W. B. Yeats - The Grey Rock 汉译

POETS with whom I learned my trade,  

Companions of the Cheshire Cheese,  

Here’s an old story I’ve re-made,  

Imagining ’twould better please  

Your ears than stories now in fashion,     

Though you may think I waste my breath  

Pretending that there can be passion  

That has more life in it than death,  

And though at bottling of your wine  

The bow-legged Goban had no say;  

The moral’s yours because it’s mine.  

When cups went round at close of day—  

Is not that how good stories run?—  

Somewhere within some hollow hill,  

If books speak truth in Slievenamon,  

But let that be, the gods were still  

And sleepy, having had their meal,  

And smoky torches made a glare  

On painted pillars, on a deal  

Of fiddles and of flutes hung there  

By the ancient holy hands that brought them  

From murmuring Murias, on cups—  

Old Goban hammered them and wrought them,  

And put his pattern round their tops  

To hold the wine they buy of him. 

But from the juice that made them wise  

All those had lifted up the dim  

Imaginations of their eyes,  

For one that was like woman made  

Before their sleepy eyelids ran  

And trembling with her passion said,  

‘Come out and dig for a dead man,  

Who’s burrowing somewhere in the ground,  

And mock him to his face and then  

Hollo him on with horse and hound, 

For he is the worst of all dead men.’  

We should be dazed and terror struck,  

If we but saw in dreams that room,  

Those wine-drenched eyes, and curse our luck  

That emptied all our days to come.  

I knew a woman none could please,  

Because she dreamed when but a child  

Of men and women made like these;  

And after, when her blood ran wild,  

Had ravelled her own story out,  

And said, ‘In two or in three years  

I need must marry some poor lout,’  

And having said it burst in tears.  

Since, tavern comrades, you have died,  

Maybe your images have stood,  

Mere bone and muscle thrown aside,  

Before that roomful or as good.  

You had to face your ends when young—  

’Twas wine or women, or some curse—  

But never made a poorer song  

That you might have a heavier purse,  

Nor gave loud service to a cause  

That you might have a troop of friends.  

You kept the Muses’ sterner laws,  

And unrepenting faced your ends,  

And therefore earned the right—and yet  

Dowson and Johnson most I praise—  

To troop with those the world’s forgot,  

And copy their proud steady gaze.  

‘The Danish troop was driven out 

Between the dawn and dusk,’ she said;  

‘Although the event was long in doubt,  

Although the King of Ireland’s dead  

And half the kings, before sundown  

All was accomplished.’

            ‘When this day  

Murrough, the King of Ireland’s son,  

Foot after foot was giving way,  

He and his best troops back to back  

Had perished there, but the Danes ran,  

Stricken with panic from the attack,  

The shouting of an unseen man;  

And being thankful Murrough found,  

Led by a footsole dipped in blood  

That had made prints upon the ground,  

Where by old thorn trees that man stood;  

And though when he gazed here and there,  

He had but gazed on thorn trees, spoke,  

“Who is the friend that seems but air  

And yet could give so fine a stroke?”  

Thereon a young man met his eye,  

Who said, “Because she held me in  

Her love, and would not have me die,  

Rock-nurtured Aoife took a pin,  

And pushing it into my shirt,  

Promised that for a pin’s sake,  

No man should see to do me hurt;  

But there it’s gone; I will not take  

The fortune that had been my shame  

Seeing, King’s son, what wounds you have.”  

’Twas roundly spoke, but when night came  

He had betrayed me to his grave,  

For he and the King’s son were dead.  

I’d promised him two hundred years,  

And when for all I’d done or said—  

And these immortal eyes shed tears—

He claimed his country’s need was most,  

I’d saved his life, yet for the sake  

Of a new friend he has turned a ghost.  

What does he care if my heart break?  

I call for spade and horse and hound

That we may harry him.’ Thereon  

She cast herself upon the ground  

And rent her clothes and made her moan:  

‘Why are they faithless when their might  

Is from the holy shades that rove

The grey rock and the windy light?  

Why should the faithfullest heart most love  

The bitter sweetness of false faces?  

Why must the lasting love what passes,  

Why are the gods by men betrayed!’

But thereon every god stood up  

With a slow smile and without sound,  

And stretching forth his arm and cup  

To where she moaned upon the ground,  

Suddenly drenched her to the skin;

And she with Goban’s wine adrip,  

No more remembering what had been,  

Stared at the gods with laughing lip.  

I have kept my faith, though faith was tried,  

To that rock-born, rock-wandering foot,

And the world’s altered since you died,  

And I am in no good repute  

With the loud host before the sea,  

That think sword strokes were better meant  

Than lover’s music—let that be,

So that the wandering foot’s content.