【正文】
were the approach of death. I laid the pencil down again.一段時間后,顯然他跳舞跳得有些累了,于是停在了窗棱上,沐浴在陽光里。 and when he tried to fly across it he failed. Being intent on other matters I watched these futile attempts for a time without thinking, unconsciously waiting for him to resume his flight, as one waits for a machine, that has stopped momentarily, to start again without considering the reason of its failure. After perhaps a seventh attempt he slipped from the wooden ledge and fell, fluttering his wings, on to his back on the window sill. The helplessness of his attitude roused me. It flashed upon me that he was in difficulties。所以,這只飛蛾不斷重復(fù)的簡單活動難免讓人可憐。這樣的展示卻不能不讓人覺得怪異。Yet, because he was so small, and so simple a form of the energy that was rolling in at the open window and driving its way through so many narrow and intricate corridors in my own brain and in those of other human beings, there was something marvellous as well as pathetic about him. It was as if someone had taken a tiny bead of pure life and decking it as lightly as possible with down and feathers, had set it dancing and zig–zagging to show us the true nature of life. Thus displayed one could not get over the strangeness of it. One is apt to forget all about life, seeing it humped and bossed and garnished and cumbered so that it has to move with the greatest circumspection and dignity. Again, the thought of all that life might have been had he been born in any other shape caused one to view his simple activities with a kind of pity.然而,如此渺小的他,如此簡單的一種生命形式,卻從敞開的窗戶飛進(jìn)來,努力引起人類的注意和思索,這就顯得有點可貴了,同時也愈發(fā)可悲。每當(dāng)他跳躍窗格,那條線仿佛都清晰可見。而他已經(jīng)做了他所能做的一切。這就是他所能做的。他活潑地從窗格的一個角跳到另一個角,停一秒鐘,又飛快地跳到第二個角。The same en