《瓦尔登湖·第四章·声音·Sounds》第11节
While these things go up other things come down. Warned by the whizzing sound, I look up from my book and see some tall pine, hewn on far northern hills, which has winged its way over the Green Mountains and the Connecticut, shot like an arrow through the township within ten minutes, and scarce another eye beholds it; going “to be the mast / Of some great ammiral.” And hark! here comes the cattle-train bearing the cattle of a thousand hills, sheepcots, stables, and cow-yards in the air, drovers with their sticks, and shepherd boys in the midst of their flocks, all but the mountain pastures, whirled along like leaves blown from the mountains by the September gales. The air is filled with the bleating of calves and sheep, and the hustling of oxen, as if a pastoral valley were going by. When the old bell-wether at the head rattles his bell, the mountains do indeed skip like rams and the little hills like lambs. A car-load of drovers, too, in the midst, on a level with their droves now, their vocation gone, but still clinging to their useless sticks as their badge of office. But their dogs, where are they? It is a stampede to them; they are quite thrown out; they have lost the scent. Methinks I hear them barking behind the Peterboro’ Hills, or panting up the western slope of the Green Mountains. They will not be in at the death. Their vocation, too, is gone. Their fidelity and sagacity are below par now. They will slink back to their kennels in disgrace, or perchance run wild and strike a league with the wolf and the fox. So is your pastoral life whirled past and away. But the bell rings, and I must get off the track and let the cars go by;— What’s the railroad to me? / I never go to see / Where it ends. / It fills a few hollows, / And makes banks for the swallows, / It sets the sand a-blowing, / And the blackberries a-growing, but I cross it like a cart-path in the woods. I will not have my eyes put out and my ears spoiled by its smoke and steam and hissing.
注释摘要
梭罗在这一段里把货运列车的双向流动变成了一幅活动的浮雕。“这边东西上去，那边东西下来”：上去的是被砍伐的北方松树，作为船桅的胚料；下来的是整列装载的牲畜、牧人、牧羊童，把这些山里牧场的生活一列火车打包运走。他先从身旁的声响发端——松木经刮削后凌空飞过的嗡嗡声——然后镜头剧烈拉远，把那根单棵松树构想成横越青山与康涅狄格河的箭矢，十秒之内射穿整个镇区的空域，几…