青春

（散文诗）

塞缪尔·厄尔曼 （丁子江译）

青春并非人生年表，而是心灵之态；它不是红颜、芳唇和柔膝那样显露于外；它是意志坚韧，想象丰富与激情放开；它是生命长流的源脉。

青春显示勇气超越怯懦，冒险克服闲呆。六十岁比二十岁更加活力常在。年老并不因为岁数,放弃理想带来垂暮懈怠。

岁月可使皮肤褶皱，但丧失热情必让灵魂老迈。焦虑、恐惧、自信缺失，致使心灵卑屈，精神坠入尘埃。

无论是六十岁还是十六岁，都应心存奇妙的魅力，童趣般对未来永不消褪的憧憬，以及对生活博弈的畅怀。在你我的心中都有无线电台；只要从人间和无限宇空中接收美好、希望、欢乐、勇气和力量的讯息，那就永葆青春的气概。

当天线下降，心灵被玩世不恭和悲观丧气的冰雪覆盖，即使是二十岁，也未老先衰；但只要天线上升，迎向乐观的浪花，就有望八十岁离世时仍属年轻一代。

译注：本诗直接译自美国阿拉巴马大学塞缪尔·厄尔曼纪念馆所藏的英文原诗（网络上流传的各种英文版本错误较多）。

“YOUTH“

(Prose Poem）

Samuel Ullman

Youth is not a time of life; it is a state of mind; it is not a matter of rosy cheeks, red lips and supple knees; it is a matter of the will, a quality of the imagination, a vigor of the emotions; it is the freshness of the deep springs of life.

Youth means a temperamental predominance of courage over timidity of the appetite, for adventure over the love of ease. This often exists in a man of sixty more than a boy of twenty. Nobody grows old merely by a number of years. We grow old by deserting our ideals.

Years may wrinkle the skin, but to give up enthusiasm wrinkles the soul. Worry, fear, self-distrust bows the heart and turns the spirit back to dust.

Whether sixty or sixteen, there is in every human being's heart the lure of wonder, the unfailing child-like appetite of what's next, and the joy of the game of living. In the center of your heart and my heart there is a wireless station; so long as it receives messages of beauty, hope, cheer, courage and power from men and from the infinite, so long are you young.

When the aerials are down, and your spirit is covered with snows of cynicism and the ice of pessimism, then you are grown old, even at twenty, but as long as your aerials are up, to catch the waves of optimism, there is hope you may die young at eighty.

诗作者简介