英语专业晨读美文-人生篇 9 Shelly to Elizabeth Hitc

[00:01.43]Shelly to Elizabeth Hitchener

[00:03.94]Your letter of the 1st hath this moment reached me.

[00:08.43]I answer it according to our agreement,

[00:11.06] which shall be inviolable.

[00:13.35]Truly did you say that, at our arising in the morning,

[00:16.52]nature assumes a different aspect.

[00:19.25]Who could have conjectured 1 the circumstances of my last letter?

[00:23.09]Friend of my soul, this is terrible, dismaying:

[00:27.46]it makes one's heart sink, it withers 2 vital energy...

[00:31.40]Dear being, I am thine again;

[00:34.79] thy happiness shall again

[00:36.01]predominate over this fleeting 3 tribute to self-interest.

[00:40.16]Yet who would not feel now?

[00:42.24]Oh'twere as reckless a task to endeavour

[00:45.09]to annihilate 4 perception while sense existed,

[00:48.38] as to blunt the sixth sense to such impressions as these!—

[00:52.65]forgive me, dearest friend! I pour out my whole soul to you.

[00:57.24] I write by fleeting intervals 5:

[00:59.54]my pen runs away with my senses.

[01:02.05] The impassionateness of my sensations grows upon me.

[01:05.44] Your letter, too, has much affected 6 me.

[01:08.51]Never, with my consent,

[01:10.37]shall that intercourse 7 cease

[01:11.98] which has been the day-dawn of my existence, the sun

[01:15.16]which has shed warmth

[01:16.58] on the cold drear length of the anticipated prospect 8 of life.

[01:20.52]Prejudice might demand the sacrifice,

[01:23.14]but she is an idol 9 to whom we bow not.

[01:26.21] The world might demand it; its opinion might require;

[01:30.25]but the cloud which flees over young mountain were

[01:33.09] as important to our happiness, to our usefulness.

[01:36.71]This must never be, never whilst this existence continues;

[01:41.95] and when Time has enrolled 10 us in the list of the departed,

[01:45.56] surely this friendship will survive to bear our identity to heaven.

[01:50.05] What is love, or friendship? Is it something material—a ball,

[01:55.76] an apple, a plaything—

[01:57.95]which must be taken from one to be given to another?

[02:01.01] Is it capable of no extension, no communication?

[02:05.06] Lord Kaimes defines love to a particularization of the general passion.

[02:09.87]But this is the love of sensation, of sentiment——

[02:13.26]the absurdest of absurd vanities:

[02:16.11] it is the love of pleasure, not the love of happiness.

[02:20.04]The one is a love which is self-centered, self-devoted,

[02:24.20]self-interested: It desires its own interest;

[02:27.70]it is the parent of jealousy 11.

[02:30.10]Its object is the plaything which it desires to monopolize 12.

[02:33.93]Selfishness, monopoly, is its very soul,

[02:38.31]and to communicate to others part of this love were to destroy its essence,

[02:42.46] to annihilate this chain of straw.

[02:44.76] But love, the love which we worship,—

[02:48.05]virtue 13, heaven, disinterestedness—

[02:51.44]in a word, Friendship—

[02:53.29]which has as much to do with the senses as with yonder mountains;

[02:56.90] that which seeks the good of all—

[02:59.20]the good of its object first,

[03:01.06]not because that object is a minister to its pleasures,

[03:04.67] not merely because it even contributes to its happiness,

[03:08.27]but because it is really worthy 14,

[03:10.79]because it has powers, sensibilities, is capable of abstracting itself,

[03:16.59] and loving virtue for virtue's own loveliness—

[03:19.87]desiring the happiness of others

[03:22.05] not from the obligation of fearing hell or desiring heaven:

[03:25.88] but for pure, simple, unsophisticated virtue.

[03:30.69]You will soon hear again.

[03:32.67] Adieu, my dearest friend.

[03:35.18]Continue to believe that

[03:36.82]when I am insensible to your excellence 15,

[03:39.33]I shall cease to exist.

[03:41.52]Yours most sincerely, inviolably, eternally

[03:46.01]Percy S.