for here, millions of mixed shades and shadows, drowned dreams, somnambulisms, reveries; all that we call lives and souls, lie dreaming, dreaming, still; tossing like slumberers in their beds; the ever-rolling waves but made so by their restlessness.
因为在这里,有许许多多闹不清的亡魂幽灵,沉湎于梦乡者,梦游病者,幻想家,以及一切我们称为生命和灵魂的,都在这里做梦,做梦,竟自做梦下去;象酣睡者在他们床铺上翻来复去一样;这些惶乱不安的人就这样弄得波涛汹涌不息。
To any meditative Magian rover, this serene Pacific, once beheld, must ever after be the sea of his adoption. It rolls the midmost waters of the world, the Indian ocean and Atlantic being but its arms. The same waves wash the moles of the new-built California towns, but yesterday planted by the recentest race of men and lave the faded but still gorgeous skirts of Asiatic lands, older than Abraham; while all between float milky-ways of coral isles, and low-lying, endless, unknown Archipelagoes, and impenetrable Japans. Thus this mysterious, divine Pacific zones the world's whole bulk about; makes all coasts one bay to it; seems the tide-beating heart of earth. Lifted by those eternal swells, you needs must own the seductive god, bowing your head to Pan.
任何一个沉思默想的古波斯游行僧,一看到这个静宁的太平洋,一定会从此把这个大海收做义子。它滚过世界最中心的河流,印度洋和大西洋不过是它的两条胳膊。就是这股浪潮冲刷那些昨天还正由先人构筑起来的、新建的加利福尼亚城市的突堤,冲洗了那些比亚伯拉罕还要古老的、虽然失去光辉但还有豪华气象的亚洲城廓;而漂流在中间的就是银河似的珊瑚群岛,和地势低凹、无尽止、不知名的群岛,以及难以捉摸的日本四岛。这个奥妙而神圣的太平洋就这样包住了整个世界的躯干,使所有的海洋都成为它的湾岬,它似乎就是大地的潮汐起伏的中心。你被这种永远滔滔不息的浪潮所簸腾,就必须对那个具有吸引力的神认输,向牧羊神低头了。
But few thoughts of Pan stirred Ahab's brain, as standing, like an iron statue at his accustomed place beside the mizen rigging, with one nostril he unthinkingly snuffed the sugary musk from the Bashee isles (in whose sweet woods mild lovers must be walking), and with the other consciously inhaled the salt breath of the new found sea; that sea in which the hated White Whale must even then be swimming.
可是亚哈的脑海里并不大想到牧羊神,他象一尊铁像似的站在后桅索具的老地方,一只鼻孔心不在焉地吸着来自巴士群岛的带甜味的麝香气(温顺的爱侣们一定正在那些可爱的树林中散步),另一只鼻孔则有意识地吸进了新发现的海洋的海水气息;那条可恨的白鲸甚至这时一定正在里边游着呢。