诗词大意:天然生长高达百尺的大树,无端的砍伐后成了一根长长的树干。可惜这样的栋梁之材,被抛弃在幽僻的山谷之中。过了很多年,外面的树皮都腐烂剥落了,里面的树心依然坚硬。看似已经腐朽,懂得的人拿到它,还可以用作马厩的支柱。
寒山·《天生百尺树》
天生百尺树,剪作长条木。
年多心尚劲,日久皮渐秃。
识者取将来,犹堪柱马屋。
Company
Lumbermen assail the immortals’ trees,
Plane them into measured plans,
Busily hewing them to a woodsman’s tune.
Abandoned, unaccountably, sprawled
In a sunless valley, their fiber holds
Though their hearts turn gray and their skin festers.
Might an old man carry them away?
It takes little to raise a cottager’s beams.
(Peter Stambler 译)
When Heaven produces one-hundred-foot trees,
They can be cut into long and strong boards.
How sad that this “material for pillars and beams”
Is abandoned in some hidden vale.
Its years may be numerous, but its heart is still strong;
So many its days—its bark gradually getting bare.
But if one who knows worth comes and takes it,
It can still be used for some stable “post.”
(Robert. G. Henricks 译)
Hundred-foot trees produced by Heaven
get sawed into giant planks
unfortunate building timber
gets left in a hidden valley
its heart stays strong despite the years
its bark falls off day after day
if some astute person took it away
it still could prop up a stable
(Red Pine 译)