頌詩譯選

第二次來臨

凌風 譯

盤旋復盤旋圈子越來越大
鷹不再受蓄鷹者的馭使；
事務散盤了；中心失去控制；
成為只是亂民的世界，
貧血的潮流氾濫，到處
對清白的尊重被淹沒了；
最好的人全然缺乏信念，但最壞的
卻滿有強烈的熱情。
定然是某種啟示臨近了；
定然是第二次來臨近了。
第二次來臨！這句話剛完
就有一個巨大的形象靈感
出現使我不安：在某地荒漠散沙中間
一個獅身人首的模樣，
像太陽漠然無憐憫的注視，
它的腿緩慢的移動，在它的周圍
是沙漠群鳥畏縮的影子。
黑暗又降臨；但現在我知道
二十個世紀的沉睡
苦惱的被搖籃搖成噩夢，
那麼粗暴的獸，它的時刻終於來臨，
懶散的走向伯利恆出生。

葉慈（1865-1939）是愛爾蘭詩人，劇作家，並國會議員，獲1923年諾貝爾文學獎。

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.