英语沙龙：Deep in the Shady Sadness of a Vale（在线收听）

Deep in the Shady Sadness of a Vale

DEEP in the shady sadness of a vale 

Far sunken from the healthy breath of morn, 

Far from the fiery noon, and eve’s one star, 

Sat gray-hair’d Saturn, quiet as a stone, 

Still as the silence round about his lair; 

Forest on forest hung about his head 

Like cloud on cloud. No stir of air was there, 

Not so much life as on a summer’s day 

Robs not one light seed from the feather’d grass, 

But where the dead leaf fell, there did it rest. 

A stream went voiceless by, still deadened more 

By reason of his fallen divinity 

Spreading a shade: the Naiad ’mid her reeds 

Press’d her cold finger closer to her lips.

Along the margin-sand large foot-marks went, 

No further than to where his feet had stray’d, 

And slept there since. Upon the sodden ground 

His old right hand lay nerveless, listless, dead, 

Unsceptred; and his realmless eyes were closed; 

While his bow’d head seem’d list’ning to the Earth, 

His ancient mother, for some comfort yet.

It seem’d no force could wake him from his place; 

But there came one, who with a kindred hand 

Touch’d his wide shoulders, after bending low 

With reverence, though to one who knew it not. 

She was a Goddess of the infant world; 

By her in stature the tall Amazon 

Had stood a pigmy’s height: she would have ta’en 

Achilles by the hair and bent his neck; 

Or with a finger stay’d Ixion’s wheel. 

Her face was large as that of Memphian sphinx, 

Pedestal’d haply in a palace court, 

When sages look’d to Egypt for their lore. 

But oh! how unlike marble was that face: 

How beautiful, if sorrow had not made 

Sorrow more beautiful than Beauty’s self. 

There was a listening fear in her regard, 

As if calamity had but begun; 

As if the vanward clouds of evil days 

Had spent their malice, and the sullen rear 

Was with its stored thunder labouring up. 

One hand she press’d upon that aching spot 

Where beats the human heart, as if just there, 

Though an immortal, she felt cruel pain: 

The other upon Saturn’s bended neck 

She laid, and to the level of his ear 

Leaning with parted lips, some words she spake 

In solemn tenour and deep organ tone: 

Some mourning words, which in our feeble tongue 

Would come in these like accents; O how frail 

To that large utterance of the early Gods! 

“Saturn, look up!—though wherefore, poor old King? 

“I have no comfort for thee, no not one: 

“I cannot say, “O wherefore sleepest thou?’ 

“For heaven is parted from thee, and the earth 

“Knows thee not, thus afflicted, for a God; 

“And ocean too, with all its solemn noise, 

“Has from thy sceptre pass’d; and all the air 

“Is emptied of thine hoary majesty. 

“Thy thunder, conscious of the new command, 

“Rumbles reluctant o’er our fallen house; 

“And thy sharp lightning in unpractised hands 

“Scorches and burns our once serene domain. 

“O aching time! O moments big as years! 

“All as ye pass swell out the monstrous truth, 

“And press it so upon our weary griefs 

“That unbelief has not a space to breathe. 

“Saturn, sleep on:—O thoughtless, why did I 

“Thus violate thy slumbrous solitude? 

“Why should I ope thy melancholy eyes? 

“Saturn, sleep on! while at thy feet I weep.”