“…I was rich, if not in money, in sunny hours and summer days.”----- Henry David Thoreau.
When Thoreau wrote that line, he was thinking of the Walden. Pond he knew as a boy.
Woodchoppers and the Iron Horse had not yet greatly damaged the beauty of its setting. A boy could go to the pond and lie on his back against the seat of a boat, lazily drifting from shore to shore while the loons dived and the swallows dipped around him. Thoreau loved to recall such sunny hours and summer days “when idleness was the most attractive and productive business.”
I too was a boy in love with a pond, rich in sunny hours and summer days. Sun and summer are still what they always were, but the boy and the pond changed. The boy, who is now a man, no longer find much time for idle drifting. The pond has been annexed by a great city. The swamps where herons once hunted are now drained and filled with houses. The bay where water lilies quietly floated is now a harbor for motor boats. In short, everything that the boy loved no longer exists----except in the man's memory of it.
Some people insist that only today and tomorrow matter. But how much poorer we would be if we really lived by that rule! So much of what we do today is frivolous and futile and soon forgotten. So much of what we hope to do tomorrow never happens.
The past is the bank in which we store our most valuable possession: the memories that give meaning and depth to our lives.
Those who truly treasure the past will not bemoan the passing of the good old days, because days enshrined in memory are never lost. Death itself is powerless to still a remembered voice or erase a remembered smile. And for one boy who is now a man, there is a pond which neither time nor tide can change, where he can still spend a quite hour in the sun.
参考译文
“……我并不富有，却拥有无数个艳阳天和夏日。”
写下这句话的时候，梭罗想起了他孩提时代的瓦尔登糊。
那时，伐木者和火车还没有对瓦尔登糊的糊畔美景造成严重的破坏。小男孩可以乘船来到糊中心，仰卧在小船上，任其从岸的一边缓缓漂向岸的另一边，周围是戏水的鸟儿和翩舞的燕子。梭罗喜欢回忆这样温馨的艳阳天和夏日，“这个时候，恬谈的生活是最迷人也是最有益的事情。”
在我的孩童时代，我也曾那样热爱小糊，也曾拥有过无数个艳阳天和夏日。如今，阳光、夏日依旧示变，可是从前的男孩和从前的小糊却都已改变。那男孩已经长大成人，再也无暇去湖上泛舟。而小湖所在的地方，也被大城市的建筑物所取代了。曾有苍鹭觅食的沼泽，如今早已枯竭，上面盖起了座座房屋。曾有睡莲静静漂浮的湖泊，如今已成了汽艇的避风港。总之，男孩所热爱的一切都已经不复存在--只停留在人们的记忆中。
有人认为，只有今天和明天才最重要的，可是，如果真让人过着这样的日子，我们将会多么悲惨啊！我们今天所做的事情，有许多都是徒劳的，并且很快就会被人们遗忘。而许多我们期待未来将要做的事情却从未发生过。
过去是一家银行，我们把最珍贵的东西--记忆储存其中，记忆使我们的生活更有意义、更有深度。
那些珍惜过去的人，不会悲叹于时光的一去不复返，因为过去的一切已被我们珍藏在记忆中，永远不会被遗失。死亡无法使记忆中的声音逝去，也无法将记忆中的微笑抹杀。对那个已经长大成人的男孩来说，有那样一个小湖，它不会因时间或潮汐的更迭而改变，可以让他一直在阳光下享受宁静的时光。
