朗读者 Alex: 《Youth》 by Samuel Ullman

图 | Samuel Ullman

~~~ 本篇内容源自MOTIF首期朗读活动，朗读者：Alex ~~~

背景介绍：

Samuel Ullman 塞缪尔·乌尔曼 (1840年4月13日 - 1924年3月21日)，犹太人，美国作家，1840年生于德国，儿时随家人移居美国，参加过南北战争，之后定居英国伯明翰，经营五金杂货，年逾70岁开始写作。

他于78岁时写的散文《Youth》因麦克阿瑟将军的喜爱而出名。

以下是Samuel Ullman的《Youth》，由Alex完成朗读:

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.

Note: This poem is better known in Japan because it was a favourite of General Douglas MacArthur who had a framed copy on his office wall in Tokyo during the Occupation of Japan and regularly quoted the poem in his speeches.

According to Margaret England Armbrester, a Japanese businessman by the name of Yoshio Okada read about MacArthur’s love of the poem in the December 1945 issue of Reader’s Digest. He found the poem very moving and translated it into Japanese to display in his own office.

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