Inscription for a Christmas Card

  • In this ruddy time of holly
  • This my greeting unto thee
  • By paths of crimson flowers
  • Untasted by the honey bee
  • By his solitary bowers.
  • Hand in hand may old time call thee
  • Where the wood spirits stately race
  • Flits ever on before thy face.
  • The great world for gold is mad
  • Content be thou that thou art glad
  • For riches go upon no quest:
  • Peace and solitude is best.
  • Hear ye not the tumbling waters
  • Rolling from the haunted hills,
  • Hear ye not the mountain’s daughters
  • Laughing in a thousand rills,
  • Does not the shouting spring
  • Come on the swallow’s wing?
  • Let there be all thy wealth.

圣诞卡题词

  • 在这冬青泛红时
  • 我送这问候给您，
  • 沿途满径的红花
  • 尚未经蜜蜂尝品，
  • 紧邻它孤寂的家。
  • 愿古昔牵手唤您
  • 到林妖翩翩嬉逐
  • 飞过您面前之处。
  • 尘世为黄金疯魔，
  • 愿您知足常快乐：
  • 财富不求任自然，
  • 平和孤寂乃至善。
  • 岂不闻潺潺流水
  • 出鬼谷滚滚滔滔；
  • 岂不闻山神女儿
  • 在千条溪中大笑；
  • 咆哮山泉岂不会
  • 打湿燕子的羽翼？
  • 这全是您的财富。

傅浩　译

附

家: 原文bowers，意为树下、花园、森林等地方的的阴凉地。

翩翩嬉逐: 原文stately race，stately意为"having a dignified, unhurried, and grand manner; majestic in manner and appearance"。

维护者注——

This is the third and longest draft of this poem found in the album. After its initial reference to a “time of holly,” the poem leaves its seasonal subject behind and returns to Yeats’s normal early literary concerns. The unrhymed last line may indicate that the poem is incomplete. “By” in line 3, “call” in line 6, and “shouting” in line 17 are particularly conjectural readings.

George Bornstein—