The Hours by John Peale Bishop

菲茨杰拉德在普林斯顿时期结交的挚友Bishop为其写下的悼念诗 In the real dark night of the soul it is always three o'clock in the morning. F. SCOTT FITZGERALD I ALL day, knowing you dead, I have sat in this long-windowed room, Looking upon the sea and, dismayed By mortal sadness, though without thought to resume Those hours which you and I have known Hours when youth like an insurgent sun Showered ambition on an aimless air, Hours foreboding disillusion, Hours which now there is none to share. Since you are dead, I leave them all alone. II A day like any day. Though any day now We expect death. The sky is overcast, And shuddering cold as snow the shoreward blast. And in the marsh, like a sea astray, now Waters brim. This is the moment when the sea Being most full of motion seems motionless. Land and sea are merged. The marsh is gone. And my distress Is at the flood. All but the dunes are drowned. And brimming with memory I have found All hours we ever knew, but have not found The key. I cannot find the lost key To the silver closet you as a wild child hid. III I think of all you did And all you might have done, before undone By death, but for the undoing of despair. No promise such as yours when like the spring You came, colors of jonquils in your hair, Inspired as the wind, when the woods are bare And every silence is about to sing. None had such promise then, and none Your scapegrace wit or your disarming grace; For you were bold as was Danae's son, Conceived like Perseus in a dream of gold. And there was none when you were young, not one, So prompt in the reflecting shield to trace The glittering aspect of a Gorgon age. Despair no love, no fortune could assuage , . . Was it a fault in your disastrous blood That beat from no fortunate god, The failure of all passion in mid-course? You shrank from nothing as from solitude, Lacking the still assurance, and pursued Beyond the sad excitement by remorse. Was it that having shaped your stare upon The severed head of time, upheld and blind, Upheld by the stained hair, And seen the blood upon that sightless stare, You looked and were made one With the strained horror of those sightless eyes? You looked, and were not turned to stone. IV You have outlasted the nocturnal terror, The head hanging in the hanging mirror, The hour haunted by a harrowing face. Now you are drunk at last. And that disgrace You sought in oblivious dives you have At last, in the dissolution of the grave. I have lived with you the hour of your humiliation. I have seen you turn upon the others in the night And of sad self-loathing Concealing nothing Heard you cry: I am lost. But you are lower I And you had that right. The damned do not so own their damnation. I have lived with you some hours of the night, The late hour When the lights lower, The later hour When the lights go out, When the dissipation of the night is past, Hour of the outcast and the outworn whore, That is past three and not yet four When the old blackmailer waits beyond the door And from the gutter with unpitying hands Demands the same sad guiltiness as before, The hour of utter destitution When the soul knows the horror of its loss And knows the world too poor V For restitution, Past three o'clock And not yet four When not pity, pride, Or being brave, Fortune, friendship, forgetfulness of drudgery Or of drug avails, for all has been tried, And nothing avails to save The soul from recognition of its night. The hour of death is always four o'clock. It is always four o'clock in the grave. VI Having heard the bare word that you had died, All day I have lingered in this lofty room, Locked in the light of sea and cloud, And thought, at cost of sea-hours, to illume The hours that you and I have known. Hours death does not condemn, nor love condone. And I have seen the sea-light set the tide In salt succession toward the sullen shore And while the waves lost on the losing sand Seen shores receding and the sands succumb. The waste retreats; glimmering shores retrieve Unproportioned plunges; the dunes restore Drowned confines to the disputed kingdom Desolate mastery, since the dark has come. The dark has cornel I cannot pluck you bays, Though here the bay grows wild. For fugitive As surpassed fame the leaves this sea-wind frays. Why should I promise what I cannot give? I cannot animate with breath Syllables in the open mouth of death. Dark, dark. The shore here has a habit of light. O dark! I leave you to oblivious night! 译文可以参看上海译文出版社出版的《崩溃》