原版英文故事與詩歌：Town & Country

ProgressThe city's heat is like a leaden pall—

Its lowered lamps glow in the midnight air

Like mammoth orange-moths that flit and flare

Through the dark tapestry of night. The tall

Black houses crush the creeping beggars down,

Who walk beneath and think of breezes cool,

Of silver bodies bathing in a pool;

Or trees that whisper in some far, small town

Whose quiet nursed them, when they thought that

Was merely metal, not a grave of mould

In which men bury all that's fine and fair.

When they could chase the jewelled butterfly

Through the green bracken-scented lanes or sigh

For all the future held so rich and rare;

When, though they knew it not, their baby cries

Were lovely as the jewelled butterflies.

by Osbert Sitwell

The CityWhen, sick of all the sorrow and distress

That flourished in the City like foul weeds,

I sought blue rivers and green, opulent meads,

And leagues of unregarded loneliness

Whereon no foot of man had seemed to press,

I did not know how great had been my needs,

How wise the woodland’s gospels and her creeds,

How good her faith to one long comfortless.

But in the silence came a Voice to me;

In every wind it murmured, and I knew

It would not cease though far my heart might roam.

It called me in the sunrise and the dew,

At noon and twilight, sadly, hungrily,

The jealous City, whispering always—“Home!”

by Charles Hanson Towne