The Four Ages of Poetry
诗歌的四个时代
POETRY, like the world, may be said to have four ages, but in a different order: the first age of poetry being the age of iron; the second, of gold; the third, of silver: and the fourth, of brass.
诗歌和世界一样，可以说有四个时代，但顺序不同：诗歌的第一个时代是铁的时代；第二个是金的时代；第三个是银的时代；第四个是铜的时代。
The first, or iron age of poetry, is that in which rude bards celebrate in rough numbers the exploits of ruder chiefs, in days when every man is a warrior, and when the great practical maxim of every form of society," to keep what we have and to catch what we can, is not yet disguised under names of justice and forms of law, but is the naked motto of the naked sword, which is the only judge and jury in every question of meum and tuum.These days, the only three trades flourishing (besides that of priest which flourishes always)are those of king, thief, and beggar: the beggar being for the most part a king dejected, and the thief a king expectant. The first question asked of a stranger is, whether he is a beggar or a thief: the stranger, in reply, usually assumes the first , and awaits a convenient opportunity to prove his claim to the second appellation.
诗歌的第一个时代，或者说铁的时代，是粗野的吟游诗人以粗野的数字颂扬粗野的酋长的功绩的时代，在这个时代，每个人都是战士，每一种社会形式的伟大实用格言，"保持我们所拥有的，抓住我们能抓住的，还没有在正义的名称和法律的形式下进行伪装，而是赤裸裸的剑的格言，它是每一个我们和他们之间问题的唯一法官和审判。在这个时代，只有三种行业在蓬勃发展（除了始终在蓬勃发展的牧师行业），那就是国王、小偷和乞丐：乞丐大多是垂头丧气的国王，而小偷则是期待中的国王。陌生人被问到的第一个问题是，他是乞丐还是小偷：陌生人在回答时通常假设是第一个，并等待一个合适的机会来证明他对第二个称谓的要求。
The natural desire of every man to engross to himself as much power and property as he can acquire by any of the means which might makes right, is accompanied by the no less natural desire of making known to as many people as possible the extent to which he has been a winner in this universal game. The successful warrior becomes a chief; the successful chief becomes a king: his next want is an organ to disseminate the fame of his achievements and the extent of his possessions; and this organ he finds in a bard, who is always ready to celebrate the strength of his arm, being first duly inspired by that of his liquor. This is the origin of poetry, which, like all other trades, takes its rise in the demand for the commodity, and flourishes in proportion to the extent of the market.
每个人都有一个自然的愿望，那就是尽可能多地把自己的权力和财产收归己有，只要他能通过任何强权
的手段获得，同时也有一个同样自然的愿望，那就是让尽可能多的人知道他在这场普遍的游戏中的胜利程度。成功的战士会成为首领；成功的首领会成为国王：他的下一个需求是一个传播他的成就和他的财产范围的机构；他在吟游诗人那里到了这个机构，他总是准备好庆祝他的手臂的力量，首先是受到他的酒的启发。这就是诗歌的起源，就像所有其他行业一样，它的兴起源于对商品的需求，并随着市场的扩大而繁荣。
Poetry is thus in its origin panegyrical. The first rude songs of all nations appear to be a sort of brief historical notices, in a strain of tumid hyperbole, of the exploits and possessions of a few pre-eminent individuals.
因此，诗歌的起源是赞美性的。所有国家的第一首粗犷的歌曲似乎都是一种简短的历史记录，以一种喧嚣的夸张手法，描述少数杰出人物的功绩和财产。
The golden age of poetry finds its materials in the age of iron. This age begins when poetry begins to be retrospective; when something like a more extended system of civil polity is established;
when personal strength and courage avail less to the aggrandizing of their possessor and to the making and marring of kings and kingdoms, and are checked by organized bodies, social institutions, and hereditary successions. Men also live more in the light of truth and within the interchange of obser
vation; and thus perceive that the agency of gods and genii is not so frequent among themselves as, to judge from the songs and legends of the past time, it was among their ancestors. From these two circumstances, really diminished personal power, and apparently diminished familiarity with gods and genii, they very easily and naturally deduce two conclusions: Ist, That men are degenerated, and 2nd, That they are less in favour with the gods. The people of the petty states and colonies, which have now acquired stability and form, which owed their origin and first prosperity to the talents and courage of a single chief, magnify their founder through the mists of distance and tradition, and perceive him achieving wonders with a god or goddess always at his elbow. They find his name and his exploits thus magnified and accompanied in their traditionary songs, which are their only memorials. All that is said of him is in this character. There is nothing to contradict it. The man and his exploits and his tutelary deities are mixed and blended in one invariable association. The marvellous too is very much like a snowball: it grows as it rolls downward, till the little nucleus of truth which began its descent from the summit is hidden in the accumulation of superinduced hyperbole.
诗歌的黄金时代在铁的时代到它的材料。这个时代开始于诗歌开始回溯的时候；当某种类似于更广泛的民事政体系统建立起来的时候；当个人的力量和勇气对其拥有者的扩张以及对国王和王国的建立和破坏不那么有用的时候，并且受到有组织的机构、社会制度和世袭继承的制约。人们也更多地生活在真理
的光辉中，并在观察的交流中；因此，他们意识到，从过去的歌曲和传说中判断，神和精灵的作用在他们中间并不那么频繁，在他们的祖先中也是如此。从这两种情况，即个人能力的真正减弱和对神灵的熟悉程度的明显减弱，他们非常容易和自然地推断出两个结论。第一，个人的作用减少了，第二，他们对神灵的喜爱减少了。小国和殖民地的人民，现在已经获得了稳定和形式，他们的起源和最初的繁荣归功于一个酋长的才能和勇气，他们通过距离和传统的迷雾放大了他们的创始人，并认为他取得了奇迹，有一个神或女神一直在他身边。他们发现他的名字和他的功绩在他们的传统歌曲中被放大并伴随着，这些歌曲是他们唯一的纪念品。所有关于他的说法都是这样的。没有什么可以与之相矛盾的。这个人和他的功绩以及他的守护神都混合在一起，形成了一个不变的联系。不可思议的事情也很像一个雪球：它越滚越大，直到从山顶开始下降的那颗小小的真理之核被掩盖在夸张的体积中。
Speculations, too, and disputes, on the nature of man and of mind; on moral duties and on good and evil; on the animate and inanimate components of the visible world; begin to share attention with the eggs of Leda and the horns of Io, and to draw off from poetry a portion of its once undivided audience.
sort of中文翻译关于人和心灵的本质；关于道德义务和善恶；关于可见世界的有生命和无生命的组成部分的猜测和争论，也开始与莱达的蛋和伊欧的角分享注意力，并从诗歌中抽走了一部分曾经未分的观众。
Then comes the silver age, or the poetry of civilized life. This poetry is of two kinds, imitative and origin
al. The imitative consists in recasting, and giving an exquisite polish to, the poetry of the age of gold: of this Virgil is the most obvious and striking example. The original is chiefly comic, didactic, or satiric: as in Menander, Aristophanes, Horace, and Juvenal. The poetry of this age is characterized by an exquisite and fastidious selection of words, and a laboured and somewhat monotonous harmony of expression: but its monotony consists in this, that experience having
exhausted all the varieties of modulation, the civilized poetry selects the most beautiful, and prefers the repetition of these to ranging through the variety of all. But the best expression being that into which the idea naturally falls, it requires the utmost labour and care so to reconcile the inflexibility of civilized language and the laboured polish of versification with the idea intended to be expressed, that sense may not appear to be sacrificed to sound. Hence, numerous efforts and rare success.
然后是白银时代，或文明生活的诗歌。这种诗歌有两种，模仿性和原创性。模仿性包括重铸黄金时代的诗歌，并对其进行精致的打磨：维吉尔就是最明显和最突出的例子。原创的主要是滑稽、说教或讽刺性的：如米南德、阿里斯托芬、贺拉斯和尤文纳。这个时代的诗歌的特点是对词语的选择精致而谨慎，表达方式费力而有些单调：但它的单调在于，经验已经用尽了所有的调式，文明的诗歌选择了最美的，并宁愿重复这些调式，也不愿意在所有的调式中选择。但是，最好的表达方式是思想自然而然地落入其中，这就需要付出最大的努力和小心，使文明语言的僵硬和诗词的费力抛光与所要表达的思想之间相协
调，使意义不至于被牺牲在韵律上。因此，许多努力只换来罕见的成功。
This state of poetry is however a step towards its extinction. Feeling and passion are best painted in, and roused by, ornamental and figurative language; but the reason and the understanding are best addressed in the simplest and most unvarnished phrase. Pure reason and dispassionate truth would be perfectly ridiculous in verse, as we may judge by versifying one of Euclid's demonstrations. This will be found true of all dispassionate reasoning whatever, and all reasoning that requires comprehensive views and enlarged combinations. It is only the more tangible points of morality, those which command assent at once, those which have a mirror in every mind, and in which the severity of reason is warmed and rendered palatable by being mixed up with feeling and imagination, that are applicable even to what is called moral poetry: and as the sciences of morals and of mind advance towards perfection, as they become more enlarged and comprehensive in their views, as reason gains the ascendancy in them over imagination and feeling, poetry can no longer accompany them in their progress, but drops into the background, and leaves them to advance alone.
然而，诗歌的这种状态是走向消亡的一个步骤。感情和激情最好用装饰性和比喻性的语言来描绘和激发；但理性和理解力最好用最简单和最不加修饰的语句表达。纯粹的理性和冷静的真理在诗词中是非常可笑的，我们可以通过对欧几里德的一个论证进行诗化来判断。所有冷静的推理都是如此，所有需要全
面观点和扩大组合的推理都是如此。只有那些更具体的道德观点，那些能立即得到赞同的观点，那些在每个人心中都有一面镜子的观点，在这些观点中，理性的严厉因与感情和想象力相混合而变得温暖和可接受，这些观点甚至适用于所谓的道德诗歌。当道德和心灵的科学走向完美时，当它们的观点变得更加广泛和全面时，当理性在它们中获得了对想象力和感觉的优势时，诗歌就不能再伴随它们的进步，而是落入背景，让它们独自前进。
Thus the empire of thought is withdrawn from poetry, as the empire of facts had been before. The poet of the age of iron celebrates the achievements of his contemporaries; the poet of the age of gold celebrates the heroes of the age of iron: the poet of the age of silver re-casts the poems of the age of gold: we may here see how very slight a ray of historical truth is sufficient to dissipate all the illusions of poetry.
因此，思想的帝国从诗歌中退出，就像以前事实的帝国一样。铁器时代的诗人歌颂他同时代人的成就；黄金时代的诗人歌颂铁器时代的英雄：白银时代的诗人重铸黄金时代的诗篇：我们在这里可以看到，一丝丝历史的真实足以消解诗歌的所有幻想。
Then comes the age of brass, which, by rejecting the polish and the learning of the age of silver, and taking a retrograde stride to the barbarisms and rude traditions of the age of iron, professes to
return to nature and revive the age of gold. This is the second childhood of poetry. To the comprehensive energy of the Homeric Muse, which, by giving at once the grand outline of things, presented to the mind a vivid picture in one or two verses, inimitable alike in simplicity and magnificence, is substituted a verbose and minutely-detailed description of thoughts, passions, actions, persons, and things, in that loose rambling style of verse, which any one may write, at the rate of two hundred lines in an hour. To this age may be referred all the poets who flourished in the decline of the Roman Empire. The best specimen of it, though not the most generally known, is the Dionysiaca of Nonnus, which contains many passages of exceeding beauty in the midst of masses of amplification and repetition.
然后是黄铜时代，它摒弃了白银时代的修辞和学问，并向铁器时代的野蛮和粗鲁传统倒退，声称要回归自然，复兴黄金时代。这就是诗歌的第二个童年。荷马史诗的全面能量，即在一两句诗中给出了事物的宏伟轮廓，向人们展示了一幅生动的图画，在简单和宏伟方面都是无可比拟的，而现在则取代了对思想、激情、行动、人物和事物的冗长而详细的描述，这种诗的风格松散，漫无边际，任何人都可以在一小时内写出两百行。所有在罗马帝国衰落时兴起的诗人都可以归入这个时代。它的最佳标本，尽管不是最广为人知的，是诺努斯的Dionysiaca，其中有许多段落在大量的扩写和重复中表现得极为优美。
The iron age of classical poetry may be called the bardic; the golden, the Homeric; the silver, the Virgili
an: and the brass, the Nonnic.Modern poetry has also its four ages: but "it wears its rue with a difference."(Adapted from The Four Ages of Poetry by Thomas Peacock, 1820)古典诗歌的铁时代可称为吟游诗人；金的是荷马史诗；银的是维吉尔史诗；铜的是诺尼克史诗。现代诗歌也有其四个时代：但"它的芸芸众生是不同的。"（改编自《诗歌的四个时代》，托马斯-皮考克著，1820年）
选词填空
Poetry is a form of literary art which uses aesthetic and rhythmic qualities of language. Poetry has a long history. Early poems evolved from folk songs such as the Chinese Shijing, or from a need to retell oral epics and the Homeric epics, the Iliad and the Odyssey. Ancient attempts to define poetry, such as Aristotle's Poetics, focused on the uses of speech in rhetoric, drama, song and comedy. Later attempts concentrated on features such as repetition, verse form and rhyme, and emphasized the aesthetics which distinguish poetry from more objectively-informative, prosaic forms of writing. From the mid-20th century, poetry has sometimes been more generally regarded as a fundamental creative act employing language.
诗歌是一种文学艺术形式，它利用语言的审美和韵律特性。诗歌有着悠久的历史。早期的诗歌是从中国《诗经》等民歌演变而来的，或者是从复述口头史诗和荷马史诗、《伊利亚特》和《奥德赛》的需要演
变而来的。古代定义诗歌的尝试，如亚里士多德的《诗学》，侧重于修辞、戏剧、歌曲和喜剧中的言语运用。后来的尝试集中在重复、诗句形式和押韵等特征上，并强调美学，将诗歌与更客观的信息性、平淡的写作形式区分开来。从20世纪中期开始，诗歌有时被更普遍地认为是一种运用语言的基本创作行为。
Poetry uses forms and conventions to suggest differential interpretation to words, or to evoke emotive responses. The use of ambiguity, symbolism, irony and other stylistic elements often leaves a poem open to multiple interpretations.
诗歌使用形式和惯例来暗示对词语的不同解释，或唤起情感的反应。模糊性、象征性、讽刺性和其他文体元素的使用往往使一首诗可以有多种解释。
Some poetry types are specific to particular cultures and genres and respond to characteristics
of the language in which the poet writes. Much modern poetry reflects a critique of poetic tradition. In today's increasingly globalized world, poets often adapt forms, styles and techniques from diverse cultures and languages.
有些诗歌类型是特定的文化和流派所特有的，并对诗人写作的语言特点作出反应。许多现代诗歌反映了
对诗歌传统的批判。在今天这个日益全球化的世界里，诗人经常从不同的文化和语言中调整形式、风格和技巧。
翻译（英译中）
The natural desire of every man to engross to himself as much power and property as he can acquire by any of the means which might makes right, is accompanied by the no less natural desire of making known to as many people as possible the extent to which he has been a winner in this universal game. The successful warrior becomes a chief: the successful chief becomes a king: his next want is an organ to disseminate the fame of his achievements and the extent of his possessions: and this organ he finds in a bard, who is always ready to celebrate the strength of his arm, being first duly inspired by that of his liquor. This is the origin of poetry, which, like all other trades, takes its rise in the demand for the commodity, and flourishes in proportion to the extent of the market.
每个人都有一个自然的愿望，那就是尽可能多地把自己的权力和财产收归己有，只要他能通过任何强权的手段获得，同时也有一个同样自然的愿望，那就是让尽可能多的人知道他在这场普遍的游戏中的胜利程度。成功的战士会成为首领：成功的首领会成为国王：他的下一个需求是一个传播他的成就和他的财产范围的机构：他在一个吟游诗人身上到了这个机构，他总是准备庆祝他的手臂的力量，首先是受到
他的酒的启发。这就是诗歌的起源，就像所有其他行业一样，它的兴起源于对商品的需求，并随着市场的扩大而繁荣。
或
每个人的自然欲望，是把他所能获得的权势和财产，尽量独占为己有，不择手段，强权就是公理；加上一个同样自然的欲望，那就是让尽可能多的人知道，他在这个普遍追求中夺得多少东西。成功的武士变成魁酋，成功的魁酋转成王者：他接着便需要一个工具来宣扬他的功业的名声和财富的多寡。这个工具他在歌人身上到了，歌人事前在他的美力充分感发之下，是随时准备歌颂他的武力的。这就是诗的起源：诗，正如其他职业那样，是因有这种商品的需求而兴起，按照市场范围的扩大而繁荣的。
翻译（中译英）
唐诗代表了中华诗歌的最高成就。知名诗人多若星辰，李白、杜甫、白居易都是世界闻名的伟大诗人。唐诗题材广泛，数量庞大，风格和流派多样。宋词是继唐诗后中国古代文学史上的又一座高峰，历来与唐诗并称双雄。宋词以长短句为主，依词牌填词，豪放派和婉约派词风各异，主要代表有辛弃疾、苏轼、柳永、李清照等。
Tang poetry represents the highest achievement of Chinese poetry. There are as many famous poets a
s the stars, and Li Bai, Du Fu, and Bai Juyi are all great poets known worldwide. Tang poetry has a wide range of subjects, a large number of them, and a variety of styles and genres. Song lyrics are another peak in the history of ancient Chinese literature after Tang poetry, and have traditionally been called the twin heroes together with Tang poetry. The main representatives of Song lyrics are Xin Qiji, Su Shi, Liu Yong and Li Qingzhao.

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