The Meditation of the Old Fisherman

You waves, though you dance by my feet like children at play,
Though you glow and you glance, though you purr and you dart;
In the Junes that were warmer than these are, the waves were
more gay,
When I was a boy with never a crack in my heart.

The herring are not in the tides as they were of old;
My sorrow! for many a creak gave the creel in the cart
That carried the take: to Sligo town to be sold,
When I was a boy with never a crack in my heart.

And ah, you proud maiden, you are not so fair when his oar
Is heard on the water, as they were, the proud and apart,
Who paced in the eve by the nets on the pebbly shore,
When I was a boy with never a crack in my heart.

老渔夫的幽思

海浪哟，虽然你们像玩耍的孩子般在我脚边跳舞，
虽然你们脸放光，眼发亮，虽然你们叫声欢，脚步轻，
但是从前的六月比近来的更暖和，海浪也更
　　欢娱，
那时候我还是个小伙子，心里面还没有一丝裂痕。

大群的鲱鱼再也不像往日那样在潮水里洄游；
真让人悲伤！当年大车上的藤筐咯吱吱响个不停，
满载着一网打来的鲜鱼到斯来沟县城里去出售，
那时候我还是个小伙子，心里面还没有一丝裂痕。

啊，骄傲的女孩儿，哪怕他的桨声在水面上荡响，
你也不比她们漂亮，那些骄傲又出众的美人，
她们曾经在黄昏时分漫步在卵石滩上的鱼网旁，
那时候我还是个小伙子，心里面还没有一丝裂痕。

傅浩　译

此诗作于1886年6月，最初发表于《爱尔兰月刊》（1886年10月）。叶芝（1895）称“此诗所根据的是一个从斯来沟湾捕鱼归来的渔夫对我说的一些话”（《校刊本》，页797）。

叶芝诗集（增订本） 2018 ——

Yeats claimed that 'This is an attempt to reconstruct an old song from three lines imperfectly remembered by an old peasant woman in the vil- lage of Ballysodare, Sligo, who often sings them to herself' (1889: VP p. 90). The work is close to the first two stanzas of a poem with the same title in the P. J. McCall Ballad Collection in the National Library of Ire- land. Yeats glossed 'salley' as 'willow' (1895; VP p. 797).

The Collected Works of W. B. Yeats, Volume I—