文学作品汉译：Francis Bacon - Life

　　文学作品汉译：Francis Bacon - Life

　　文学作品汉译：请欣赏培根作品《Life》

　　Life

　　Francis Bacon

　　The World’s a bubble, and the Life of Man

　　Less than a span:

　　In his conception wretched, from the womb

　　So to the tomb;

　　Curst from the cradle, and brought up to years

　　With cares and fears.

　　Who then to frail mortality shall trust,

　　But limns the water, or but writes in dust.

　　Yet since with sorrow here we live opprest,

　　What life is best?

　　Courts are but only superficial schools

　　To dandle fools:

　　The rural parts are turn’d into a den

　　Of savage men;

　　And where’s a city from all vice so free,

　　But may be term’d the worst of all the three?

　　Domestic cares afflict the husband’s bed,

　　Or pains his head;

　　Those that live single, take it for a curse,

　　Or do things worse;

　　Some would have children: those that have them moan

　　Or wish them gone;

　　What is it, then, to have, or have no wife,

　　But single thraldom, or d double strife?

　　Our own affections still at home to please

　　Is a disease:

　　To cross the sea to any foreign soil,

　　Perils and toil:

　　Wars with their noise affright us; when they cease,

　　We are worse in peace;―

　　What then remains, but that we still should cry

　　Not to be born, or, being born, to die?