「人生の海の孤島」

「マルグリートへ」　マシュー・アーノルド
Matthew Arnold
(24 December 1822 – 15 April 1888　66歳没)
Born Laleham, Middlesex, England, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland
Died Liverpool, England
　 （20180430）

「マルゲリットへ：続ける」（1852）
To_Marguerite:_Continued

To Marguerite: Continued

YES! in the sea of life enisl’d,
With echoing straits between us thrown,
Dotting the shoreless watery wild,
We mortal millions live alone.
The islands feel the enclasping flow,
And then their endless bounds they know.

But when the moon their hollows lights,
And they are swept by balms of spring,
And in their glens, on starry nights,
The nightingales divinely sing;
And lovely notes, from shore to shore,
Across the sounds and channels pour —

Oh! then a longing like despair
Is to their farthest caverns sent;
For surely once, they feel, we were
Parts of a single continent!
Now round us spreads the watery plain —
Oh might our marges meet again!

Who order’d, that their longing’s fire
Should be, as soon as kindled, cool’d?
Who renders vain their deep desire?—
A God, a God their severance rul’d!
And bade betwixt their shores to be
The unplumb’d, salt, estranging sea.

response to John Donne's "no man is an island."
ジョン・ダン（John Donne, 1572- 1631　59歳没）
1624年の『不意に発生する事態に関する瞑想（Devotions upon Emergent Occasions）』の中の17番は、「誰がために鐘は鳴る（for whom the bell tolls）」および「なんぴとも一島嶼にてはあらず（no man is an island）」というフレーズで知られている