双语美文：冬日之光.docVIP

双语美文：冬日之光 双语美文：冬日之光 　　On March 16, 2002, when daffodils were swaying in the slowly warming wind of a 1)North Carolina spring, I found myself in a 2)snug hospital room with my wife and just-born daughter, only hours old, and I thought of ice. 　　2002年3月16日,北卡罗来纳州的春天时节,水仙花在渐渐变暖的春风中摇曳,我与妻子以及刚刚出生才几个小时的女儿呆在一间温暖的病房里。这时,我想到了冰雪。 　　A poem called Frost at Midnight, by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, was on my mind. In this verse, written in 1798, Coleridge sits near his infant son, Hartley, on a winter night in England. He recalls events from his troubled life, one 3)fraught with chronic miserie ranging from melancholy to4)botched love to opium addiction to writer’s 5)block. With a 6)fervor usually reserved for prayer, the poet envisions a life for his son free of these problems—a vibrant, creative 7)existence. Coleridge then asks nature itself to nurture his parental hope, 8)invoking the 9)potency of green summer but also, and especially, the winter’s “secret 10)ministry of frost,” “quietly shining to the quiet moon.” 　　我想起塞缪尔·泰勒·柯勒律治的诗《霜夜》。这首诗写于1798年,在英格兰的一个冬夜,柯勒律治坐在他幼小的儿子哈特利身旁。他回忆起自己坎坷的一生——罹患忧郁症,情路失意跌撞,沉溺鸦片,写作路上又灵感枯竭——悲歌连连。带着祈祷时的那股热情,诗人寄望儿子的生活能免于这一切不幸——过上充满活力且富有创造性的生活。接着,柯勒律治请求大自然呵护成全他对儿子的希望,恳求青葱夏日,尤其是那“向着宁静的月亮静静闪光”的冬日“秘密使者严霜”赐予力量。 　　As a college professor, I had been teaching Frost at Midnight for year and had decided, soon after my wife became pregnant, to read the poem to commemorate our baby’s birth. And so I did recite the poem to our girl—we named her Una—hoping, like Coleridge, that her life would be 11)perennially blessed by leaves and ice alike, by summery days but also by the chilly periods when she would most need strength. 　　作为一名大学教授,我曾教授《霜夜》这首诗多年,而且早在妻子怀孕后不久就决定,要读此诗来纪念我们孩子的出生。后来我的确为我们的女儿(我们给她起名叫尤纳)朗诵了这首诗,如柯勒律治一样,希望她能够永远得到绿叶和寒冰的庇佑,无论是炎炎夏日还是最需要力量的寒冷时节,福佑都不断降临于她。 　　What intrigued and moved me about the poem was its curious suggestion that gloom and loneliness might actually cultivate a sort of 12)luminous affection. 13)Forlorn most of his life, Coleridge was acutely