约瑟失·艾迪生(Joseph Addison)
When I am in a serious humour , I very often walk by myself in Westminster Abbey; where the gloominess of the place, and the use to which it is applied, with the solemnity of the building, and the condition of the people who lie in it, are apt to fill the mind with a kind of melancholy , or rather thoughtfulness, that is not disagreeable. I yesterday passed a whole afternoon in the churchyard, the cloisters , and the church, amusing myself with the tombstones and inscriptions that I met with in those several regions of the dead. Most of them recorded nothing else of the buried person, but that he was born upon one day, and died upon another: the whole history of his life being comprehended in those two circumstances, that are common to all mankind. I could not but look upon these registers of existence, whether of brass or marble, as a kind of satire upon the departed persons; who had left no other memorial of them, but that they were born and that they died. They put me in mind of several persons mentioned in the battles of heroic poems, who have sounding names given them, for no other reason but that they may be killed, and are celebrated for nothing but being knocked on the head.
Upon my going into the church, I entertained myself with the digging of a grave; and saw in every shovelful of it that was thrown up, the fragment of a bone or skull intermixed with a kind of fresh mouldering earth, that some time or other had a place in the composition of a human body. Upon this I began to consider with myself what innumerable multitudes of people lay confused together under the pavement of that ancient cathedral; how men and women, friends, and enemies, priests and soldiers, monks and prebendaries , were crumbled amongst one another, and blended together in the same common mass; how beauty, strength, and youth, with old age, weakness, and deformity, lay undistinguished in the same promiscuous heap of matter.
- humour [ˈhjuːmə] n. 情绪，心情
- melancholy [ˈmelənkəlɪ] n. 忧郁
- cloister [ˈklɔɪstə] n. 修道院
entertain oneself with 以……自娱
- prebendary [ˈprebəndərɪ] n. 受俸牧师
- promiscuous [prəˈmɪskjʊəs] a. 杂乱的
我常在心情严肃时，独步进入威斯敏斯特教堂，那里肃穆的气氛，庄严的建筑，人们长眠其中的情况，往往使我的头脑中有一种忧郁感，更确切地讲是沉思，倒也不怎么使人感到不自在。昨天我在教堂、回廊和墓地晃悠了一下午，饶有兴致地看看墓碑和碑文。这些碑上大多数只有生死日期，一个人一生的历史全都包含在生与死两个事件之中，所有的人也都是如此。这些生存的记录，无论刻在黄铜上还是刻在大理石上，我只能看成是对死者的辛辣讽刺；他们没有留下别的纪念物，只有生死日期。他们让我想起了在英雄赞诗里一个个战场上提到的一些人，给了他们响亮的名誉，没有别的理由，只是可能他们是被杀死的，颂扬他们，只是因为他们的脑袋被击中。
进入教堂，看着人家在挖一座坟墓，颇有兴致。我看到每一锹挖上来的都夹杂着骨头或头盖骨碎片，这些都曾经是人体的组织结构。看到这些，我开始思忖，无数的人杂乱地躺在那个古老大教堂下面，想到了男人女人、朋友敌人、牧师士兵、和尚和受俸牧师，如何挤压成了碎屑，混合在一起成了一大块，想到了美、力量、青春、老年、虚弱、残疾，没有区别，一概在杂乱的一堆东西之中。