英语专业晨读美文-哲理篇 5 About Youth(在线收听

[00:00.74]About Youth
[00:03.80]No young man believes he will ever die.
[00:08.29] It was a saying of my brother's, and a fine one.
[00:12.23]There is a feeling of eternity in youth,
[00:14.30]which makes us amend for everything.
[00:16.71]To be young is to be as one of the immortal Gods.
[00:19.77] One half of time indeed is flown—
[00:22.40]the other half remains in store for us with all its countless treasures,
[00:26.77]for there is no line drawn,
[00:28.63]and we see no limit to our hopes and wishes.
[00:31.48]We make the coming age our own—the vast,
[00:34.98]the unbounded prospect lies before us.
[00:38.36]Death, old age are words without a meaning
[00:41.65]that pass by us like the idea air which we regard not.
[00:45.59]Others may have undergone,
[00:47.55]or may still be liable to them—we "bear a charmed life",
[00:52.15] which laughs to scorn all such sickly fancies.
[00:55.21]As in setting out on delightful journey,
[00:57.72] we strain our eager gaze forward—bidding the lovely scenes at distance hail!
[01:02.75]And see no end to the landscape,
[01:05.16]new objects presenting themselves as we advance.
[01:08.33]So, in the commencement of life,
[01:10.63]we set no bounds to our inclinations,
[01:13.58]nor to the unrestricted opportunities of gratifying them.
[01:17.30]We have as yet found no obstacle,
[01:19.81] no disposition to flag; and it seems that we can go on so forever.
[01:24.96] We look round in a new world, full of life, and motion,
[01:28.35]and ceaseless progress;
[01:29.65]and feel in ourselves all the vigor and spirit to keep pace with it,
[01:34.47]and do not foresee from any present symptoms
[01:37.42]how we shall be left behind in the natural course of things,
[01:41.25] decline into old age, and drop into the grave.
[01:44.86] It is the simplicity,
[01:46.50]and as it were abstractedness of our feelings in youth,
[01:50.11] that identifies us with nature,
[01:52.08]and deludes us into a belief of being immortal like it.
[01:56.02] Our short lives connexion with existence we fondly flatter ourselves
[02:00.28] is an indissoluble and lasting union—
[02:03.56]a honeymoon that knows neither coldness, jar, nor separation.
[02:08.16] As infants smile and sleep,
[02:10.89]we are rocked in the cradle of our wayward fancies,
[02:14.50] and lulled into security by the roar of the universe around us
[02:18.66]—we quaff the cup of life with eager haste without draining it,
[02:22.70]instead of which it only overflows the more objects press around us,
[02:27.63]filling the mind with their magnitude and
[02:30.35] with the strong of desires that wait upon them,
[02:33.31]so that we have no room for the thoughts of death.

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