Pan

I sing of Pan and his piping sweet,
King of the shade and the sunlight
That dance amongst the flames of the wheat,
I sing too of the dew bounding
From the impress of the steeds’ feet.
I sing of solitude,
Temple decked to Pan by that race
Of mysterious priests
Who’ve seen the great god face to face,
Who of Pan their melodious king
Have heard hushed talk among the leaves,
Who have heard the brooks the story sing
How an angel race once lived on earth
With bountiful Pan as their King.
A new god rose who hated man;
They died, their shades possess the earth,
And to the woods fled bountiful Pan.

潘

我歌颂潘和他美妙的牧笛，
　阴凉和阳光里面的王者，
在麦子火苗中跳舞的形体；
　我也歌颂骏马的蹄子
践踏处迸溅而起的露水。
　我歌颂孤寂之处，
那神秘祭司一族曾庄严、
　奉献给潘的神殿；
他们见过那大神，面对面，
　他们听过潘，那音乐之王，
在树叶中间已沉寂的言谈，
　他们听过溪流把故事唱：
曾有天使族生活在大地，
　奉慷慨的潘为他们的王。
一位恨人类的新神崛起；
　他们死去，魂附于大地，
慷慨的潘就逃到森林里。

傅浩　译

附

庄严、奉献: 原文"decked"按照韦氏词典的解释(verb 2)，个人认为应用“装饰”理解。

维护者注——

参见《潘的祭司》一诗注。据古罗马帝国时期希腊历史家普鲁塔克说，潘是古希腊神话中惟一真正死了的神。后世有人认为潘神之死象征着神话世界的消逝，取而代之的是基督教的“新神”。

叶芝诗集（增订本） 2018 ——

This poem has an exceptionally full compositional record. At least nine separate drafts survive, each with revisions or alterations, thus making a total of eighteen different stages of the poem’s evolution. The version transcribed here is the most advanced one and originally ended with the following lines, which Yeats canceled:

Ere he fled he cast forgetfulness
On all, for he loved and pitied man,
But a few he called to follow him.
In this temple of perfect beauty
He tells them strange and wonderful things
And he ~~teaches~~ prepares them to prophesy.

The interested reader will find the entire record in The Early Poetry II.

The poem itself provides an early example of Yeats’s lifelong cyclical view of history, here with the civilization associated with Pan being displaced by that of the new god, whose hostile attitude toward mankind appears to be the opposite of Pan’s beneficent one. In Greek mythology, Pan is the god of flocks and shepherds, and hence of nature in general; invention of the shepherd’s pipe was ascribed to him.

bounding: “bounding” is a tentative reading; the manuscript is particularly difficult to decipher there.

George Bornstein—