Philip Freneau
The Wild Honeysuckle
野忍冬花
美好的花呀，你长得，这么秀丽， 却藏身在这僻静沉闷的地方--- 甜美的花儿开了却没人亲昵， 招展的小小枝梢也没人观赏；
没游来荡去的脚把你踩碎， 没东攀西摘的手来催你落泪。
大自然把你打扮得一身洁白， 她叫你避开庸俗粗鄙的目光， 她布置下树荫把你护卫起来， 又让潺潺的柔波淌过你身旁； 你的夏天就这样静静地消逝， 这时候你日见萎蔫终将安息。
那些难免消逝的美使我销魂， 想起你未来的结局我就心疼， 别的那些花儿也不比你幸运--- 虽开放在伊甸园中也已凋零， 无情的寒霜再加秋风的威力， 会叫这花朵消失得一无踪迹。
朝阳和晚露当初曾把你养育， 让你这小小的生命来到世上， 原来若乌有，就没什么可失去， 因为你的死让你同先前一样； 这来去之间不过是一个钟点--- 这就是脆弱的花享有的天年。
（黄皋炘 译） Commentary
The short lyric was written in 1786. Freneau was inspired by the beauty of the wild honey suckle when he was walking at Chaeleston, South Carolina. It was virtually unread in the poet’s lifetime, yet it deserves a place among major English and American works of poetry of that time. This is one of the most quoted works of Freneau. Generally speaking, it is the best of Freneau’s poems, and the best poem on nature before the appearance of the verses of William Cullen Bryant, William Wordsworth, and Ralph Waldo Emerson’s The Rhodora. But unlike those early writers who turned to look for themes outside America, Freneau rooted his poem on this piece of land. He is one of the few early writers who eulogize the country.
Before Freneau there had been some American poets who, however, wrote mostly on the religious
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theme and either in style or structurally they imitated English poets. Freneau, the first American-born poet, was one of the earliest who cast their eyes over the natural surroundings of the New Continent and American subject matter.
As is displayed in this poem, honeysuckle, instead of rose of daffodil became the object of depiction; it is “wild” just to convey the fresh perception of the natural scenes on the new continent. The flowers, similar to the early Puritan settlers, used to believe they were the selects of God to be arranged on the abundant land, but now have to wake up from fantasy and be more respectful to natural law. Time is constant but the time of a life is short; any favor is relative but change is absolute; with or without the awareness, nature develops; flowers were born, blossomed and declined to repose, and human beings would exist in exactly the same way. A philosophical meditation is indicated by the description of the fate of a trivial wild plant.
A quintessentially Romantic poet, Freneau demonstrated the best of his poetic art in the melodious lyrics on Nature’s beauty. In this short poem about a flower, the poet describes his thoughts over some much more grand topics including religion and life in general. The wild honey suckle is, in the poet’s eye, no longer a common flower. To some extent, Freneau’s poem is a longer expounding of William Blake’s poem: “To see the world in a grain of sand,/And a heaven in a wild flower,/Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,/And eternity in an hour.”
In the first two stanzas, to start with, Freneau devoted more attention to the environment of the flower in which he found it than to the appearance of the flower per se. He commented on the secluded nature of the place where the honey suckle grew, drawing a conclusion that it was due to Nature’s protectiveness that the flower was able to lead a peaceful life free from men’s disturbance and destruction.
But the next stanza immediately changed the tone from silent admiration and appreciation to outright lamentation over the “future’s doom” of the flower --- even Nature was unable to save the flower from its death. Actually no flower, or no living being, can escape. Not even the flowers that used to bloom in Eden. Thus from the flower in nature the poet started to ponder over the fate of man, who was bound to fall from his innocence and suffer from the despair of death as the result to his exile from Paradise. Just as kindly as nourished and protected the honey suckle in spring and summer, Nature will destroy ruthlessly the flower with its autumn and winter weapons.
Following the traditional European model, the lyric is written in regular 6-line tetrameter stanzas, rhyming “ababcc”, and sounds just like music. But in order to accord with the change in tone and topic in Stanza 3, the rhythmic pattern is varied. Different from the rest the poem which is written in smooth iambic tetrameter lines, the third line of the stanza --- “They died” --- begins with a “spondee” (two stressed beats in a row) and, after forcing the reader to pause (the dash), continues in a highly irregular rhythm with an intensification of stressed beats. The purpose is obvious: the speaker wants to drive the horrible message home, to let the reader feel the impact acutely. But as we progress into the last stanza, when a more mature view of life and death is adopted, the rhythms are restored to the original regularity as the tone assumes a tempered serenity grown out of experience.
In this poem, the poet expresses a keen awareness of the loveliness and transience of nature. It implies that life and death are inevitable law of nature. In addition, the poet writes with the strong implication that, though in the work no one is presented in person, human beings at times envy the flower. This is seen not because the “roving foot” would “crush”; nor that the “busy hand” would “provoke a tear”; nor because of the “vulgar eye”, but because of the fact that the human being has
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the ability to foresee his death. Whereas, the flower, with its happy ignorance, lacks this consciousness and is completely unaware of its doom. Its innocence left it happier than the foreseeing human beings. Unfortunately, the human beings are quite unwilling to refuse this knowledge and that arouses all their sufferings.
菲利普·弗瑞诺是美国18世纪著名的诗人，被成为美国诗歌之父。尽管他在很大程度上受到John Milton和Tomas Gray等英国诗人的影响，在诗歌的主题和形式上都带有明显的模仿痕迹，但他却颇有独创地把传统英诗的创作模式运用于讴歌北美大陆特有的土著居民和花卉鸟兽中。他的诗歌融合了新古典主义和浪漫主义，充满美国情调，其特点在于具有浓厚的抒情色彩，运用明确的意象手法，并反映出崇尚自然和原始生活的倾向。而这些特点成为19世纪浪漫主义文学的基本特征，所以Freneau本人被认为是美国浪漫主义文学的先驱。《野金银花》就是他自然神论的一个重要特征，一直被评论家视为美国文学的瑰宝。 Freneau丰富的想象使他在同代人中率先摆脱模拟英国18世纪新古典诗作的羁绊，直接观察和描绘四周的一切。美洲大地的风貌，它的一花一草，它平凡的生活经历，都能引起诗人的联翩浮想。他善于捕捉倏忽即逝的遐思，并借此为框架，巧妙地遣词用字，写出抒发自己胸臆的诗歌。《野金银花》是Freneau在南卡罗莱纳州查尔斯顿散步时，看到一簇幽生的金银花，于是便有感而发，将这首短诗一气呵成。诗人以敏锐的观察力、浅俗的词汇、优美的旋律和清晰的意象，细腻生动地描写了盛开于北美大地不为人们注意的野金银花。
此诗分为两大部分，前两节写景，后两节抒情。写景以抒情为目的，抒情以写景为背景，两部分互为烘托，成为不可分割的整体。诗人以惊喜的目光看到自然界神奇的产物时，心中涌动的是对大自然无限的崇拜之情。如果说“绿荫”指的是未受人类文明侵犯的新大陆处女地的话，那些“美丽的金银花”则应是大自然创作的生命的具体体现。诗人用浅显的文字勾画出一片繁荣祥和的景象，在对生命的赞叹中，流露出返璞归真、崇尚自然的情节，充满了浪漫主义情调和理想主义色彩。
然而，Freneau的过人之处，不仅在于他具有诗人的敏感，而且在于他同时具有哲人的睿智。诗人先是描写外界景物，然后直接联系到自己，联系到人类，并将人与自然融为一体，以自然规律来感染读者。所以，诗人从第三小节开始笔锋一转。显然，诗人对大自然的神奇力量由崇拜转为迷惑，怀着惋惜忐忑的心情联想到生命的无奈和大自然的无情，开始了对生命本质的思考。因此，在第四小节，诗人对主题进一步挖掘。至此，Freneau借助金银花的荣枯阐述了自己毫不掩饰的自然观：万物有生必有死，有荣必有枯，花开花落，四季转换乃自然界的规律，这一规律是不以人的意志为转移的，是人类无法抗拒的。自然界万物的生生息息乃自然的神力所造就，是人类无法左右的。因而，对于花的荣枯，人的生死，人类大可不必为之伤情。正如中国的一句古语，人“生不带来死不带去”。诗人高歌：“不曾拥有，何曾失去”，足以说明诗人对生命本质有了明确的认识后，走出困惑，最终达到一种豁达乐观的境界。
Freneau以他对美洲大地的深厚感情和洞若幽微的感受力，通过对金银花的生长环境及其盛衰变迁的描述，抒发了他对短暂人生的感叹，使本诗在清丽的意境和浓郁的美洲大地的乡土气息中加入一层哲理的思考。诗歌的最后四句，似对花说，又似诗人自然自语，令人颇为回味，乃整首诗歌的点睛之笔。人无异于花草，两者都发端于“一块共同的泥土”，并无法回避“一把黄土葬其身”的最终结局。美是那么短暂，人生或许亦莫过于此吧。言尽而意犹存，让人怅然若失。诗人记录了他对生命的感触，揭示生命的本质，借此提醒读者，生命因其短暂而宝贵无价。虽然生命只是从生到死的一个过程，但依然有许多令人心快的绮丽风光，有许多值得人们为之奋斗拼搏的美好事物。珍惜生命才是真正地享受生命。尽管生命是有限的，却要在这有限的生命中，尽可能绽放它，满怀热情，悟彻人生的实质。就如同任何一种像野
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金银花的花卉不会因为最终的凋零而拒绝开放，人类也不应该因为生命最终的结局是死亡就放弃对生命的珍爱。
这首诗中，Freneau以抒情的色调描绘和讴歌了大自然的瑰丽，同时又揭示出自然界的萧杀冷酷和生命无奈短暂的本质；既有浪漫主义情调，又不乏意象主义的意味，的确不失为一首上乘之作。
Edgar Allan Poe
To Helen（1831）
Helen, thy beauty is to me Like those Nicéan barks of yore, That gently, o'er a perfumed sea, The weary way-worn wanderer bore
To his own native shore.
On desperate seas long wont to roam, Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face, Thy Naiad airs have brought me home To the beauty of fair Greece, And the grandeur of old Rome. *
Lo ! in yon little window-niche How statue-like I see thee stand! The folded scroll within thy hand! Ah, Psyche, from the regions which
Are Holy-land !
致海伦
海伦，对于我，你那美艳 像往昔的尼斯之船，
轻柔地拂过那芳香的大海， 载着那疲惫的游子， 返回故乡的海岸。
徘徊在茫茫无际的大海上，
你水仙一般的秀发，你雍容典雅的脸庞， 你海神一般的风韵，让我见识到， 希腊旧日的风华， 罗马往昔的庄严。
看！在那明丽的窗镜内，
我看到了你手持玛瑙灯的身影， 这般婀娜娉婷！ 啊！你这来自天国的
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灵魂！
作品赏析
诗人追求的是神圣的美，是彼岸的辉煌。海伦，这个使古希腊两个国家发生战争的美女，正是这种美的象征。海伦的美像那古老的帆船, 古典、优雅，勾起了诗人的诗情和丰富的想象力。“来自天国的灵魂”，海伦仿佛出现在诗人的面前，那美丽的形象鲜明活泼，那风姿神采令人心驰神往，让诗人在追思希腊、罗马的荣耀中沉醉。
Commentary
This poem is believed to have been written when the poet was only 14, inspired, as Poe admitted, by the beauty of Mrs. Jane Stith Stanard, the young mother of a school fellow who was “the first purely ideal love of my soul”. In this poem, the personal element of the young poet was almost completely sublimated in the idealization of the tradition of supernal beauty in art. The lady died in 1824. But she appeared in this poetic work in the figure of Helen, the well-known ancient beauty, with all the adoration of poet to her.
In the first stanza, Helen’s beauty is compared to the Nicean barks --- a suggestion of classical associations; what’s more, “of yore” instead of “before” or “long ago”, is applied to add the classical atmosphere to the poem. As the ancient ships had transported the ancient hero --- Ulysses --- home fro Troy, so will the beauty of Helen lead the poet to the home of art.
The second stanza starts with “On desperate seas”. Actually, the transferred epithet is used just to show the poet’s cordiality to the goddess of art. In classic myth, the flower Hyacinth preserved the memory of Apollo’s love for the dead young Hyacinthus (who is a very handsome young man of Greek myth and the object when Apollo was gaming and dead soon. Very disappointed by that, Apollo changed him into the plant of hyacinth which had been taken as a symbol for affection). All these, the hyacinth hair, the face of classic beauty and the expression of Naiad, are charming enough to lead one to the home of art --- ancient Greece and ancient Rome.
In the third stanza, Helen is directly compared to goddess Psyche from the Holy Land. Through his description of his passion to Helen, Poe expressed his pursuit and sincere devotion to beauty.
In the poem, three beauties in ancient Greek mythology --- Helen, Naiad and Psyche --- are mentioned just to show that beauty is something that existed; it is very holy but it is hard to reach.
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