Alexander Pope - A Tragic Pastoral 汉译

I have a mind to fill the rest of this paper with an accident that happened just under my eyes, and has made a great impression upon me. I have just passed part of this summer at an old romantic seat of my Lord Harcourt’s, which he has lent me. It overlooks a common field, where, under the shadow of a haycock, sat two lovers, as constant as ever were found in romance, beneath a spreading beech. The name of the one (let it sound as it will) was John Hewett; of the other, Sarah Drew. John was a well-set man about five-and-twenty; Sarah a brown woman of eighteen.  John had for several months borne the labour of the day in the same field with Sarah; when she milked, it was his morning and evening charge to bring the cows to her pail. Their love was the talk, but not the scandal of the neighbourhood; for all they aimed at was the blameless possession of each other in marriage. It was but this very morning that he obtained her parents’ consent, and it was but till the next week that they were to wait to be happy. Perhaps this very day, in the intervals of their work, they were talking of their wedding clothes; and John was now matching several kinds of poppies and field flowers to her complexion, to make her a present of knots for the day. While they were thus employed (it was on the last day of July,) a terrible storm of thunder and lightning arose, that drove the labourers to what shelter the trees or hedges afforded. Sarah, frightened and out of breath, sunk on a haycock, and John (who never separated from her) sat by her side, having raked two or three heaps together to secure her. Immediately there was heard so loud a crack as if heaven had burst asunder. The labourers, all solicitous for each other’s safety, called to one another: those who were nearest our lovers, hearing no answer, stepped to the place where they lay. They first saw a little smoke, and after, this faithful pair; – John with one arm about Sarah’s neck, and the other held over her face, as if to screen her from the lightning. They were struck dead, and already grown stiff and cold in this tender posture. There was no mark or discolouring on their bodies, only that Sarah’s eyebrow was a little singed, and a small spot between her breasts. They were buried next day in one grave, in the parish of Stanton Harcourt; where my Lord Harcourt, at my request, has erected a monument over them.