《瓦尔登湖·第十章·贝克农场·Baker Farm》第6节
O Baker Farm! “Landscape where the richest element / Is a little sunshine innocent.” * * “No one runs to revel / On thy rail-fenced lea.” * * “Debate with no man hast thou, / With questions art never perplexed, / As tame at the first sight as now, / In thy plain russet gabardine dressed.” * * “Come ye who love, / And ye who hate, / Children of the Holy Dove, / And Guy Faux of the state, / And hang conspiracies / From the tough rafters of the trees!” Men come tamely home at night only from the next field or street, where their household echoes haunt, and their life pines because it breathes its own breath over again; their shadows morning and evening reach farther than their daily steps. We should come home from far, from adventures, and perils, and discoveries every day, with new experience and character. Before I had reached the pond some fresh impulse had brought out John Field, with altered mind, letting go “bogging” ere this sunset. But he, poor man, disturbed only a couple of fins while I was catching a fair string, and he said it was his luck; but when we changed seats in the boat luck changed seats too. Poor John Field!—I trust he does not read this, unless he will improve by it,—thinking to live by some derivative old country mode in this primitive new country,—to catch perch with shiners. It is good bait sometimes, I allow. With his horizon all his own, yet he a poor man, born to be poor, with his inherited Irish poverty or poor life, his Adam’s grandmother and boggy ways, not to rise in this world, he nor his posterity, till their wading webbed bog-trotting feet get talaria to their heels.
注释摘要
梭罗在约翰·菲尔德漏雨的屋檐下坐了一个下午，劝他过更简单的生活，劝说未果后起身离开。这一段发生在他刚告别菲尔德一家、走向瓦尔登湖的路上。整节贝克农场的前半部分是松林、雪松、沼泽的漫游，中间是避雨时与这位爱尔兰移民邻居的相遇和长篇说教，这之后梭罗忽然转入一种近乎诗歌的语调，对着贝克农场发出感叹。这声“O Baker Farm”既是对土地的呼唤，也是对一种生活…