Robert Frost (1874-1963) was born in San Francisco. He was one of America's leading 20th-century poets and a four-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize. An essentially pastoral poet often associated with rural New England, Frost wrote poems with philosophical dimensions transcend any region.

佛洛斯特(1874-1963) 生于旧金山，是美国最受爱戴广被阅读的诗人之一。基本上他是个田园诗人，多写同新英格兰州乡间有关的事物，但他诗中的哲思却不受地域的限制。

夏菁，是盛志澄的笔名，1925年生于浙江嘉兴．美国科罗拉多州立大学硕士，曾任联合国专家及科罗拉多教授等职。夏菁是台湾 “蓝星诗社” 创始人之一。自1954年 出版第一本诗集起，已有九种，包括近年出版的《雪岭》(2003)和《夏菁短诗选》(2004)等。

Hsia Ching, the pen name of Ted (Tse) C. Sheng, was born in Zhejiang, China in 1925. He received his M.S. degree from the Colorado State University (1966) and has worked with the United Nations and taught at the Colorado State University. Hsia Ching was one of the founders of the Blue Stars Poetry Society in Taiwan in early Fifties. Since his first collection of poems published in 1954, he has produced a total of nine volumes of poems including the recent two: A Snow-capped Peak (2003) and Selected Poems of Hsia Ching (2004).

Spring Pools

春天的池沼

These pools that, though in forests, still reflect
The total sky almost without defect,
And like the flowers beside them, chill and shiver,
Will like the flowers beside them soon be gone,
And yet not out by any brook or river,
But up by roots to bring dark foliage on.

The trees that have it in their pent-up buds
To darken nature and be summer woods---
Let them think twice before use their powers
To blot out and drink up and sweep away
These flowery waters and these watery flowers
From snow that melted only yesterday.
			

这些池沼，虽然在森林之中
仍能完美地反射天空，
它们像池边的花般，凛冽颤抖，
也将如身畔的花朵瞬即消逝，
尚未注入任何小溪或河流，
只沿树根而上，将浓叶蕃孳。

在林木含水待放的嫩芽裡
发为荫荫夏木，遮蔽天地――
让它们在施展力量前再三想过，
然后去吸干、饮尽以及消除
这些如花的池水以及如水的花朵
仅仅自昨日的雪内融出。
			

In a Disused Graveyard

废墓

The living come with grassy tread
To read the gravestones on the hill；
The graveyard draws the living still,
But never any more the dead.

The verses in it say and say:
"The ones who living come today
To read the stones and go away
Tomorrow dead will come to stay."

So sure of death the marbles rhyme,
Yet can't help marking all the time
How no one dead will seem to come,
What is it men are shrinking from?

It would be easy to be clever
And tell the stones: Men hate to die
And have stopped dying now forever.
I think they would believe the lie.
			

生者践踏着荒草前来，
到山上浏览墓石的碑文；
这废墓仍然吸引着生人，
对死者则已无奈。

墓地到处是类似的韵文：
“今天你们活着而来的人
读罢碑文然后回程
明日谢世将来此葬身。”

对死亡如此肯定、这些碑碣，
现在却不得不常常注意及
为何死了的不再到此安歇，
人们为什么又畏缩不前？

我们很可以变得俏皮
对墓石说：人类对死亡已厌，

且已永生不死，从现在起。
我想它们会信此谎言。