《瓦尔登湖·第一章·经济篇·Economy》第68节
COMPLEMENTAL VERSES The Pretensions of Poverty “Thou dost presume too much, poor needy wretch, / To claim a station in the firmament / Because thy humble cottage, or thy tub, / Nurses some lazy or pedantic virtue / In the cheap sunshine or by shady springs, / With roots and pot-herbs; where thy right hand, / Tearing those humane passions from the mind, / Upon whose stocks fair blooming virtues flourish, / Degradeth nature, and benumbeth sense, / And, Gorgon-like, turns active men to stone. / We not require the dull society / Of your necessitated temperance, / Or that unnatural stupidity / That knows nor joy nor sorrow; nor your forc’d / Falsely exalted passive fortitude / Above the active. This low abject brood, / That fix their seats in mediocrity, / Become your servile minds; but we advance / Such virtues only as admit excess, / Brave, bounteous acts, regal magnificence, / All-seeing prudence, magnanimity / That knows no bound, and that heroic virtue / For which antiquity hath left no name, / But patterns only, such as Hercules, / Achilles, Theseus. Back to thy loath’d cell; / And when thou seest the new enlightened sphere, / Study to know but what those worthies were.” / T. CAREW
注释摘要
梭罗在《经济篇》正文之后附上了这首出自十七世纪英国宫廷诗人托马斯·卡鲁的诗，题为《贫穷的狂妄》。这首诗几乎是在逐条斥责梭罗自己刚用数十页篇幅为之辩护的那种生活——简朴、自愿贫穷、退居乡野、蔑视世俗功名。梭罗将此诗附录于此，并非表示认同，而是主动把自己要面对的最尖锐反驳摆到台前，这本身就是一种修辞上的自信：他把敌手的论据提前亮出来，等于在说，这些质疑我都听到…