Thoughts in Westminster Abbey When I am in a serious humour, I very often walk by myself in Westminster Abbey; where the glo

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问题     Thoughts in Westminster Abbey
    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 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. The life of these men is finely described in holy writ by ’ the path of an arrow’ , which is immediately closed up and lost.
    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 intermixt 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.

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答案 西敏寺内的遐想 每当心情沉重的时候,我总是独自一人去西敏寺教堂;那里肃穆的气氛,教堂特有的神圣,庄重的建筑,在那里安息的人们的身份地位,无不给人的心里注满一种忧郁,或不妨说令人沉思,令人欣然。昨天我在教堂草地、回廊和教堂里度过了整整一个下午,在好几个墓区里,打量墓碑和碑文,聊以自娱。大部分的墓碑上只刻着死者姓名和生卒年月:人们对其一生的了解也只在于人类所共有的生死两字。对于那些逝去的人们的生死记录,不管是刻在铜牌上还是刻在大理石碑上,我都不由自主地将它们看作是对死者的一种讽刺;他们没有留下任何别的记录,只是生与死。他们使我想到了英雄诗歌中描写战争时提到的几个人物,他们有响亮的名字,不为别的原因,只是因为他们可能战死,只是因为他们的死亡而为人纪念。圣经中的句子“如箭飞过”恰如其分地描写了这些人的一生:一闪而过,不见踪影。 我走进教堂,观看别人挖一座坟墓;只见挖出来的每一铲新的腐土中,都混杂着骨头或头颅的碎块,曾几何时,这些碎块还是人身体的一部分呢。看见这个情景,我暗自思忖,在这座古老的大教堂的路底下,混埋着何等众多的人啊;男人和女人,朋友和敌人,牧师和士兵,修士和受俸牧师,全都变成了碎块,混在一起;美丽、强壮、年轻的人和年老力衰、畸形的人,毫无区别地杂处在一堆之中。

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