高级英语1-Unit4-Oxford翻译.docVIP

Unit4 牛津 There are certain things in the world that are so praiseworthy that it seems a needless, indeed an almost laughable thing to praise them; such things are love and friendship, food and sleep, spring and summer; such things, too, are the wisest books, the greatest pictures, the noblest cities. But for all that I mean to try and make a little hymn in prose in honour of Oxford, a city I have seen but seldom, and which yet appears to me one of the most beautiful things in the world. 此世间确有诸多凡物，它们本身便是值得人们去品味和赞誉的，譬如说爱情和友谊、美食和睡梦、春色和夏日，还有如那些注满了智慧的书卷、注满了心血的画作和注满了圣意的城邦 。也许对于这些凡物而言，再多的赞誉已无非是陈词滥调，荒唐可笑的，但我之所以还是想要对上述这些事物品味、赞誉一番，都是为了向牛津城表示我的敬意。牛津城对我来说，就是这世间极其罕见，又最为美丽的地方之一。 I do not wish to single out particular buildings, but to praise the whole effect of the place, such as it seemed to me on a day of bright sun and cool air, when I wandered hour after hour among the streets, bewildered and almost intoxicated with beauty, feeling as a poor man might who has pinched all his life, and made the most of single coins, and who is brought into the presence of a heap of piled-up gold, and told that it is all his own. 我并不想单独从牛津城里遴选出一些建筑来赞誉；我想要赞誉的是这块土地上所映射出的一种整体效果。这种效果在我看来，就好比是在一个阳光明媚、天气清爽的日子里，一连花上几个小时，徜徉在牛津城的街道上，痴迷、甚至是沉醉于这番美景之中。这感觉就犹如是把一位穷得一辈子衣衫褴褛、靠一角一分过日子的人带到一堆金矿旁，然后告诉他，这些财富都已归他所有。 I have seen it said in foolish books that it is a misfortune to Oxford that so many of the buildings have been built out of so perishable a vein of stone. It is indeed a misfortune in one respect, that it tempts men of dull and precise minds to restore and replace buildings of incomparable grace, because their outline is so exquisitely blurred by time and decay. I remember myself, as a child, visiting Oxford, and thinking that some of the buildings were almost shamefully ruinous of aspect; now that I am wiser I know that we have in these battered and fretted palace-fronts a kind of beauty that fills the mind with almost despairing sense of loveliness, till the heart aches with gratitude, and thrills wi