William Butler Yeats
イェイツ (1865-1939)

再来　The Second Coming

　

拡がる輪をえがいて廻り廻っている
鷹には鷹匠の声が聞こえない
事物はばらばらになり、中心は保てない
ただの無秩序が世界にとき放たれる
血にくすんだ潮はほどかれ、いたるところで
無垢の儀式を溺れさせる
最も良き人々は信念を欠き、最も悪しき人々が
すさまじい強さに満ちている

　

たしかに啓示は迫っている
たしかに再来は迫っている
再来、この言葉が口を出るかでないかのうちに
世界の精霊の生みだす広大なイメージが
わたしの目を見えなくする　それは砂漠の砂のごみ
それは獅子の体と人の頭を持ち
太陽のように空虚で冷酷なまなざしを持ち
鈍い腿を動かしている　そしてその周り中を
憤った砂漠の鳥たちの影がからみつく
暗闇は再び落ちる　しかし今やわたしは知る
石のような二十世紀間の眠りが
揺れるゆりかごのため、悪夢に悩まされていることを
そしてどんな凶暴な獣が、ついにその時がやってくると
生まれようとしてベツレヘムに向け身を屈めるのかを。

　

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

　

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

（from Michael Robartes and The Dancer）

イニスフリーの湖島　The Lake Isle of Innisfree

I WILL arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made:
Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honeybee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight's all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evenings full of the linnet's wings.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear the lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements gray,
I hear it in the deep heart's core.

戻る