先讀課文﹕
Ode to the West Wind 西風頌
by Percy Bysshe Shelley
I
O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being,(1)
Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead(2)
Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,(1)
Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red,(2)
Pestilence-stricken multitudes: O thou,(3)
Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed(2)
The winged seeds, where they lie cold and low,(3)
Each like a corpse within its grave,until(4)
Thine azure sister of the Spring shall blow(3)
Her clarion o'er the dreaming earth, and fill(4)
(Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air)(5)
With living hues and odours plain and hill:(4)
Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere;(5)
Destroyer and Preserver; hear, O hear!(5)
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II
Thou on whose stream, 'mid the steep sky's commotion,
Loose clouds like Earth's decaying leaves are shed,
Shook from the tangled boughs of Heaven and Ocean,
Angels of rain and lightning: there are spread
On the blue surface of thine airy surge,
Like the bright hair uplifted from the head
Of some fierce Maenad [1], even from the dim verge
Of the horizon to the zenith's height,
The locks of the approaching storm. Thou dirge
Of the dying year, to which this closing night
Will be the dome of a vast sepulchre
Vaulted with all thy congregated might
Of vapours, from whose solid atmosphere
Black rain, and fire, and hail will burst: O hear!
III
Thou who didst waken from his summer dreams
The blue Mediterranean, where he lay,
Lulled by the coil of his crystalline streams,
Beside a pumice isle in Baiae's [2] bay,
And saw in sleep old palaces and towers
Quivering within the wave's intenser day,
All overgrown with azure moss and flowers
So sweet, the sense faints picturing them! Thou
For whose path the Atlantic's level powers
Cleave themselves into chasms, while far below
The sea-blooms and the oozy woods which wear
The sapless foliage of the ocean, know
Thy voice, and suddenly grow grey with fear,
And tremble and despoil themselves: O hear!
IV
If I were a dead leaf thou mightest bear;
If I were a swift cloud to fly with thee;
A wave to pant beneath thy power, and share
The impulse of thy strength, only less free
Than thou, O Uncontrollable! If even
I were as in my boyhood, and could be
The comrade of thy wanderings over Heaven,
As then, when to outstrip thy skiey speed
Scarce seemed a vision; I would ne'er have striven
As thus with thee in prayer in my sore need.
Oh! lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud!
I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!
A heavy weight of hours has chained and bowed
One too like thee: tameless, and swift, and proud.
V
Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is:
What if my leaves are falling like its own!
The tumult of thy mighty harmonies
Will take from both a deep, autumnal tone,
Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, Spirit fierce,
My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one!
Drive my dead thoughts over the universe
Like withered leaves to quicken a new birth!
And, by the incantation of this verse,
Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth
Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!
Be through my lips to unawakened Earth
The trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind,
If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?
1) 生詞自查。
2) 詩人介紹﹕Percy Bysshe Shelley ( 4 August 1792 -- 8 July 1822) was one
of the major English Romantic poets and is critically regarded as among
the finest lyric poets in the English language. Shelley was famous for his
association with John Keats and Lord Byron. The novelist Mary Shelley was
his second wife.
He became an idol of the next three or four generations of poets, including
important Victorian and Pre-Raphaelite poets. He was admired by Karl Marx,
Oscar Wilde, Thomas Hardy, George Bernard Shaw, Bertrand Russell, William
Butler Yeats, Upton Sinclair and Isadora Duncan.[
3) 註解﹕[1] In Greek mythology, maenads were the female followers of Dionysus
(Bacchus in the Roman pantheon), the most significant members of the Thiasus,
the god's retinue. Their name literally translates as "raving ones". Often
the maenads were portrayed as inspired by him into a state of ecstatic frenzy,
through a combination of dancing and drunken intoxication. In this state,
they would lose all self-control, begin shouting excitedly, engage in uncontrolled
sexual behavior, and ritualistically hunt down and tear to pieces animals
-- and, in myth at least, sometimes men and children -- devouring the raw
flesh. During these rites, the maenads would dress in fawn skins and carry
a thyrsus, a long stick wrapped in ivy or vine leaves and tipped by a cluster
of leaves; they would weave ivy-wreaths around their heads, and often handle
or wear snakes. [2] Baiae in the Campania region of Italy was a Roman seaside
resort on the Bay of Naples. It was said to have been named after Baius,
who was supposedly buried there. Michael Baius (1513 -- September 16, 1589)
was a Belgian theologian. In 1552 Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, appointed
him professor of scriptural interpretation in the university.
4) 能背誦。這是首經典名詩。最後一句更為大家所熟知並引用。注意﹐有時一行詩
會延續到下一小節去﹐以構成一個完整句。閱讀時﹐注意句子結構。掌握了句子結
構安排﹐才能更好理解。
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