有一种什么样的欢快而光润）；我认为，这个国家没有、或者至多只有很少的 Africanæ bestiæ，也就是罗马人所说的非洲野兽；在这一点上，它也格外适合人居住。我们听说，在东印度的城市新加坡，离市中心三英里之内，每年都有一些居民被老虎叼走；可在北美，旅人几乎在任何地方都可以夜里躺在树林中，不必害怕野兽。

These are encouraging testimonies. If the moon looks larger here than in Europe, probably the sun looks larger also. If the heavens of America appear infinitely higher, and the stars brighter, I trust that these facts are symbolical of the height to which the philosophy and poetry and religion of her inhabitants may one day soar. At length, perchance, the immaterial heaven will appear as much higher to the American mind, and the intimations that star it as much brighter. For I believe that climate does thus react on man—as there is something in the mountain air that feeds the spirit and inspires. Will not man grow to greater perfection intellectually as well as physically under these influences? Or is it unimportant how many foggy days there are in his life? I trust that we shall be more imaginative, that our thoughts will be clearer, fresher, and more ethereal, as our sky—our understanding more comprehensive and broader, like our plains—our intellect generally on a grander scale, like our thunder and lightning, our rivers and mountains and forests,—and our hearts shall even correspond in breadth and depth and grandeur to our inland seas. Perchance there will appear to the traveler something, he knows not what, of læta and glabra, of joyous and serene, in our very faces. Else to what end does the world go on, and why was America discovered?

这些都是令人鼓舞的证词。如果这里的月亮看上去比欧洲的大，大概太阳看上去也更大。如果美洲的天显得无限地更高，星星更亮，我相信这些事实象征着这里的居民的哲学、诗歌和宗教有一天可能飞升到的高度。也许终有一天，那非物质的天空在美洲人的心灵看来也会同样更高，那些像星星一样点缀着它的启示也会同样更亮。因为我相信，气候确实是这样反过来作用于人的——就像山间的空气里有某种东西，能滋养精神，给人灵感。在这些影响之下，人不会在智力上和体格上都长得更完美吗？或者，他一生中有多少个雾天，是无关紧要的吗？我相信，我们会更富于想象，我们的思想会像我们的天空一样更清澈、更清新、更空灵——我们的理解会像我们的平原一样更全面、更宽广——我们的智力总体上会像我们的雷电、我们的河流山岳和森林一样，有更宏大的规模——我们的心甚至会在宽广、深邃和壮丽上，与我们的内陆海相称。也许，旅人会在我们的脸上看到某种东西，他说不清是什么，某种 læta 和 glabra，某种欢快而安详的东西。不然的话，世界为什么还要向前走，美洲又为什么要被发现呢？

To Americans I hardly need to say—

对美国人，我几乎不必说——

“Westward the star of empire takes its way.”

“帝国的星辰取道西行。”

As a true patriot, I should be ashamed to think that Adam in paradise was more favorably situated on the whole than the backwoodsman in this country.

作为一个真正的爱国者，我要是认为乐园里的亚当总的来说比这个国家林区边地的拓荒者处境更好，我会感到羞愧。

Our sympathies in Massachusetts are not confined to New England; though we may be estranged from the South, we sympathize with the West. There is the home of the younger sons, as among the Scandinavians they took to the sea for their inheritance. It is too late to be studying Hebrew; it is more important to understand even the slang of today.

我们马萨诸塞人的同情并不局限于新英格兰；尽管我们也许与南方疏远了，我们却同情西部。那里是小儿子们的家园，就像在斯堪的纳维亚人中间，小儿子们到海上去寻找自己的遗产。现在再去研究希伯来文已经太晚了；更要紧的是去理解哪怕是今天的俚语。

Some months ago I went to see a panorama of the Rhine. It was like a dream of the Middle Ages. I floated down its historic stream in something more than imagination, under bridges built by the Romans, and repaired by later heroes, past cities and castles whose very names were music to my ears, and each of which was the subject of a legend. There were Ehrenbreitstein and Rolandseck and Coblentz, which I knew only in history. They were ruins that interested me chiefly. There seemed to come up from its waters and its vine-clad hills and valleys a hushed music as of crusaders departing for the Holy Land. I floated along under the spell of enchantment, as if I had been transported to an heroic age, and breathed an atmosphere of chivalry.

几个月前，我去看了一幅莱茵河的全景画。它像一场中世纪的梦。我顺着那条历史悠久的河流漂流而下，那不只是在想象之中：经过罗马人建造、后来的英雄们修补过的桥，经过一座座城市和城堡，它们的名字在我听来就是音乐，每一座都是一个传说的题材。那里有埃伦布赖特施泰因、罗兰塞克和科布伦茨，我只在历史书里知道它们。最让我感兴趣的是那些废墟。从河水里，从覆满葡萄藤的山冈和山谷里，似乎升起一种静悄悄的音乐，仿佛十字军正出发去往圣地。我在魔力的笼罩下漂流着，仿佛被带到了一个英雄的时代，呼吸着骑士精神的空气。

Soon after, I went to see a panorama of the Mississippi, and as I worked my way up the river in the light of to-day, and saw the steamboats wooding up, counted the rising cities, gazed on the fresh ruins of Nauvoo, beheld the Indians moving west across the stream, and, as before I had looked up the Moselle, now looked up the Ohio and the Missouri and heard the legends of Dubuque and of Wenona’s Cliff—still thinking more of the future than of the past or present—I saw that this was a Rhine stream of a different kind; that the foundations of castles were yet to be laid, and the famous bridges were yet to be thrown over the river; and I felt that this was the heroic age itself, though we know it not, for the hero is commonly the simplest and obscurest of men.

不久以后，我又去看了一幅密西西比河的全景画；我在今天的光线里溯河而上，看见汽船停靠装柴，数着那些正在兴起的城市，凝望着诺伍新近的废墟，看见印第安人向西渡过河去；像先前我曾向摩泽尔河上游望去那样，如今我向俄亥俄河和密苏里河的上游望去，听着迪比克和韦诺娜崖的传说——我想得更多的仍是未来，而不是过去或现在——我看出，这是另一种莱茵河；城堡的地基还有待奠定，著名的桥梁还有待架过河去；我感到这就是英雄时代本身，尽管我们并不知道，因为英雄通常是最朴素、最默默无闻的人。

The West of which I speak is but another name for the Wild; and what I have been preparing to say is, that in Wildness is the preservation of the World. Every tree sends its fibers forth in search of the Wild. The cities import it at any price. Men plow and sail for it. From the forest and wilderness come the tonics and barks which brace mankind. Our ancestors were savages. The story of Romulus and Remus being suckled by a wolf is not a meaningless fable. The founders of every state which has risen to eminence have drawn their nourishment and vigor from a similar wild source. It was because the children of the Empire were not suckled by the wolf that they were conquered and displaced by the children of the northern forests who were.

我所说的西部，不过是野性的另一个名字；我一直准备要说的是：野性之中，保存着世界。每一棵树都把它的根须伸出去，寻找野性。城市不惜任何代价输入它。人们为它耕种，为它航海。从森林和荒野中，来了使人类振作的补药和树皮。我们的祖先是野蛮人。罗慕路斯和雷穆斯被狼哺育的故事，并不是一个没有意义的寓言。每一个兴盛到显赫地位的国家，它的创建者都从类似的野性源泉中汲取了养分和活力。正因为帝国的子孙不是被狼哺育的，他们才被北方森林里那些被狼哺育的子孙征服、取代了。

I believe in the forest, and in the meadow, and in the night in which the corn grows. We require an infusion of hemlock spruce or arbor vitæ in our tea. There is a difference between eating and drinking for strength and from mere gluttony. The Hottentots eagerly devour the marrow of the koodoo and other antelopes raw, as a matter of course. Some of our northern Indians eat raw the marrow of the Arctic reindeer, as well as various other parts, including the summits of the antlers, as long as they are soft. And herein, perchance, they have stolen a march on the cooks of Paris. They get what usually goes to feed the fire. This is probably better than stall-fed beef and slaughterhouse pork to make a man of. Give me a wildness whose glance no civilization can endure,—as if we lived on the marrow of koodoos devoured raw.

我信仰森林，信仰草地，信仰玉米在其中生长的夜晚。我们的茶里需要泡进一点铁杉或侧柏。为了力气而吃喝，和仅仅出于贪食而吃喝，是有区别的。霍屯督人理所当然地生吞捻角羚和其他羚羊的骨髓，吃得津津有味。我们北方的一些印第安人生吃北极驯鹿的骨髓，还有其他各个部分，包括鹿角的尖端，只要它们还是软的。在这一点上，也许他们已经抢在巴黎厨师的前头了。他们得到的，是通常被扔进火里烧掉的东西。要造就一个人，这大概比厩里喂养的牛肉和屠宰场的猪肉更好。给我一种野性吧，它的目光任何文明都承受不住——仿佛我们是靠生吞捻角羚的骨髓活着的。

There are some intervals which border the strain of the wood-thrush, to which I would migrate—wild lands where no settler has squatted; to which, methinks, I am already acclimated.

有一些音程，像河边的低地一样，紧挨着林鸫的歌声，我愿意迁徙到那里去——那些还没有拓荒者擅自占住的荒地；我想，我早已适应了那里的水土。

The African hunter Cumming tells us that the skin of the eland, as well as that of most other antelopes just killed, emits the most delicious perfume of trees and grass. I would have every man so much like a wild antelope, so much a part and parcel of Nature, that his very person should thus sweetly advertise our senses of his presence, and remind us of those parts of nature which he most haunts. I feel no disposition to be satirical, when the trapper’s coat emits the odor of musquash even; it is a sweeter scent to me than that which commonly exhales from the merchant’s or the scholar’s garments. When I go into their wardrobes and handle their vestments, I am reminded of no grassy plains and flowery meads which they have frequented, but of dusty merchants’ exchanges and libraries rather.

非洲猎人卡明告诉我们，大羚羊的皮，和大多数其他刚被猎杀的羚羊的皮一样，散发出树木和青草最美妙的香气。我愿每个人都那样像一只野羚羊，那样是自然的一部分，以至于他的身体本身就能这样甜美地向我们的感官宣告他的到来，让我们想起他最常出没的那些自然之地。即使捕兽人的外套散发出麝鼠的气味，我也毫无讽刺的意思；在我闻来，它比通常从商人或学者的衣服上散发出来的气味更香。当我走进他们的衣橱，摸摸他们的衣服，我想起的不是他们常去的什么青草平原和开满花的草地，倒是尘土飞扬的商品交易所和图书馆。

A tanned skin is something more than respectable, and perhaps olive is a fitter color than white for a man—a denizen of the woods. “The pale white man!” I do not wonder that the African pitied him. Darwin the naturalist says, “A white man bathing by the side of a Tahitian was like a plant bleached by the gardener’s art, compared with a fine, dark green one, growing vigorously in the open fields.”

晒黑的皮肤可不只是体面而已；对于一个人——一个林中的居民——来说，橄榄色也许比白色更合适。“苍白的白人！”难怪那个非洲人怜悯他。博物学家达尔文说：“一个白人在一个塔希提人身旁洗澡，就像一株被园丁的手艺漂白了的植物，与一株在开阔的田野里茁壮生长的、深绿色的好植物相比。”

Ben Jonson exclaims,—

本·琼森高呼——

“How near to good is what is fair!”

“美的东西离善多么近！”

So I would say,—

所以我要说——

“How near to good is what is wild!”

“野的东西离善多么近！”

Life consists with wildness. The most alive is the wildest. Not yet subdued to man, its presence refreshes him. One who pressed forward incessantly and never rested from his labors, who grew fast and made infinite demands on life, would always find himself in a new country or wilderness, and surrounded by the raw material of life. He would be climbing over the prostrate stems of primitive forest trees.

生命与野性相容。最有生气的，就是最野的。它还没有被人驯服，它的存在使人清新。一个不断向前挺进、从不停下劳作的人，一个长得很快、向生活提出无穷要求的人，会发现自己总是在一片新的土地或荒野里，被生活的原料包围着。他会在原始森林倒伏的树干上攀爬。

Hope and the future for me are not in lawns and cultivated fields, not in towns and cities, but in the impervious and quaking swamps. When, formerly, I have analyzed my partiality for some farm which I had contemplated purchasing, I have frequently found that I was attracted solely by a few square rods of impermeable and unfathomable bog—a natural sink in one corner of it. That was the jewel which dazzled me. I derive more of my subsistence from the swamps which surround my native town than from the cultivated gardens in the village. There are no richer parterres to my eyes than the dense beds of dwarf andromeda (Cassandra calyculata) which cover these tender places on the earth’s surface. Botany cannot go farther than tell me the names of the shrubs which grow there—the high-blueberry, panicled andromeda, lamb-kill, azalea, and rhodora—all standing in the quaking sphagnum. I often think that I should like to have my house front on this mass of dull red bushes, omitting other flower plots and borders, transplanted spruce and trim box, even graveled walks—to have this fertile spot under my windows, not a few imported barrow-fuls of soil only to cover the sand which was thrown out in digging the cellar. Why not put my house, my parlor, behind this plot, instead of behind that meager assemblage of curiosities, that poor apology for a Nature and art, which I call my front yard? It is an effort to clear up and make a decent appearance when the carpenter and mason have departed, though done as much for the passer-by as the dweller within. The most tasteful front-yard fence was never an agreeable object of study to me; the most elaborate ornaments, acorn tops, or what not, soon wearied and disgusted me. Bring your sills up to the very edge of the swamp, then (though it may not be the best place for a dry cellar,) so that there be no access on that side to citizens. Front yards are not made to walk in, but, at most, through, and you could go in the back way.

对我来说，希望和未来不在草坪和耕地里，不在城镇里，而在那些无法穿越的、颤动的沼泽里。从前，当我分析自己为什么偏爱某个我曾考虑买下的农场时，我常常发现，吸引我的只是几平方杆不透水、深不可测的泥沼——它一角上的一个天然洼地。那才是让我目眩的宝石。我从环绕我家乡小镇的沼泽中得到的养料，比从村里精心耕作的园子中得到的多。在我眼里，没有什么花坛比那些茂密的矮生地桂（Cassandra calyculata）更丰美，它们覆盖着地球表面这些柔嫩的地方。植物学只能告诉我生长在那里的灌木的名字，再多就不能了——高丛越橘、圆锥南烛、窄叶山月桂、杜鹃花和加拿大杜鹃——它们全都立在颤动的泥炭藓里。我常想，我愿意让我的房子正面对着这一大片暗红色的灌木丛，不要别的花圃和花境，不要移栽的云杉和修剪整齐的黄杨，甚至不要铺砾石的小径——让这块肥沃的地方就在我的窗下，而不是那几车运来的泥土，只是为了盖住挖地窖时翻出来的沙子。为什么不把我的房子、我的客厅，放在这块地的后面，而要放在那一小堆贫乏的珍奇玩意儿后面，那个对自然和艺术的可怜的敷衍，我叫它我的前院？木匠和泥瓦匠走了以后，收拾一番、弄得像个样子，是件费力的事，尽管这样做既是为了住在里面的人，也同样是为了过路人。最有品味的前院篱笆，在我也从来不是一个令人愉快的研究对象；最精致的装饰，橡子形的柱顶或者别的什么，很快就让我厌倦、厌恶了。那么，就把你的门槛一直修到沼泽的边上吧（尽管那也许不是修干地窖的最好地方），这样，那一边就没有路让市民们进来了。前院不是用来在里面散步的，至多是用来穿过的，而你可以从后门进去。

Yes, though you may think me perverse, if it were proposed to me to dwell in the neighborhood of the most beautiful garden that ever human art contrived, or else of a dismal swamp, I should certainly decide for the swamp. How vain, then, have been all your labors, citizens, for me!

是的，尽管你也许会认为我乖僻，但如果有人提议让我住在人类的艺术所设计过的最美的花园附近，或者住在一片阴郁的沼泽附近，我一定会选择沼泽。那么，市民们，你们为我所做的一切辛劳，是多么徒劳啊！

My spirits infallibly rise in proportion to the outward dreariness. Give me the ocean, the desert, or the wilderness! In the desert, pure air and solitude compensate for want of moisture and fertility. The traveler Burton says of it—“Your morale improves; you become frank and cordial, hospitable and single-minded.... In the desert, spirituous liquors excite only disgust. There is a keen enjoyment in a mere animal existence.” They who have been traveling long on the steppes of Tartary say, “On reentering cultivated lands, the agitation, perplexity, and turmoil of civilization oppressed and suffocated us; the air seemed to fail us, and we felt every moment as if about to die of asphyxia.” When I would recreate myself, I seek the darkest wood, the thickest and most interminable and, to the citizen, most dismal, swamp. I enter a swamp as a sacred place,—a sanctum sanctorum. There is the strength, the marrow, of Nature. The wild wood covers the virgin mould,—and the same soil is good for men and for trees. A man’s health requires as many acres of meadow to his prospect as his farm does loads of muck. There are the strong meats on which he feeds. A town is saved, not more by the righteous men in it than by the woods and swamps that surround it. A township where one primitive forest waves above while another primitive forest rots below—such a town is fitted to raise not only corn and potatoes, but poets and philosophers for the coming ages. In such a soil grew Homer and Confucius and the rest, and out of such a wilderness comes the reformer eating locusts and wild honey.

外面越是荒凉，我的精神就越是准确无误地随之高涨。给我海洋、沙漠或者荒野吧！在沙漠里，纯净的空气和孤独弥补了湿润和肥沃的缺乏。旅行家伯顿这样说沙漠：“你的精神状态变好了；你变得坦率而热诚，好客而单纯……在沙漠里，烈酒只会引起厌恶。仅仅作为动物活着，就有一种强烈的享受。”那些在鞑靼草原上长久旅行过的人说：“重新进入耕作的土地时，文明的骚动、困惑和混乱压迫着我们，令我们窒息；空气似乎不够我们呼吸了，我们每时每刻都觉得自己快要窒息而死。”当我想要恢复元气时，我就去找最幽暗的树林，最茂密、最无边无际、在市民看来最阴郁的沼泽。我走进沼泽，就像走进一个神圣的地方——一个至圣所。那里有自然的力量，自然的精髓。野生的树林覆盖着处女般的腐殖土——同样的土壤，对人和对树都是好的。一个人的健康，需要他的视野里有多少英亩的草地，就像他的农场需要多少车粪肥一样。那是他赖以为生的硬食。一座城镇之所以得救，靠城里的义人，也同样靠环绕着它的树林和沼泽。一个镇区，上面摇曳着一片原始森林，下面又腐烂着另一片原始森林——这样的镇子，不仅适合种玉米和土豆，也适合为未来的时代培育诗人和哲学家。荷马、孔子和其余的人，就生长在这样的土壤里；从这样的荒野里，走出了那个吃蝗虫和野蜜的改革者。

To preserve wild animals implies generally the creation of a forest for them to dwell in or resort to. So it is with man. A hundred years ago they sold bark in our streets peeled from our own woods. In the very aspect of those primitive and rugged trees there was, methinks, a tanning principle which hardened and consolidated the fibers of men’s thoughts. Ah! already I shudder for these comparatively degenerate days of my native village, when you cannot collect a load of bark of good thickness, and we no longer produce tar and turpentine.

保护野生动物，一般意味着要为它们造一片森林，让它们居住或出没。人也是这样。一百年前，人们在我们的街上卖从我们自己的树林里剥下的树皮。我想，在那些原始而粗犷的树木的样子里，就有一种鞣制的成分，能使人们思想的纤维变得坚韧而结实。啊！想到我家乡村子这些相对堕落的日子，我已经不寒而栗了：如今你收集不到一车厚度像样的树皮，我们也不再出产焦油和松节油了。

The civilized nations—Greece, Rome, England—have been sustained by the primitive forests which anciently rotted where they stand. They survive as long as the soil is not exhausted. Alas for human culture! little is to be expected of a nation, when the vegetable mould is exhausted, and it is compelled to make manure of the bones of its fathers. There the poet sustains himself merely by his own superfluous fat, and the philosopher comes down on his marrow bones.

文明的民族——希腊、罗马、英格兰——一直靠着那些古时候就在原地腐烂的原始森林维持着。只要土壤没有耗尽，它们就能存续。唉，人类的文化啊！一个民族，当它的腐殖土耗尽了，被迫用祖先的骨头来做肥料时，就没有多少可指望的了。到那时，诗人只能靠他自己多余的脂肪维持，哲学家则落到屈膝跪地、啃自己骨髓的地步。

It is said to be the task of the American “to work the virgin soil,” and that “agriculture here already assumes proportions unknown everywhere else.” I think that the farmer displaces the Indian even because he redeems the meadow, and so makes himself stronger and in some respects more natural. I was surveying for a man the other day a single straight line one hundred and thirty-two rods long, through a swamp at whose entrance might have been written the words which Dante read over the entrance to the infernal regions,—“Leave all hope, ye that enter”—that is, of ever getting out again; where at one time I saw my employer actually up to his neck and swimming for his life in his property, though it was still winter. He had another similar swamp which I could not survey at all, because it was completely under water, and nevertheless, with regard to a third swamp, which I did survey from a distance, he remarked to me, true to his instincts, that he would not part with it for any consideration, on account of the mud which it contained. And that man intends to put a girdling ditch round the whole in the course of forty months, and so redeem it by the magic of his spade. I refer to him only as the type of a class.

据说美国人的任务是“耕作处女地”，而且“农业在这里已经呈现出别处所不知道的规模”。我想，农夫之所以取代了印第安人，正是因为他开垦了草地，从而使自己更强壮，在某些方面也更自然。前几天，我为一个人测量一条一百三十二杆长的直线，它穿过一片沼泽，沼泽的入口处真可以写上但丁在地狱入口处读到的那句话——“进来的人，抛弃一切希望吧”——也就是说，抛弃再出去的希望；有一次，我看见我的雇主真的陷到了脖子，在他自己的产业里游泳逃命，尽管当时还是冬天。他还有另一片类似的沼泽，我根本没法测量，因为它完全在水下；尽管如此，说到第三片沼泽，那片我从远处测量过的，他却出于本性对我说，不管给他什么报酬，他都不会出让它，因为里面有烂泥。那个人打算在四十个月之内，在整片沼泽四周挖一圈环沟，用他铁锹的魔力把它开垦出来。我提到他，只是把他当作某一类人的典型。

The weapons with which we have gained our most important victories, which should be handed down as heirlooms from father to son, are not the sword and the lance, but the bushwhack, the turf-cutter, the spade, and the bog hoe, rusted with the blood of many a meadow, and begrimed with the dust of many a hard-fought field. The very winds blew the Indian’s cornfield into the meadow, and pointed out the way which he had not the skill to follow. He had no better implement with which to intrench himself in the land than a clam-shell. But the farmer is armed with plow and spade.

我们赖以赢得最重要的胜利的武器，应当作为传家宝父子相传的，不是剑和矛，而是砍灌木的刀、切草皮的铲、铁锹和沼地锄，上面锈着许多块草地的血，染着许多场苦战的田野的尘土。连风也把印第安人的玉米地吹进了草地，指出了一条他没有本事去走的路。他用来在土地上掘壕固守的工具，不过是一只蛤壳。而农夫却有犁和锹作武装。

In literature it is only the wild that attracts us. Dullness is but another name for tameness. It is the uncivilized free and wild thinking in Hamlet and the Iliad, in all the scriptures and mythologies, not learned in the schools, that delights us. As the wild duck is more swift and beautiful than the tame, so is the wild—the mallard—thought, which ’mid falling dews wings its way above the fens. A truly good book is something as natural, and as unexpectedly and unaccountably fair and perfect, as a wild flower discovered on the prairies of the west or in the jungles of the east. Genius is a light which makes the darkness visible, like the lightning’s flash, which perchance shatters the temple of knowledge itself—and not a taper lighted at the hearthstone of the race, which pales before the light of common day.

在文学中，吸引我们的只有野性。乏味不过是驯顺的另一个名字。让我们欣喜的，是《哈姆雷特》和《伊利亚特》里，一切经典和神话里，那种不是在学校里学来的、未开化的、自由而野性的思想。正如野鸭比家鸭更迅捷、更美丽，野性的思想——那只绿头鸭——也是这样，它在降落的露水中，振翅飞过沼泽的上空。一本真正的好书，是一种自然的东西，就像在西部的草原上或东方的丛林里发现的一朵野花，出乎意料、不可思议地美丽而完满。天才是一道使黑暗显形的光，像闪电的一闪，也许会把知识的殿堂本身击得粉碎——而不是在人类的炉边点燃的一支细烛，在平常白昼的光亮面前就黯然失色。

English literature, from the days of the minstrels to the Lake Poets—Chaucer and Spenser and Milton, and even Shakespeare included—breathes no quite fresh and in this sense wild strain. It is an essentially tame and civilized literature, reflecting Greece and Rome. Her wilderness is a green wood, her wild man a Robin Hood. There is plenty of genial love of Nature, but not so much of Nature herself. Her chronicles inform us when her wild animals, but not when the wild man in her, became extinct.

英国文学，从吟游诗人的时代到湖畔诗人——包括乔叟、斯宾塞和弥尔顿，甚至莎士比亚——都没有吐露出一种十分清新的、在这个意义上是野性的调子。它本质上是一种驯顺的、文明的文学，映照着希腊和罗马。它的荒野是一片绿林，它的野人是一个罗宾汉。那里有许多对自然的亲切的爱，却没有多少自然本身。它的编年史告诉我们，它的野兽是什么时候灭绝的，却没有告诉我们，它里面的野人是什么时候灭绝的。

The science of Humboldt is one thing, poetry is another thing. The poet today, notwithstanding all the discoveries of science, and the accumulated learning of mankind, enjoys no advantage over Homer.

洪堡的科学是一回事，诗是另一回事。今天的诗人，尽管有科学的一切发现和人类积累的学问，比起荷马来，并不占什么优势。

Where is the literature which gives expression to Nature? He would be a poet who could impress the winds and streams into his service, to speak for him; who nailed words to their primitive senses, as farmers drive down stakes in the spring, which the frost has heaved; who derived his words as often as he used them—transplanted them to his page with earth adhering to their roots; whose words were so true and fresh and natural that they would appear to expand like the buds at the approach of spring, though they lay half smothered between two musty leaves in a library,—aye, to bloom and bear fruit there, after their kind, annually, for the faithful reader, in sympathy with surrounding Nature.

表达自然的文学在哪里？能叫风和溪流为他效劳、替他说话的人，才是诗人；他把词语钉回它们原始的意义上，就像农夫在春天把被冰冻顶起的木桩重新打下去；他每用一个词，就重新推究一次它的来历——把它们移植到他的书页上，根上还带着泥土；他的词语那样真实、清新、自然，即使它们半闷死在图书馆里两张发霉的书页之间，也仿佛会像春天来临时的花蕾一样舒展开来——啊，会在那里，为忠实的读者，与周围的自然相应和，年年依其本性开花结果。

I do not know of any poetry to quote which adequately expresses this yearning for the Wild. Approached from this side, the best poetry is tame. I do not know where to find in any literature, ancient or modern, any account which contents me of that Nature with which even I am acquainted. You will perceive that I demand something which no Augustan nor Elizabethan age, which no culture, in short, can give. Mythology comes nearer to it than anything. How much more fertile a Nature, at least, has Grecian mythology its root in than English literature! Mythology is the crop which the Old World bore before its soil was exhausted, before the fancy and imagination were affected with blight; and which it still bears, wherever its pristine vigor is unabated. All other literatures endure only as the elms which overshadow our houses; but this is like the great dragon-tree of the Western Isles, as old as mankind, and, whether that does or not, will endure as long; for the decay of other literatures makes the soil in which it thrives.

我不知道有什么诗可以引用，能充分表达这种对野性的渴望。从这一面去看，最好的诗也是驯顺的。在任何文学里，无论古代的还是现代的，我都不知道到哪里去找一种能让我满意的记述，记述那连我也熟悉的自然。你会看出，我要求的是任何奥古斯都时代或伊丽莎白时代，总之是任何文化都不能给的东西。神话比任何东西都更接近它。希腊神话扎根于其中的自然，至少比英国文学扎根于其中的自然肥沃多少啊！神话是旧世界在它的土壤耗尽之前、在幻想和想象染上枯萎病之前所结出的庄稼；凡是它原初的活力尚未衰减的地方，它至今仍结出这样的庄稼。其他一切文学，都只像遮蔽我们房屋的榆树那样存续；而神话就像西方群岛上那棵巨大的龙血树，和人类一样古老；无论人类是否长存，它都会同样长存；因为其他文学的衰败，正是它赖以繁茂的土壤。

The West is preparing to add its fables to those of the East. The valleys of the Ganges, the Nile, and the Rhine, having yielded their crop, it remains to be seen what the valleys of the Amazon, the Plate, the Orinoco, the St. Lawrence, and the Mississippi will produce. Perchance, when, in the course of ages, American liberty has become a fiction of the past,—as it is to some extent a fiction of the present,—the poets of the world will be inspired by American mythology.

西方正准备把它的寓言加到东方的寓言上去。恒河、尼罗河和莱茵河的河谷已经结出了它们的庄稼，亚马孙河、拉普拉塔河、奥里诺科河、圣劳伦斯河和密西西比河的河谷将会出产什么，还有待观察。也许，经过许多个时代，当美国的自由已经成为过去的一个虚构——正如它在某种程度上是现在的一个虚构——世界的诗人们会从美国的神话中得到灵感。

The wildest dreams of wild men, even, are not the less true, though they may not recommend themselves to the sense which is most common among Englishmen and Americans to-day. It is not every truth that recommends itself to the common sense. Nature has a place for the wild clematis as well as for the cabbage. Some expressions of truth are reminiscent,—others merely sensible, as the phrase is,—others prophetic. Some forms of disease, even, may prophesy forms of health. The geologist has discovered that the figures of serpents, griffins, flying dragons, and other fanciful embellishments of heraldry, have their prototypes in the forms of fossil species which were extinct before man was created, and hence “indicate a faint and shadowy knowledge of a previous state of organic existence.” The Hindoos dreamed that the earth rested on an elephant, and the elephant on a tortoise, and the tortoise on a serpent; and though it may be an unimportant coincidence, it will not be out of place here to state, that a fossil tortoise has lately been discovered in Asia large enough to support an elephant. I confess that I am partial to these wild fancies, which transcend the order of time and development. They are the sublimest recreation of the intellect. The partridge loves peas, but not those that go with her into the pot.

即使是野人最野的梦，也并不因此就不那么真实，尽管它们也许不合今天英国人和美国人中间最通行的那种感觉，也就是常识的口味。并不是每一条真理都能讨常识的喜欢。自然为野生的铁线莲留了一个位置，也为卷心菜留了一个位置。有些真理的表达是追忆性的——有些只是像俗话说的那样“合乎情理”——有些是预言性的。甚至某些形式的疾病，也可能预言着某些形式的健康。地质学家发现，蛇、狮鹫、飞龙以及纹章上其他想象出来的装饰图案，都在人类被造出来之前就已灭绝的化石物种的形态里有它们的原型，因此“表明了对一种先前的有机存在状态的模糊而朦胧的认识”。印度人梦见大地驮在一头大象身上，大象驮在一只乌龟身上，乌龟又驮在一条蛇身上；虽然这也许是个无关紧要的巧合，但在这里不妨说一句：最近在亚洲发现了一只乌龟化石，大得足以驮起一头大象。我承认，我偏爱这些超越了时间和发展顺序的野性的幻想。它们是智力最崇高的消遣。山鹑爱吃豌豆，但不爱吃那些和她一起下锅的豌豆。

In short, all good things are wild and free. There is something in a strain of music, whether produced by an instrument or by the human voice—take the sound of a bugle in a summer night, for instance,—which by its wildness, to speak without satire, reminds me of the cries emitted by wild beasts in their native forests. It is so much of their wildness as I can understand. Give me for my friends and neighbors wild men, not tame ones. The wildness of the savage is but a faint symbol of the awful ferity with which good men and lovers meet.

总之，一切好的东西都是野性的、自由的。一段音乐里有某种东西，不管是乐器奏出的还是人声唱出的——比如夏夜里的一声军号——它凭着它的野性，说句不带讽刺的话，让我想起野兽在它们原生的森林里发出的叫声。那是我所能理解的它们的那一份野性。给我野性的人做朋友和邻居吧，不要驯顺的人。野蛮人的野性，不过是好人和恋人相遇时那种令人敬畏的野性的一个模糊的象征。

I love even to see the domestic animals reassert their native rights—any evidence that they have not wholly lost their original wild habits and vigor; as when my neighbor’s cow breaks out of her pasture early in the spring and boldly swims the river, a cold, gray tide, twenty-five or thirty rods wide, swollen by the melted snow. It is the buffalo crossing the Mississippi. This exploit confers some dignity on the herd in my eyes—already dignified. The seeds of instinct are preserved under the thick hides of cattle and horses, like seeds in the bowels of the earth, an indefinite period.

我甚至喜欢看到家畜重新维护它们天生的权利——任何证据，证明它们并没有完全失去原初的野性习性和活力；比如我邻居的母牛早春时冲出牧场，大胆地游过河去，那是一股冰冷灰暗的流水，二十五或三十杆宽，因融雪而上涨。那是野牛在横渡密西西比河。在我眼里，这番壮举给那群牛——它们本已很有尊严——又增添了几分尊严。本能的种子保存在牛马厚厚的皮下，就像种子保存在大地的腹中，不知能保存多久。

Any sportiveness in cattle is unexpected. I saw one day a herd of a dozen bullocks and cows running about and frisking in unwieldy sport, like huge rats, even like kittens. They shook their heads, raised their tails, and rushed up and down a hill, and I perceived by their horns, as well as by their activity, their relation to the deer tribe. But, alas! a sudden loud Whoa! would have damped their ardor at once, reduced them from venison to beef, and stiffened their sides and sinews like the locomotive. Who but the Evil One has cried “Whoa!” to mankind? Indeed, the life of cattle, like that of many men, is but a sort of locomotiveness; they move a side at a time, and man, by his machinery, is meeting the horse and the ox half way. Whatever part the whip has touched is thenceforth palsied. Who would ever think of a side of any of the supple cat tribe, as we speak of a side of beef?

牛的任何嬉闹都出人意料。有一天，我看见一群十来头阉牛和母牛跑来跑去，笨拙地蹦跳嬉戏，像巨大的老鼠，甚至像小猫。它们摇着头，翘起尾巴，在一座小山上冲上冲下；从它们的角，也从它们的活跃，我看出了它们与鹿族的亲缘。可是，唉！突然一声响亮的“吁！”就会立刻浇灭它们的热情，把它们从鹿肉降为牛肉，使它们的身侧和筋腱像火车头一样僵硬。除了那恶者，谁曾对人类喊过“吁！”呢？确实，牛的生活，像许多人的生活一样，不过是一种火车头式的移动；它们一次只挪动半边身子，而人凭着他的机器，正在和马和牛半路相迎。凡是被鞭子碰过的地方，从此就麻痹了。谁会想到去说灵活的猫族中哪一只的“半边”，就像我们说“半边牛肉”那样呢？

I rejoice that horses and steers have to be broken before they can be made the slaves of men, and that men themselves have some wild oats still left to sow before they become submissive members of society. Undoubtedly, all men are not equally fit subjects for civilization; and because the majority, like dogs and sheep, are tame by inherited disposition, this is no reason why the others should have their natures broken that they may be reduced to the same level. Men are in the main alike, but they were made several in order that they might be various. If a low use is to be served, one man will do nearly or quite as well as another; if a high one, individual excellence is to be regarded. Any man can stop a hole to keep the wind away, but no other man could serve so rare a use as the author of this illustration did. Confucius says,—“The skins of the tiger and the leopard, when they are tanned, are as the skins of the dog and the sheep tanned.” But it is not the part of a true culture to tame tigers, any more than it is to make sheep ferocious; and tanning their skins for shoes is not the best use to which they can be put.

我很高兴，马和小公牛在被弄成人的奴隶之前必须先被驯服，而人自己在变成社会顺从的成员之前，也还有些“野燕麦”没有撒完。毫无疑问，并不是所有的人都同样适合被文明化；大多数人像狗和羊一样，因为遗传的禀性而驯顺，但这不能成为理由，要把其他人的天性也摧折，好把他们降到同样的水平。人大体上是相似的，但他们被造成许多个，是为了能够各不相同。如果要派一种低下的用场，一个人和另一个人差不多或者完全一样好；如果要派一种高尚的用场，就要看个人的卓越了。任何人都能堵住一个洞来挡风，但没有别人能派上这个比喻的作者所派上的那种罕见的用场。孔子说：“虎豹之鞟，犹犬羊之鞟。”但真正的文化的本分，不是驯服老虎，正如不是使羊变得凶猛；而把它们的皮鞣了做鞋，也不是它们最好的用处。

When looking over a list of men’s names in a foreign language, as of military officers, or of authors who have written on a particular subject, I am reminded once more that there is nothing in a name. The name Menschikoff, for instance, has nothing in it to my ears more human than a whisker, and it may belong to a rat. As the names of the Poles and Russians are to us, so are ours to them. It is as if they had been named by the child’s rigmarole—Iery-wiery ichery van, tittle-tol-tan. I see in my mind a herd of wild creatures swarming over the earth, and to each the herdsman has affixed some barbarous sound in his own dialect. The names of men are, of course, as cheap and meaningless as Bose and Tray, the names of dogs.

当我浏览一份外国语言的人名单，比如军官名单，或者就某个专题写过书的作者名单时，我又一次想到，名字里什么也没有。比如缅希科夫这个名字，在我听来，并不比一根胡须更有人味，它也可以属于一只老鼠。波兰人和俄国人的名字在我们听来是什么样，我们的名字在他们听来也就是什么样。仿佛他们是用孩子们的顺口溜起的名——Iery-wiery ichery van, tittle-tol-tan。我在心里看见一群野生的动物在大地上蜂拥，牧人给每一只都贴上了一个用他自己的方言发出的野蛮的声音。人的名字，当然和博斯、特雷这些狗的名字一样廉价，一样没有意义。

Methinks it would be some advantage to philosophy if men were named merely in the gross, as they are known. It would be necessary only to know the genus and perhaps the race or variety, to know the individual. We are not prepared to believe that every private soldier in a Roman army had a name of his own—because we have not supposed that he had a character of his own. At present our only true names are nicknames. I knew a boy who, from his peculiar energy, was called “Buster” by his playmates, and this rightly supplanted his Christian name. Some travellers tell us that an Indian had no name given him at first, but earned it, and his name was his fame; and among some tribes he acquired a new name with every new exploit. It is pitiful when a man bears a name for convenience merely, who has earned neither name nor fame.

我想，如果人只按大类来命名，按人们对他们的了解来命名，对哲学会有些好处。只需要知道属，也许再加上种族或变种，就能知道个体了。我们不准备相信，罗马军队里的每一个普通士兵都有他自己的名字——因为我们并不认为他有他自己的性格。目前，我们唯一真正的名字是绰号。我认识一个男孩，因为他特别有劲，玩伴们叫他“闯将”，这个绰号理所当然地取代了他的教名。有些旅行者告诉我们，一个印第安人起初并没有人给他起名字，而是要去赢得一个名字，他的名字就是他的名声；在有些部落里，他每立一次新功，就获得一个新名字。一个人既没有赢得名字也没有赢得名声，却仅仅为了方便而顶着一个名字，那是可怜的。

I will not allow mere names to make distinctions for me, but still see men in herds for all them. A familiar name cannot make a man less strange to me. It may be given to a savage who retains in secret his own wild title earned in the woods. We have a wild savage in us, and a savage name is perchance somewhere recorded as ours. I see that my neighbor, who bears the familiar epithet William or Edwin, takes it off with his jacket. It does not adhere to him when asleep or in anger, or aroused by any passion or inspiration. I seem to hear pronounced by some of his kin at such a time his original wild name in some jaw-breaking or else melodious tongue.

我不会让仅仅是名字替我作出区分，尽管有这些名字，我照样把人看成一群一群的。一个熟悉的名字，并不能让一个人对我变得不那么陌生。它可能被安在一个野人身上，而他暗地里保留着自己在树林里赢得的野性的称号。我们心里有一个野蛮人，也许在什么地方，记录着一个野蛮的名字，那才是我们的。我看见我的邻居，顶着威廉或者埃德温这样熟悉的称呼，脱外套时就把它一起脱掉了。他睡着的时候，发怒的时候，被什么激情或灵感唤起的时候，这名字都不附在他身上。在那样的时刻，我仿佛听见他的某个族人，用某种拗口的或者悦耳的语言，叫出他原初的野性的名字。

Here is this vast, savage, howling mother of ours, Nature, lying all around, with such beauty, and such affection for her children, as the leopard; and yet we are so early weaned from her breast to society, to that culture which is exclusively an interaction of man on man,—a sort of breeding in and in, which produces at most a merely English nobility, a civilization destined to have a speedy limit.

这就是我们这位广大的、野蛮的、咆哮的母亲，自然，躺在我们四周，那样美丽，又像母豹那样爱她的孩子；可我们这么早就被从她的怀里断了奶，交给社会，交给那种完全只是人对人的相互作用的文化——一种近亲繁殖，它至多只能产生一种纯然英国式的贵族，一种注定很快就会走到尽头的文明。

In society, in the best institutions of men, it is easy to detect a certain precocity. When we should still be growing children, we are already little men. Give me a culture which imports much muck from the meadows, and deepens the soil—not that which trusts to heating manures, and improved implements and modes of culture only!

在社会中，在人类最好的制度中，很容易看出某种早熟。我们本该还是正在成长的孩子，却已经是小大人了。给我一种从草地上运来大量淤泥、使土壤加深的文化吧——而不是那种只信赖催热的肥料、改良的农具和耕作方法的文化！

Many a poor sore-eyed student that I have heard of would grow faster, both intellectually and physically, if, instead of sitting up so very late, he honestly slumbered a fool’s allowance.

我听说过许多可怜的、眼睛酸痛的学生，如果他们不熬到那么晚，而是老老实实地睡足一个傻瓜该睡的分量，无论在智力上还是体格上，都会长得更快。

There may be an excess even of informing light. Niepce, a Frenchman, discovered “actinism,” that power in the sun’s rays which produces a chemical effect; that granite rocks, and stone structures, and statues of metal “are all alike destructively acted upon during the hours of sunshine, and, but for provisions of Nature no less wonderful, would soon perish under the delicate touch of the most subtle of the agencies of the universe.” But he observed that “those bodies which underwent this change during the daylight possessed the power of restoring themselves to their original conditions during the hours of night, when this excitement was no longer influencing them.” Hence it has been inferred that “the hours of darkness are as necessary to the inorganic creation as we know night and sleep are to the organic kingdom.” Not even does the moon shine every night, but gives place to darkness.

甚至给人知识的光，也可能过量。法国人涅普斯发现了“光化性”，即太阳光线中产生化学效应的那种力量；他发现花岗岩、石头建筑和金属雕像“在阳光照耀的时辰里都同样受到破坏性的作用，要不是自然有同样奇妙的安排，它们很快就会在宇宙中最微妙的力量那轻柔的触碰下毁灭”。但他观察到，“那些在白天经历了这种变化的物体，在夜间的时辰里，当这种刺激不再影响它们时，具有恢复原状的能力”。由此人们推断，“黑暗的时辰对于无机的造物，就像我们知道夜晚和睡眠对于有机界一样必要”。连月亮也不是每夜都照耀，而是让位给黑暗。

I would not have every man nor every part of a man cultivated, any more than I would have every acre of earth cultivated: part will be tillage, but the greater part will be meadow and forest, not only serving an immediate use, but preparing a mould against a distant future, by the annual decay of the vegetation which it supports.

我不愿每个人、或者一个人的每一部分都被耕作，正如我不愿大地的每一英亩都被耕作：一部分是耕地，但更大的部分会是草地和森林，它们不仅派上眼前的用场，还通过它们所养育的草木一年一年的腐烂，为遥远的未来准备着腐殖土。

We have heard of a Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge. It is said that knowledge is power, and the like. Methinks there is equal need of a Society for the Diffusion of Useful Ignorance, what we will call Beautiful Knowledge, a knowledge useful in a higher sense: for what is most of our boasted so-called knowledge but a conceit that we know something, which robs us of the advantage of our actual ignorance? What we call knowledge is often our positive ignorance; ignorance our negative knowledge. By long years of patient industry and reading of the newspapers—for what are the libraries of science but files of newspapers—a man accumulates a myriad facts, lays them up in his memory, and then when in some spring of his life he saunters abroad into the Great Fields of thought, he, as it were, goes to grass like a horse and leaves all his harness behind in the stable. I would say to the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, sometimes,—Go to grass. You have eaten hay long enough. The spring has come with its green crop. The very cows are driven to their country pastures before the end of May; though I have heard of one unnatural farmer who kept his cow in the barn and fed her on hay all the year round. So, frequently, the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge treats its cattle.

我们听说过一个“实用知识传播会”。据说知识就是力量，诸如此类。我想，同样需要一个“实用无知传播会”，我们可以称之为“美的知识”，一种在更高的意义上有用的知识：因为我们大多数自夸的所谓知识，不就是一种自以为知道了点什么的自负吗？它夺走了我们实际的无知所带来的好处。我们所说的知识，常常是我们积极的无知；无知，则是我们消极的知识。经过多年耐心的勤勉和读报——因为科学的图书馆不就是一摞摞报纸合订本吗——一个人积累起无数事实，把它们储存在记忆里，然后，当他在人生的某个春天漫步出门，走进思想的大田野，他就像一匹马那样去吃青草，把所有的挽具都留在了马厩里。有时我要对实用知识传播会说——去吃草吧。你们吃干草已经吃得够久了。春天带着它绿色的庄稼来了。连母牛也在五月底以前被赶到乡下的牧场去了；尽管我听说过一个违背天性的农夫，一年到头把他的母牛关在牛棚里喂干草。实用知识传播会常常就是这样对待它的牲口的。

A man’s ignorance sometimes is not only useful, but beautiful—while his knowledge, so called, is oftentimes worse than useless, besides being ugly. Which is the best man to deal with—he who knows nothing about a subject, and, what is extremely rare, knows that he knows nothing, or he who really knows something about it, but thinks that he knows all?

一个人的无知，有时不仅有用，而且美——而他所谓的知识，却常常比无用还糟，而且丑陋。跟哪一种人打交道最好呢——是对一个题目一无所知、并且（这是极为罕见的）知道自己一无所知的人，还是对它确实知道一些、却以为自己全都知道的人？

My desire for knowledge is intermittent, but my desire to bathe my head in atmospheres unknown to my feet is perennial and constant. The highest that we can attain to is not Knowledge, but Sympathy with Intelligence. I do not know that this higher knowledge amounts to anything more definite than a novel and grand surprise on a sudden revelation of the insufficiency of all that we called Knowledge before—a discovery that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in our philosophy. It is the lighting up of the mist by the sun. Man cannot know in any higher sense than this, any more than he can look serenely and with impunity in the face of the sun: Ὡς τι νοῶν, οὐ κεῖνον νοήσεις,—“You will not perceive that, as perceiving a particular thing,” say the Chaldean Oracles.

我对知识的渴望是时断时续的，但我想把头浸入我的脚所不知道的大气中去的渴望，却是常年不断的。我们所能达到的最高境界，不是知识，而是与智性的共鸣。我不知道这种更高的知识，是否比一种新奇而宏大的惊异更确定些——那是在突然领悟到我们先前称为知识的一切都不够时的惊异——一种发现：天地之间有许多事情，是我们的哲学里没有梦想到的。那是太阳把雾照亮。人不能在比这更高的意义上去知道，正如他不能安然无恙地平静直视太阳的脸：Ὡς τι νοῶν, οὐ κεῖνον νοήσεις——“你不会像感知某一样特定的东西那样感知它”，《迦勒底神谕》这样说。

There is something servile in the habit of seeking after a law which we may obey. We may study the laws of matter at and for our convenience, but a successful life knows no law. It is an unfortunate discovery certainly, that of a law which binds us where we did not know before that we were bound. Live free, child of the mist—and with respect to knowledge we are all children of the mist. The man who takes the liberty to live is superior to all the laws, by virtue of his relation to the law-maker. “That is active duty,” says the Vishnu Purana, “which is not for our bondage; that is knowledge which is for our liberation: all other duty is good only unto weariness; all other knowledge is only the cleverness of an artist.”

寻找一条我们可以服从的法则，这种习惯里有某种奴性。我们可以随自己方便、为自己方便去研究物质的法则，但一种成功的生活不知道任何法则。发现一条法则，它在我们先前不知道自己被束缚的地方束缚着我们，这当然是一种不幸的发现。自由地生活吧，雾的孩子——在知识方面，我们都是雾的孩子。敢于自由生活的人，凭着他与立法者的关系，高于一切法则。《毗湿奴往世书》说：“不为束缚我们的，才是积极的义务；为解脱我们的，才是知识：其他一切义务，只能叫人疲倦；其他一切知识，只是工匠的机巧。”

It is remarkable how few events or crises there are in our histories, how little exercised we have been in our minds, how few experiences we have had. I would fain be assured that I am growing apace and rankly, though my very growth disturb this dull equanimity—though it be with struggle through long, dark, muggy nights or seasons of gloom. It would be well if all our lives were a divine tragedy even, instead of this trivial comedy or farce. Dante, Bunyan, and others appear to have been exercised in their minds more than we: they were subjected to a kind of culture such as our district schools and colleges do not contemplate. Even Mahomet, though many may scream at his name, had a good deal more to live for, aye, and to die for, than they have commonly.

值得注意的是，在我们的历史中，事件或危机是多么少，我们的心灵受过的磨炼多么少，我们有过的经历多么少。我很想确信自己正在迅速而茂盛地生长，哪怕我的生长会扰乱这种沉闷的平静——哪怕这要在漫长、黑暗、闷热的夜里或者阴郁的季节里挣扎着进行。要是我们的全部生活甚至是一场神圣的悲剧，而不是这样琐屑的喜剧或闹剧，那就好了。但丁、班扬等人的心灵，似乎比我们受过更多的磨炼：他们接受过一种我们的区立学校和大学所想不到的教养。甚至穆罕默德，尽管许多人听见他的名字会尖叫，他所拥有的值得为之而活、啊，值得为之而死的东西，也比那些人通常所有的多得多。

When, at rare intervals, some thought visits one, as perchance he is walking on a railroad, then, indeed, the cars go by without his hearing them. But soon, by some inexorable law, our life goes by and the cars return.

难得有那么一回，某个思想来访一个人，也许他正走在铁路上，那时，火车开过去他确实也听不见。但很快，凭着某条无情的法则，我们的生活开过去了，火车又回来了。

“Gentle breeze, that wanderest unseen, / And bendest the thistles round Loira of storms, / Traveler of the windy glens, / Why hast thou left my ear so soon?”

“轻柔的风啊，你看不见地漫游， / 吹弯了风暴的洛拉周围的蓟草， / 你这多风山谷里的旅人， / 为什么这么快就离开了我的耳朵？”

While almost all men feel an attraction drawing them to society, few are attracted strongly to Nature. In their relation to Nature men appear to me for the most part, notwithstanding their arts, lower than the animals. It is not often a beautiful relation, as in the case of the animals. How little appreciation of the beauty of the landscape there is among us! We have to be told that the Greeks called the world Κόσμος Beauty, or Order, but we do not see clearly why they did so, and we esteem it at best only a curious philological fact.

几乎所有的人都感到有一种吸引力把他们拉向社会，却很少有人被强烈地吸引向自然。在与自然的关系上，在我看来，人们尽管有他们的种种技艺，大多比动物还低。这种关系不常像动物那样是一种美的关系。我们中间对风景之美的欣赏是多么少啊！我们得听人告诉我们，希腊人把世界叫作 Κόσμος，美，或者秩序，但我们并不清楚地看出他们为什么这样叫，至多只把它当作一个有趣的语文学事实。

For my part, I feel that with regard to Nature I live a sort of border life, on the confines of a world into which I make occasional and transient forays only, and my patriotism and allegiance to the state into whose territories I seem to retreat are those of a moss-trooper. Unto a life which I call natural I would gladly follow even a will-o’-the-wisp through bogs and sloughs unimaginable, but no moon nor firefly has shown me the causeway to it. Nature is a personality so vast and universal that we have never seen one of her features. The walker in the familiar fields which stretch around my native town sometimes finds himself in another land than is described in their owners’ deeds, as it were in some faraway field on the confines of the actual Concord, where her jurisdiction ceases, and the idea which the word Concord suggests ceases to be suggested. These farms which I have myself surveyed, these bounds which I have set up, appear dimly still as through a mist; but they have no chemistry to fix them; they fade from the surface of the glass, and the picture which the painter painted stands out dimly from beneath. The world with which we are commonly acquainted leaves no trace, and it will have no anniversary.

就我自己来说，我觉得在自然方面，我过着一种边境上的生活，住在一个世界的边界上，我只是偶尔、短暂地闯进去一下；我对那个我似乎要退入其疆土的国家的爱国心和忠诚，是一个边境劫掠者的爱国心和忠诚。为了一种我称之为自然的生活，我愿意跟着哪怕是一团鬼火，穿过无法想象的泥沼和泥潭，但还没有哪个月亮或萤火虫给我指出通往那里的堤道。自然是一种如此广大而普遍的人格，我们从来没有见过她的任何一个面貌。在环绕我家乡小镇的那些熟悉的田野里散步的人，有时会发现自己到了另一片土地上，与田主们地契上描述的不同，仿佛到了实际的康科德边界上的某块遥远的田地，在那里，康科德的管辖权停止了，“康科德”（和谐）这个词所暗示的观念也不再被暗示了。这些我亲自测量过的农场，这些我亲手立下的地界，仍然朦胧地显现着，像隔着一层雾；但它们没有化学药剂来定影；它们从玻璃的表面上褪去，而画家画下的那幅画，从下面朦胧地显现出来。我们通常所熟悉的世界，不留下任何痕迹，也不会有任何纪念日。

I took a walk on Spaulding’s Farm the other afternoon. I saw the setting sun lighting up the opposite side of a stately pine wood. Its golden rays straggled into the aisles of the wood as into some noble hall. I was impressed as if some ancient and altogether admirable and shining family had settled there in that part of the land called Concord, unknown to me—to whom the sun was servant—who had not gone into society in the village—who had not been called on. I saw their park, their pleasure-ground, beyond through the wood, in Spaulding’s cranberry-meadow. The pines furnished them with gables as they grew. Their house was not obvious to vision; the trees grew through it. I do not know whether I heard the sounds of a suppressed hilarity or not. They seemed to recline on the sunbeams. They have sons and daughters. They are quite well. The farmer’s cart-path, which leads directly through their hall, does not in the least put them out, as the muddy bottom of a pool is sometimes seen through the reflected skies. They never heard of Spaulding, and do not know that he is their neighbor,—notwithstanding I heard him whistle as he drove his team through the house. Nothing can equal the serenity of their lives. Their coat-of-arms is simply a lichen. I saw it painted on the pines and oaks. Their attics were in the tops of the trees. They are of no politics. There was no noise of labor. I did not perceive that they were weaving or spinning. Yet I did detect, when the wind lulled and hearing was done away, the finest imaginable sweet musical hum,—as of a distant hive in May, which perchance was the sound of their thinking. They had no idle thoughts, and no one without could see their work, for their industry was not as in knots and excrescences embayed.

前几天下午，我在斯波尔丁的农场散步。我看见落日照亮了一片庄严的松林的对面一侧。它金色的光线散乱地射进林中的走廊，就像射进某座高贵的大厅。我觉得，仿佛有某个古老的、十分可敬的、闪闪发光的家族，在这片叫作康科德的土地的那一部分定居了下来，我却不知道——太阳是他们的仆人——他们没有进入村里的社交圈——也没有人去拜访过他们。我看见他们的园林，他们的游乐场，在树林那边，在斯波尔丁的蔓越莓草地上。松树一边生长，一边为他们提供山墙。他们的房子并不显露在视野里；树木从房子中间长过去。我不知道自己是否听见了一种压低了的欢笑声。他们似乎斜倚在阳光上。他们有儿有女。他们都很好。农夫的车道径直穿过他们的大厅，却一点也没有打扰他们，就像有时透过倒映的天空，可以看见池塘浑浊的底。他们从没听说过斯波尔丁，也不知道他是他们的邻居——尽管我听见他赶着牲口穿过那座房子时吹着口哨。没有什么能比得上他们生活的宁静。他们的纹章只是一片地衣。我看见它画在松树和橡树上。他们的阁楼在树梢上。他们不属于任何党派。没有劳作的声音。我没有察觉他们在织布或纺纱。然而，当风停息、听觉也消失了的时候，我确实察觉到一种可以想象的最细微、最甜美的音乐般的嗡嗡声——像五月里远处的一个蜂房，那也许就是他们思考的声音。他们没有闲散的念头，外面的人也看不见他们的工作，因为他们的勤劳并不像困在树结和瘤节里的那样。

But I find it difficult to remember them. They fade irrevocably out of my mind even now while I speak and endeavor to recall them, and recollect myself. It is only after a long and serious effort to recollect my best thoughts that I become again aware of their cohabitancy. If it were not for such families as this, I think I should move out of Concord.

但我发现很难记住他们。即使现在，我一边说着、一边努力回想他们、让自己定下神来，他们也在无可挽回地从我心里褪去。只有经过长久而认真的努力，回想起我最好的思想之后，我才重新意识到他们与我同住。要不是有这样的家族，我想我会搬出康科德。

We are accustomed to say in New England that few and fewer pigeons visit us every year. Our forests furnish no mast for them. So, it would seem, few and fewer thoughts visit each growing man from year to year, for the grove in our minds is laid waste,—sold to feed unnecessary fires of ambition, or sent to mill, and there is scarcely a twig left for them to perch on. They no longer build nor breed with us. In some more genial season, perchance, a faint shadow flits across the landscape of the mind, cast by the wings of some thought in its vernal or autumnal migration, but, looking up, we are unable to detect the substance of the thought itself. Our winged thoughts are turned to poultry. They no longer soar, and they attain only to a Shanghai and Cochin China grandeur. Those gra-a-ate thoughts, those gra-a-ate men you hear of!

在新英格兰，我们常说，每年来访我们的鸽子越来越少了。我们的森林没有给它们提供坚果。似乎，每年来访每个正在成长的人的思想也越来越少了，因为我们心中的树林已被毁坏——卖去喂养不必要的野心之火，或者送进了磨坊——几乎没留下一根小枝给它们栖息。它们不再在我们这里筑巢繁殖了。也许在某个比较温和的季节，一片淡淡的影子掠过心灵的风景，那是某个思想在它春天或秋天的迁徙中，翅膀投下的影子；可是抬头一看，我们却看不出那思想本身的实体。我们长着翅膀的思想变成了家禽。它们不再翱翔，只达到上海鸡和交趾支那鸡那样的伟大。你听说的那些伟——大——的思想，那些伟——大——的人！

We hug the earth—how rarely we mount! Methinks we might elevate ourselves a little more. We might climb a tree, at least. I found my account in climbing a tree once. It was a tall white pine, on the top of a hill; and though I got well pitched, I was well paid for it, for I discovered new mountains in the horizon which I had never seen before,—so much more of the earth and the heavens. I might have walked about the foot of the tree for threescore years and ten, and yet I certainly should never have seen them. But, above all, I discovered around me,—it was near the end of June,—on the ends of the topmost branches only, a few minute and delicate red conelike blossoms, the fertile flower of the white pine looking heavenward. I carried straightway to the village the topmost spire, and showed it to stranger jurymen who walked the streets,—for it was court week—and to farmers and lumber-dealers and wood-choppers and hunters, and not one had ever seen the like before, but they wondered as at a star dropped down. Tell of ancient architects finishing their works on the tops of columns as perfectly as on the lower and more visible parts! Nature has from the first expanded the minute blossoms of the forest only toward the heavens, above men’s heads and unobserved by them. We see only the flowers that are under our feet in the meadows. The pines have developed their delicate blossoms on the highest twigs of the wood every summer for ages, as well over the heads of Nature’s red children as of her white ones; yet scarcely a farmer or hunter in the land has ever seen them.

我们紧贴着大地——我们多么难得向上攀登！我想我们可以把自己再升高一点。至少，我们可以爬一棵树。有一次，我在爬树中得到了好处。那是一棵高大的白松，在一座小山的顶上；尽管我沾了一身松脂，却也得到了丰厚的报偿，因为我在地平线上发现了以前从未见过的新的山——多了那么多的大地和天空。我本可以在树脚下走上七十年，却一定永远不会看见它们。但最重要的是，我发现在我周围——那时将近六月底——只在最高的枝梢上，有几朵微小而精致的红色球果状的花，那是白松向着天空开放的雌花。我立刻把最高的那根枝梢带到村里，给在街上走着的陌生的陪审员们看——因为那是开庭的一周——又给农夫、木材商、樵夫和猎人看，没有一个人以前见过这样的东西，他们惊奇得就像看见一颗掉下来的星星。还说什么古代的建筑师把柱顶上的作品完成得像下部更显眼的部分一样完美！自然从一开始就只向着天空展开森林里微小的花朵，在人的头顶之上，不被他们看见。我们只看见草地上我们脚下的花。千百年来，松树每年夏天都在树林最高的枝梢上开出它们精致的花，既在自然的红皮肤孩子头顶之上，也在她的白皮肤孩子头顶之上；然而这片土地上几乎没有一个农夫或猎人见过它们。

Above all, we cannot afford not to live in the present. He is blessed over all mortals who loses no moment of the passing life in remembering the past. Unless our philosophy hears the cock crow in every barn-yard within our horizon, it is belated. That sound commonly reminds us that we are growing rusty and antique in our employments and habits of thoughts. His philosophy comes down to a more recent time than ours. There is something suggested by it that is a newer testament,—the gospel according to this moment. He has not fallen astern; he has got up early and kept up early, and to be where he is, is to be in season, in the foremost rank of time. It is an expression of the health and soundness of Nature, a brag for all the world,—healthiness as of a spring burst forth, a new fountain of the Muses, to celebrate this last instant of time. Where he lives no fugitive slave laws are passed. Who has not betrayed his master many times since last he heard that note?

最重要的是，我们不能不活在当下。在一切凡人之中，最有福的，是那个不把流逝的生命中的任何一刻浪费在回忆过去上的人。除非我们的哲学听见我们视野之内每一个农家院里的公鸡啼叫，否则它就是迟到了。那声音通常提醒我们，我们在自己的职业和思维习惯里正变得生锈而陈旧。它的哲学比我们的来得更晚近。它所暗示的东西，是一部更新的约书——依照此刻的福音。它没有落在后头；它起得早，一直早早地醒着，处在它所在的地方，就是合乎时令，处在时间的最前列。那是自然的健康与健全的表达，是对全世界的夸耀——像一股迸发的泉水那样的健康，一道新的缪斯之泉，来庆祝时间的这最后一刻。在它住的地方，没有通过什么逃奴法。自从上次听见那声啼叫以来，谁没有多次背弃过他的主呢？

The merit of this bird’s strain is in its freedom from all plaintiveness. The singer can easily move us to tears or to laughter, but where is he who can excite in us a pure morning joy? When, in doleful dumps, breaking the awful stillness of our wooden sidewalk on a Sunday, or, perchance, a watcher in the house of mourning, I hear a cockerel crow far or near, I think to myself, “There is one of us well, at any rate,”—and with a sudden gush return to my senses.

这只鸟的歌的好处，在于它毫无哀怨。歌手很容易让我们落泪或发笑，但能在我们心里激起一种纯粹的清晨的欢乐的人，在哪里呢？当我心情沮丧，在一个星期天打破我们木板人行道上那可怕的寂静，或者，也许是在守丧的人家守夜的时候，我听见远处或近处一只小公鸡啼叫，我就对自己想：“不管怎样，我们当中总有一个是好好的”——于是心头猛地一涌，回到了自己的感官里。

We had a remarkable sunset one day last November. I was walking in a meadow, the source of a small brook, when the sun at last, just before setting, after a cold grey day, reached a clear stratum in the horizon, and the softest, brightest morning sunlight fell on the dry grass and on the stems of the trees in the opposite horizon and on the leaves of the shrub-oaks on the hillside, while our shadows stretched long over the meadow eastward, as if we were the only motes in its beams. It was such a light as we could not have imagined a moment before, and the air also was so warm and serene that nothing was wanting to make a paradise of that meadow. When we reflected that this was not a solitary phenomenon, never to happen again, but that it would happen forever and ever, an infinite number of evenings, and cheer and reassure the latest child that walked there, it was more glorious still.

去年十一月的一天，我们看到了一次非凡的日落。我在一片草地上散步，那是一条小溪的源头；那是寒冷灰暗的一天，太阳终于在落山之前，到了地平线上一层晴朗的天空，最柔和、最明亮的晨光一般的阳光，洒在干枯的草上，洒在对面地平线上的树干上，洒在山坡上灌木橡树的叶子上，而我们的影子在草地上向东拉得长长的，仿佛我们是那光束中仅有的尘埃。那是一种我们片刻之前都无法想象的光，空气也那样温暖宁静，那片草地成为乐园已经什么都不缺了。当我们想到，这并不是一次孤立的、永不重现的现象，而是会永远、永远地发生，在无数个傍晚，去鼓舞、安慰将来最后一个走在那里的孩子，它就更加辉煌了。

The sun sets on some retired meadow, where no house is visible, with all the glory and splendor that it lavishes on cities, and perchance as it has never set before,—where there is but a solitary marsh hawk to have his wings gilded by it, or only a musquash looks out from his cabin, and there is some little black-veined brook in the midst of the marsh, just beginning to meander, winding slowly round a decaying stump. We walked in so pure and bright a light, gilding the withered grass and leaves, so softly and serenely bright, I thought I had never bathed in such a golden flood, without a ripple or a murmur to it. The west side of every wood and rising ground gleamed like the boundary of Elysium, and the sun on our backs seemed like a gentle herdsman driving us home at evening.

太阳落在某片僻静的草地上，那里看不见一所房屋；它落下时，带着它慷慨洒向城市的全部光辉与壮丽，也许落得前所未有地美；那里只有一只孤独的白尾鹞，翅膀被它镀上金色，或者只有一只麝鼠从它的小屋里向外张望，沼泽中间有一条黑色纹理的小溪，刚刚开始蜿蜒，绕着一截朽烂的树桩慢慢流转。我们走在那样纯净明亮的光里，它给枯草和落叶镀上金色，那样柔和、那样宁静地明亮，我想我从未沐浴过这样一股金色的洪流，它没有一丝涟漪，没有一点声响。每一片树林、每一处高地的西侧，都像极乐之境的边界一样闪着光，而我们背上的太阳，像一位温和的牧人，在傍晚赶着我们回家。

So we saunter toward the Holy Land, till one day the sun shall shine more brightly than ever he has done, shall perchance shine into our minds and hearts, and light up our whole lives with a great awakening light, as warm and serene and golden as on a bank-side in Autumn.

我们就这样向着圣地闲逛而去，直到有一天，太阳照得比以往任何时候都更明亮，也许会照进我们的心灵，用一道伟大的、唤醒的光照亮我们的一生，像秋天河岸上的阳光一样温暖、宁静、金黄。