The long-drawn virgin vales; the mild blue hill-sides; as over these there steals the hush, the hum; you almost swear that play-wearied children lie sleeping in these solitudes, in some glad May-time, when the flowers of the woods are plucked. And all this mixes with your most mystic mood; so that fact and fancy, half-way meeting, interpenetrate, and form one seamless whole.
這些人跡未到的漫長的溪谷;這些柔和青蒼的山腰;一經(jīng)過這些地方,不禁使人屏聲棄息;簡直叫人敢于發(fā)誓:在這樣靜穆的境地里,就象是在一種快樂的五月天里,玩累了的小孩,把樹林里的野花都摘光后,正在大睡一通了。因為所有這一切跟你那最為神秘的心情交融在一起,所以,事實。幻想和偶然的遭遇就互相貫穿起來,形成一個天衣無縫的整體。
Nor did such soothing scenes, however temporary, fail of at least as temporary an effect on Ahab. But if these secret golden keys did seem to open in him his own secret golden treasuries, yet did his breath upon them prove but tarnishing.
盡管這種令人獲得慰藉的景色是多么的短暫,它至少對亞哈也暫時起了作用。不過,如果這些神秘的金鑰匙真會打開他身上那秘密的金銀寶庫的話,但只消他一個哈氣,又會使它失去光澤了。
Oh, grassy glades! oh ever vernal endless landscapes in the soul; in ye, — though long parched by the dead drought of the earthly life, — in ye, men yet may roll, like young horses in new morning clover; and for some few fleeting moments, feel the cool dew of the life immortal on them. Would to God these blessed calms would last. But the mingled, mingling threads of life are woven by warp and woof: calms crossed by storms, a storm for every calm. There is no steady unretracing progress in this life; we do not advance through fixed gradations, and at the last one pause: — through infancy's unconscious spell, boyhood's thoughtless faith, adolescence' doubt (the common doom), then scepticism, then disbelief, resting at last in manhood's pondering repose of If.
長滿青草的林間空地呵!愿無窮的春色永存在生命中——你雖然久經(jīng)人間的苦旱生活而長期龜裂——人類卻還可以象小馬在清晨的三葉草上一般,在你身上打滾;還可以在霎忽而逝的工夫里,身上感到有生命不朽的涼露。但愿上帝讓這種福祉的靜穆永垂久遠??墒巧木€已被經(jīng)緯織成一片,混雜不清了:風暴勾消了寧靜,一次風暴換來萬般寧靜。生命里并沒有什么一定不能折回的進程;我們并不是循著固定的層次前進,最后就停將下來的——由孩提時代的無意識的牙牙學語,而少年時代的無思無想的信念,成人時代的懷疑(一般的命數(shù)),接著是疑惑,再接著是不信仰,最后寄托在人類的最具深思熟慮的"假定"上。