The original poem is at the front, and the Chinese translation that can be found on the Internet is at the back. My favorite of these songs is "Drummer Hodge".
[No.1] Sleeping Song- []Lullaby
By WHAuden
Lay your sleeping head, my love,
Human on my faithless arm;
Time and fevers burn away
Individual beauty from
Thoughtful children, and the grave
Proves the child ephemeral:
But in my arms till break of day
Let the living creature lie,
Mortal, guilty, but to me
The entirely beautiful.
Soul and body have no bounds:
To lovers as they lie upon
Her tolerant enchanted slope
In their ordinary swoon,
Grave the vision Venus sends
Of supernatural sympathy,
Universal love and hope;
While an abstract insight wakes
Among the glaciers and the rocks
The hermit's carnal ecstasy.
Certainty, fidelity
On the stroke of midnight pass
Like vibrations of a bell
And fashionable madmen raise
Their pedantic boring cry:
Every farthing cost,
All the dreaded cards foretell,
Shall be paid, but from this night
Not a whisper, not a thought,
Not a kiss nor look be lost.
Beauty, midnight, vision dies:
Let the winds of dawn that blow
Softly round your dreaming head
Such a day of welcome show
Eye and knocking heart may bless,
Find our mortal world enough;
Noons of dryness find you fed
By the involuntary powers, Nights of
insult let you pass Watched
by every human love .
Lullaby From the brooding child, the grave attests to that child's short life: but before dawn lay the last survivor in my arms, ordinary, guilty, and utterly beautiful to me . The soul and body of lovers know no bounds: as they lie on the slopes of enchanted tolerance in their habitual intoxication , remembering the supernatural sympathy that Venus sends , and the vision of universal love and hope; when a Abstract epiphanies awaken the worldly frenzy of hermits from glaciers and rocks . Certainty, and loyalty walk away at the stroke of midnight like a bell quivering , and the fashionable lunatics raise their bookish irritating cries: Every fascination lost must be repaid. All horrific solitaire prophecies are to be fulfilled. But not from this night nor a whisper, a thought not a kiss, not a missed glance.
Beauty, midnight, visions will all die: just
let the dawn winds blow
softly around your dreaming head
such a welcome day shows
eyes and beating hearts may be blessing,
finding that our ordinary world is enough;
dry noon You have been fed
by an inadvertent force, and
the night of abuse allows you to pass
under the gaze of every pair of earthly lovers.
[No.2] Art Museum - []Musée des Beaux Arts
By WH Auden
About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters; how well, they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.
In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on .
These classical painters: how well they know its place in the heart of
man , how pain arises
when others are eating, opening windows, or taking a boring walk; While
waiting for the
miraculous birth, there will always be children who
don't particularly want him to be there, but are skating on the pond at the edge of the
woods .
They never forget that
even tragic martyrdom ends
in a corner, a mess,
where the dog continues its dog life and the persecutor's horse rubs
the ignorant rump against the tree.
In Bruegel's Icarus, for example;
how easily everything turned away from the catastrophe:
the peasant may have heard the sound of falling water and the cry of despair,
but for him it was not A terrific failure;
the sun still shines on its white legs into the green waves;
the splendid and delicate ship must have seen
a strange thing, a boy fell from the sky,
but it has somewhere to go and still sails silently .
Art Museum
Yu Guangzhong Translation
When it comes to suffering, they have never misunderstood the
ancient masters: they deeply understand the status of
suffering in the world; when suffering comes,
others are always eating or opening windows or just walking silently
; Waiting reverently and fervently for a
miracle to happen, there are always children who
don't particularly expect it to happen to
be skating on a pond by the woods: the
masters never forget
Even horrific martyrdom must be done
alone , in a messy corner
where a dog lives as a dog, a cruel horse rubs the innocent hindquarters
against a tree trunk.
For example, in Brugo's "Icaris",
everyone the catastrophe leisurely. The farmer may
hear the splash of water and cry for help, but he should not consider
it a heavy sacrifice;
The legs
were waves; the luxurious and elegant sea boat must have seen
a marvelous scene, a boy descended from the sky,
but he had a way to catch up, and still sailed forward peacefully.
ABOUT THE POEM:
meaning:
The basic premise of the poem is response to tragedy, or as the song goes "Obla Di, Obla Da, Life Goes On." The title refers to the Museum of Fine Arts in Brussels. Auden visited the museum in 1938 and viewed the painting by Brueghel, which the poem is basically about. Generalizing at first, and then going into specifics the poem theme is the apathy with which humans view individual suffering.
Auden wrote that "In so far as poetry, or any of the arts, can be said to have an ulterior purpose, it is, by telling the truth, to disenchant and disintoxicate."
The poem juxtaposes ordinary events and exraordinary ones, although extraordinary events seem to deflate to everyday ones with his descriptions. Life goes on while a "miraculous birth occurs", but also while "the disaster" of Icarus's death happens.
background info:
For those cultural barbarians who don't know the story of Icarus, here it is, in condensed form. Icarus was a Greek mythological figure, also known as the son of Daedalus (famous for the Labyrinth of Crete). Now Icarus and his dad were stuck in Crete, because the King of Crete wouldn't let them leave. Daedalus made some wings for the both of them and gave his son instruction on how to fly (not too close to the sea, the water will soak the wings, and not too close to the sky, the sun will melt them. Icarus, however, appeared to be obstinate and did fly to close to the sun. This caused the wax that held his wings to his body to melt. Icarus crashed into the sea and died.
hints:
Some have even claimed to find hints of Auden's eventual reconversion to Christiantiy in the poem. Richard Johnson, author of "Man's Place: An Essay on Auden", believes there is a touch of Christian awareness in the poem, especially the timeline. The reader of the poem is placed in front of the Breughel painting in a museum, and at the same time is expected to project those images and truths to the world outside. There is also a sort of continuity through the poem as you read it and are allowed to see what the poet means. This allows a reader to become aware of his human position.
The poem first discusses a "miraculous birth", and at the end "the tragedy" of a death. The theme in the poem is human suffering. If you add these things together, and stir really well you might even get some hints at religion , mainly at Christianity
Also, the poem suggest a religious acceptance of suffering (example: eating your morning breakfast while watching coverage of a serious trainwreck on CNN). Religious acceptance basically means coming to terms with the ways of the world.
[No.3 ] Shropshire Boys - []A SHROPSHIRE LAD
XXXI. "On Wenlock Edge the wood's in trouble..."
by AE Housman (1859-1936)
On Wenlock Edge the wood's in trouble;
His forest fleece the Wrekin heaves;
The gale, it plies the saplings double,
And thick on Severn snow the leaves.
'Twould blow like this through holt and hanger
When Uricon the city stood:
'Tis the old wind in the old anger,
But then it threshed another wood.
Then, 'twas before my time, the Roman
At yonder heaving hill would stare:
The blood that warms as English yeoman,
The thoughts that hurt him, they were there.
There, like the wind through woods in riot,
Through him the gale of life blew high;
The tree of man was never quiet:
Then 'twas the Roman, now 'tis I.
The gale, it plies the saplings double,
It blows so hard, 'twill soon be gone:
To-day the Roman and his trouble
Are ashes under Uricon.
AEHousman profile:
Alfred Edward Housman was born in a village in rural Shropshire, England in 1859. As a student at Oxford, he distinguished himself as a promising scholar of classics, though crises of a personal nature caused him to fail his final exams. Housman was determined to overcome this failing. When not working at the British Patent office Housman wrote scholarly articles, and published many of them to very high regard from those in academic circles. He was invited to teach at the University of London as a professor of Latin, and soon stepped up to Cambridge University, to retire to the life of a shy academic. He published only two volumes of poetry --A Shropshire Lad in 1898 and Last Poems in 1922 -- yet these were instantly and enormously popular. However successful he was, the tone of his poems remained that of the Latin poets he admired:that life is short and often, inexplicably, comes to a bad end.
In addition, Yu Dafu also mentioned A Shropshire Lad more than 80 years ago:
Oh, last June outside the bustling Shanghai city, by the bustling Huangpu River, I was reciting Housman's A Shropshire Lad Come you home a
hero
Or come not home at all,
The lads you leave will mind You
Till Ludlow tower shall fall
a few clear poems, while staring blankly at the dark and turbid water in the river, I once sighed a lot Sound, how many tears dripped. If you knew the desperation I felt at that time, I don't think you would have sent me those few resentful letters from last year. ——Ah, I remembered, you don’t understand English, so I’ll translate these poems for you by the way.
"You should go home with good clothes,
otherwise you will never return, so that
your children will see the destruction of
Ladrota.
" Volume 2, No. 1, according to Duff's Short Story Book 1)
[No.4] Drummer Hodge- []Drummer Hodge
by Thomas Hardy
They throw in Drummer Hodge, to rest
Uncoffined – just as found:
His landmark is a kopje-crest
That breaks the veldt around;
And foreign constellations west
Each night above his mound.
Young Hodge the Drummer never knew –
Fresh from his Wessex home –
The meaning of the broad Karoo,
The Bush, the dusty loam,
And why uprose to nightly view
Strange stars amid the gloam.
Yet portion of that unknown plain
Will Hodge forever be;
His homely Northern breast and brain
Grow to some Southern tree,
And strange-eyed constellation reign
His stars eternally.
Drummer
Hodge Thomas Hardy Translated by
Lu
Zhilu Drummer Hodge was thrown into a pit and buried,
as found, no coffin :
His burial place is a hill in South Africa,
tore the surrounding plain a little;
Every night over this tomb,
constellations of foreign countries spread out to the west.
Just came here from his home in Wessex,
Young drummer Hodge couldn't figure it out,
Bush , fertile soil and dust,
What is the significance of the vast and arid plateau?
The dark night is vast,
the twinkling constellations are strange.
is a corner of this unnamed plain,
will sleep forever and never leave;
he will grow into a southern tree
with the simple mind and mind of the north,
let the stars twinkle with strange eyes,
Destiny always rules.
[No.5] Unspoken Longing- [] Leaves of Grass
289. The Untold Want
By Walt Whitman (1819–1892)
THE untold want, by life and land ne'er granted,
Now, Voyager, sail thou forth, to seek and find.
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