海岸是一个年代久远的世界。自从有了土地和大海，就有了这个水陆相接的地方。但它却是一个使人感到总在不断创造、生命力顽强而又充沛的世界。
The shore is an ancient world, for as long as there has been an earth and sea there has been this place of the meeting of land and water. Yet it is a world that keeps alive the sense of continuing creation and of the relentless drive of life. Each time that I enter it, I gain some new awareness of its beauty and its deeper meanings, sensing that intricate fabric of life by which one creature is linked with another, and each with its surroundings.
In my thoughts of the shore, one place stands apart for its revelation of exquisite beauty. It is a pool hidden within a cave that one can visit only rarely and briefly when the lowest of the year's low tides fall below it, and perhaps from that very fact it acquires some of its special beauty. Choosing such a tide, I hoped for a glimpse of the pool. The ebb was to fall early in the morning. I knew that if the wind held from the northwest and no interfering swell ran in from a distant storm the level of the sea should drop below the entrance to the pool. There had been sudden ominous showers in the night, with rain like handfuls of gravel flung on the roof. When I looked out into the early morning the sky was full of a gray dawn light but the sun had not yet risen. Water and air were pallid. Across the bay the moon was a luminous disc in the western sky, suspended above the dim line of distant shore—the full August moon, drawing the tide to the low, low levels of the threshold of the alien sea world. As I watched, a gull flew by, above the spruces. Its breast was rosy with the light of the unrisen sun. The day was, after all, to be fair.
Later, as I stood above the tide near the entrance to the pool, the promise of that rosy light was sustained. From the base of the steep wall of rock on which I stood, a moss-covered ledge jutted seaward into deep water. In the surge at the rim of the ledge the dark fronds of oarweeds swayed, smooth and gleaming as leather. The projecting ledge was the path to the small hidden cave and its pool. Occasionally a swell, stronger than the rest, rolled smoothly over the such swells were long enough to admit me to the ledge and long enough for a glimpse of that fairy pool, so seldom and so briefly exposed.
And so I knelt on the wet carpet of sea moss and looked back into the dark cavern that held the pool in a shallow basin. The floor of the cave was only a few inches below the roof, and a mirror had been created in which all that grew on the ceiling was reflected in the still water below.
Under water that was clear as glass the pool was carpeted with green sponge. Gray patches of sea squirts glistened on the ceiling and colonies of soft coral were a pale apricot color. In the moment when I looked into the cave a little elfin starfish hung down, suspended by the merest thread, perhaps by only a single tube foot. It reached down to touch its own reflection, so perfectly delineated that there might have been, not one starfish, but two. The beauty of the reflected images and of the limpid pool itself was the poignant beauty of things that are ephemeral, existing only until the sea should return to fill the little cave.
By Rachel Louise Carson
［参考译文］
在海边
雷切尔·路易斯·卡森
海岸是一个年代久远的世界。自从有了土地和大海，就有了这个水陆相接的地方。但它却是一个使人感到总在不断创造、生命力顽强而又充沛的世界。每当我步入这个世界，感觉到生物彼此之间以及每个生物与其周围环境之间，通过错综复杂的生命结构彼此联系起来的时候，我对它的美、它的深层意蕴都得到某种新的认识。
在我对海岸的思索中，有一个地方因为它显示出特别的美妙而占有突出的地位。那就是隐匿于一个洞中的水潭。这个洞平日为海水所淹没，一年当中只有海潮退到最低以至低于水潭时，才难得一见。也许正是由于这个缘故，它获得了某种特殊的美。我选好这样一个低潮的时机，希望能对水潭看上一眼。按推算，潮水将在清晨退下去。我知道，如果不刮西北风，远处的风暴不再掀起干扰的巨涛，海平面就会落得比水潭的入口还低。夜里突如其来几次不详的阵雨，雨点就像一把把碎石被抛到屋顶上一般。清晨我向外眺望，但见天空布满灰蒙蒙的曙光，只是太阳还没有升起。水和空气一片暗淡。海湾对面的西天挂着一轮明月，月下隐隐约约一线是远方的海岸——八月的望月把海潮吸得很低很低，低到那与世隔离的海的世界的门槛。我在观望的时候，一只海鸥在云杉丛上飞掠而过。它的腹部被那喷薄欲出的太阳映成粉红色。天到底是要晴了。
后来，当我站在高于海潮的水潭入口处附近时，已是红光满目。一块覆满青苔的礁石从我立脚的峭岩底部伸向大海直到海水深处。礁石周围，海水拍击，水藻上下左右地飘动，像皮面一样光滑闪亮。突出礁石是通往隐藏的小洞和洞中水潭的路径。间或一阵强于一阵的波涛悠悠然漫过礁石的边缘并在岩壁上摔成水沫。这种波涛间歇的时间足以让我踏上礁石，足以让我探视那仙境般的水潭，那平常不露面、露面也只是一瞬间的水潭。
我就跪在那海苔藓构成的湿漉漉的地毯上，向那把水潭抱揽在浅盆里黑黢黢的洞内窥视，但见洞的底部和顶部相距仅仅几英寸。真是一面天造的明镜。洞顶上的一切生物都倒映在底下纹丝不动的水中。
在清明如镜的水下，潭底铺着一层碧绿的海绵。洞顶上一片片灰色的海蛸熠熠闪光，一堆堆软珊瑚披着淡淡的杏黄色衣裳。就在我朝洞里探望时，一只小海星从洞顶挂了下来，仅仅悬在一条线上，或许就在它的一只管足上。它向下接触到自己的倒影。多么完美的画面！仿佛不是一只海星，而是一对海星。水中倒影的美，清澈的水潭本身的美，这都是些生命短暂的事物所体现的强烈而令人心碎的美——海水一旦漫过小洞，这种美便不复存在了。
［注释］
keeps alive the sense of : 使人一直有……的感觉
-ebb [eb] n. 落潮，退潮同 (ebb tide) to fall back from the flood stage
-pallid [ˈpælɪd] adj. 苍白的，无血色的 having an abnormally pale or wan complexion
-spruces [ˈspruːsɪz] n. 云杉，云杉属植物
sea squirts : 海蛸，一种海生软体小动物
-starfish [ˈstɑːfɪʃ] n. 海星
-poignant [ˈpɔɪnjənt] adj. 深深打动的，强烈的 profoundly moving; touching
-ephemeral [ɪˈfemərəl] adj. 短暂的，短命的 lasting for a markedly brief time