《瓦尔登湖·第十三章·室内取暖·House-Warming》第11节
Light-winged Smoke, Icarian bird, / Melting thy pinions in thy upward flight, / Lark without song, and messenger of dawn, / Circling above the hamlets as thy nest; / Or else, departing dream, and shadowy form / Of midnight vision, gathering up thy skirts; / By night star-veiling, and by day / Darkening the light and blotting out the sun; / Go thou my incense upward from this hearth, / And ask the gods to pardon this clear flame. Hard green wood just cut, though I used but little of that, answered my purpose better than any other. I sometimes left a good fire when I went to take a walk in a winter afternoon; and when I returned, three or four hours afterward, it would be still alive and glowing. My house was not empty though I was gone. It was as if I had left a cheerful housekeeper behind. It was I and Fire that lived there; and commonly my housekeeper proved trustworthy. One day, however, as I was splitting wood, I thought that I would just look in at the window and see if the house was not on fire; it was the only time I remember to have been particularly anxious on this score; so I looked and saw that a spark had caught my bed, and I went in and extinguished it when it had burned a place as big as my hand. But my house occupied so sunny and sheltered a position, and its roof was so low, that I could afford to let the fire go out in the middle of almost any winter day.
注释摘要
这首十行的小诗嵌在梭罗关于冬季取暖的长篇叙述里，是整章的情绪转折点。诗题未见诸原文，但历来注家都把它视为梭罗本人的即兴之作，韵脚与意象承接爱默生式的自然象征主义，又比爱默生多了一层私人化的炉边温度。 诗的第一组意象全在运动与消融之间摇摆。“轻翅的烟，伊卡洛斯的鸟”，这个典一出现，整首诗的基调就定下来了——伊卡洛斯借蜡翼飞向太阳，蜡融坠海；烟借热气上升，却在…