The world is but a strange romance
- The world is but a strange romance
- The end is lost by woeful chance.
- I am but a Troubador
- Scholar in the woodlands’ lore
- Scholar in the songs of birds
- And the flowers’ whispered words
- And the chimes the hairbells ring
- As their heads in the breezes swing.
世界不过是奇异的传奇
- 世界不过是奇异的传奇，
- 结尾因不幸而偶然丢失。
- 我不过是一个游吟歌手，
- 研习那林地知识的学究，
- 研习着鸟雀鸣唱的歌声，
- 花朵儿窃窃私语的话音，
- 风铃草随微风把头摇晃
- 发出的丁丁东东的声响。
傅浩 译
附
此诗是在一本笔记本的扉页上发现的，其中还另抄有八首诗。显然此诗有“序诗”的意味。
叶芝诗集（增订本） 2018 ——
This poem and the next eight are found in an album of both bound and loose leaves with a dark blue-green cover with gold trim. It is difficult to look at the golden bird on the cover of this early notebook without wondering if it provides one of the many sources for the more famous golden bird in Yeats’s great mature poem “Sailing to Byzantium.” For period of composition, the fact that some of the pages are watermarked 1882 provides the earliest possible date, though 1883-84 seems more likely and even 1885 possible.
“The world is but a strange romance” is written inside the front cover of the notebook and provides a sort of introduction to the collection. Yeats inscribed it within a decorative sketch of bluebells, a butterfly, and a body of water, and signed it “WBY.”
hairbells: (also harebells) are bluebell flowers.
George Bornstein—