《瓦尔登湖·第十七章·春天·Spring》第12节
For a week I heard the circling, groping clangor of some solitary goose in the foggy mornings, seeking its companion, and still peopling the woods with the sound of a larger life than they could sustain. In April the pigeons were seen again flying express in small flocks, and in due time I heard the martins twittering over my clearing, though it had not seemed that the township contained so many that it could afford me any, and I fancied that they were peculiarly of the ancient race that dwelt in hollow trees ere white men came. In almost all climes the tortoise and the frog are among the precursors and heralds of this season, and birds fly with song and glancing plumage, and plants spring and bloom, and winds blow, to correct this slight oscillation of the poles and preserve the equilibrium of Nature. As every season seems best to us in its turn, so the coming in of spring is like the creation of Cosmos out of Chaos and the realization of the Golden Age.— “Eurus ad Auroram Nabathæaque regna recessit, / Persidaque, et radiis juga subdita matutinis.” “The East-Wind withdrew to Aurora and the Nabathæan kingdom, / And the Persian, and the ridges placed under the morning rays * * * * Man was born. Whether that Artificer of things, / The origin of a better world, made him from the divine seed; / Or the earth, being recent and lately sundered from the high / Ether, retained some seeds of cognate heaven.”
注释摘要
这段文字从一只失群的孤雁写起，落到了春天本身所意味的宇宙更新，梭罗在其中完成了一次从具体观察到神话想象的跳跃。那只在雾晨中独自盘旋、鸣叫的雁，用他的话说，发出的是一种"groping clangor"——摸索般的铿锵之声。它寻找同伴，却也在无意中"使森林里充满了一种它们承载不了的更宏大生命的声响"。这个表述很特别：孤雁的鸣叫所暗示的生命尺度，超出了这片森林…