《英美诗歌选读》课程教案第十讲首页
学生专业班级
学 时 数
教学目的
教学内容
教学重点
爱情诗集教学难点
教学进程
教学方法
教    具
课后总结
作  业
备注：教学进程一栏可根据教学内容的多少自定页数。
第十讲 悼亡诗、庆婚曲、歌
第一节 悼亡诗
悼亡诗（elegy or monody or mournful poem）也被译成挽歌，哀歌，是哀悼个人之死，体之死，乃至整个人类之死的诗作。如弥尔顿的《黎西达斯》（Lyidas, 1637）是诗人对同学、密友爱德华•金（Edward King）的哀悼之作。金和弥尔顿就读于剑桥大学基督学院，两人都是诗人、学者和有事业心的好青年，是校方精心培养的牧师人才。金在1633年获得硕士学位后，继续在原校深造，准备做牧师，不幸的是，金于1637年夏天利用暑假去爱尔兰访友，在威尔斯港外船破人溺。弥尔顿非常伤心，写下了这首哀歌，其前面部分如下：
Yet once more, O ye laurels, and once more,
Ye myrtles brown, with ivy never sere,
I come to pluck your berries harsh and crude,
And with forced fingers rude
Shatter your leaves before the mellowing year.
Bitter constraint, and sad occasion dear,
Compels me to disturb your season due;
For Lycidas is dead, dead ere his prime,
Young Lycidas, and hath not left his peer.
通过对亡友的哀悼，弥尔顿似乎成熟了许多，在结尾处暗示出要告别以前的诗歌创作风格，准备走向革命战斗的诗歌新草地：
And now the sun had stretched out all the hills,
And now was dropped into the western bay.
At last he rose, and twitched his mantle blue:
Tomorrow to fresh woods, and pastures new.
1652年，弥尔顿第一任妻子玛丽（Marry Powell）产后三天去世，弥尔顿完全失明。1656年娶年仅28岁的凯瑟琳（Katherine Woodcock）为妻，不料凯瑟琳于1658年死于生产。弥尔顿在凯瑟琳死后的第三年，即1600年，写下了十四行诗《悼亡妻》（On His Deceased Wife），表达了他与妻子真挚的情感：
Methought I saw my late espoused saint
Brought me like Alcestis from the grave,
Whom Jove’s great son to her glad husband gave,
Rescued from Death by force, though pale and faint.
Mine, as whom washed from spot of child-bed taint
Purification in the Old Law did save,
And such as yet once more I trust to have
Full sight of her in Heaven without restraint,
Came vested all in white , pure as her mind.
Her face was veiled; yet to my fancied sight
Love, sweetness, goodness, in her person shined
So clear as in no face with more delight.
But, oh! as to embrace me she inclined,
I waked, she fled, and day brought back my night.
托马斯•格雷的《墓园挽歌》，前两节如下：
The curfew tolls the knell of parting day,
The lowing herd winds slowly o'er the lea,
The ploughman homeward plods his weary way,
And leaves the world to darkness and to me.
Now fades the glimmering landscape on the sight,
And all the air a solemn stillness holds,
Save where the beetle wheels his droning flight,
And drowsy tinklings lull the distant folds:
（Thomas Gray: Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard）
这首诗表达了对乡土的爱和对农民的同情，歌颂的是淳朴，有一种难以派遣的感伤情绪，因为当时英国工业革命正在开始，诗人感到它在破坏乡村的宁静生活，造成巨大变化，但又不明究竟，无可奈何。这首诗结构谨严，词句精雕细刻，深刻的个人感受和浓厚的感伤情绪得到完美结合。也是在这首诗里，这位充满感伤情绪的古典主义者传达了后来浪漫主义诗人们大力宣泄的浪漫情调：
Full many a gem of purest ray serene,
The dark unfathom’d caves of ocean bear:
Full many a flower is born to blush unseen,
And waste its sweetness on the desert air.
华兹华斯的露西组诗，是为了纪念诗人曾经钟爱的姑娘，不幸的是姑娘已经不在人世，因此这些诗里有一种忧郁的情调，《对死者的爱》表达了对这位姑娘的悼念：
A slumber did my spirit seal;
I had no human fears:
She seemed a thing that could not feel
The touch of earthly years.
No motion has she now, no force;
She neither hears nor sees;
Rolled round in earth’s diurnal course,
With rocks, and stones, and trees.
(William Wordsworth: The Love for the Dead)
英诗中写得这样沉重的悼亡诗不多见，最后把一个弱女子的命运放在整个大自然的运转里，从此得到一种不朽，又是华兹华斯的独有之笔。
雪莱的《阿多尼斯》（Adonais, 1821）是雪莱悼念济慈之死而作，第一节如下：
I weep for Adonais—he is dead!
O, weep for Adonais! though our tears
Thaw not the frost which binds so dear a head!
And thou, sad Hour, selected from all years
To mourn our loss, rouse thy obscure compeers,
And teach them thine own sorrow! Say: ‘With me
Died Adonais; till the Future dares
Forget the Past, his fate and fame shall be
An echo and a light unto eternity!’
据希腊神话，阿多尼斯是一个美少年，为爱与美的女神阿弗洛狄忒（Aphrodite, 在罗马神话中为维纳斯）所爱，不幸被野猪咬伤而亡。希腊妇女年年为其举行悼念仪式，诗人比翁（Bion, 100BC）曾写过挽诗哀悼。莎士比亚根据此神话写了英雄叙事诗《维纳斯与阿多尼斯》。雪莱在这首诗中将阿多尼斯比拟济慈，阿多尼斯的故事和济慈的遭遇相互交织，不少章节都仿效和取材于比翁哀悼阿多尼斯的挽诗。但比翁笔下的阿弗洛狄忒代表对肉体美的爱，雪莱笔下的幽兰尼（Urania, 阿多尼斯或济慈的母亲）则象征对于精神的爱。
阿诺德的《希斯》（Thyrsis, 1866）是悼念诗人朋友亚瑟•克拉夫（Arthur Hugh Clough, 1819~1861），克拉夫作品表现对维多利亚时期道德和宗教的怀疑，可惜于1861年死于佛罗伦萨。第一诗节如下：
How changed is here each spot man makes or fills!
In the two Hinkseys nothing keeps the same;
The village street its haunted mansion lacks,
And from the sign is gone Sibylla's name,
And from the roofs the twisted chimney-stacks--
Are ye too changed, ye hills?
See, 'tis no foot of unfamiliar men
To-night from Oxford up your pathway strays!
Here came I often, often, in old days--
Thyrsis and I; we still had Thyrsis then.