Edmund Spenser
Amoretti①
75②
One day I wrote her name upon the strand,
But came the waves and washèd it away:
Agayne③ I wrote it with a second hand,
But came the tyde, and made my paynes his pray.
“Vayne man”, sayd she, “that doest in vaine assay,
A mortall thing so to immortalize,
For I my selve shall lyke to this decay,
And eek my name bee wypèd out lykewize.”
“Not so”, quod I, “let baser things devize
To dy in dust, but you shall live by fame:
My verse your vertues rare shall eternize,
And in the heavens wryte your glorious name.
Where whenas death shall all the world subdew,
Our love shall live, and later life renew.”
William Shakespeare (1564-1616)
Spring①
When daisies pied② and violets blue,
And lady-smocks all silver-white,
And cuckoo-buds of yellow hue
Do paint the meadows with delight,
The cuckoo then, on every tree, 5
Mocks married men; for thus sings he,
‘Cuckoo;
Cuckoo, cuckoo’: Oh word of fear,
Unpleasing to a married ear!
When shepherds pipe on oaten straws, 10
And merry larks are ploughmen's clocks,
When turtles③ tread, and rooks, and daws,
And maidens bleach their summer smocks
The cuckoo then, on every tree,
Mocks married men; for thus sings he, 15
‘Cuckoo;
Cuckoo, cuckoo’: Oh word of fear,
Unpleasing to a married ear!
Hamlet
III, I, 56-88
To be, or not to be: that is the question:
艾德蒙特·斯宾塞(1552-1599),毕业于剑桥大学,创立了优美流畅的“斯宾塞体”,被称为“诗人的诗人。”
意大利语,意为“爱情小唱”。
斯宾塞十四行诗的韵脚安排是abab bcbc cdcd ee.
伊丽莎白时期英文的共同形式:y=I, er=ir, 词尾有多余的e, 过去分词词尾用d, -ful常作-full.
①《春之歌》选自莎翁的早期喜剧Love’s Labour’s Lost(《爱的徒劳》,1594)
② variegated
③ turtledoves
卞之琳译:
活下去还是不活:这是问题。
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wis
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