音频下载[点击右键另存为][00:00.76]Passage 22. On the Feeling of Immortality in Youth

[00:07.32]No young man believes he will ever die.

[00:12.13]It was a saying of my brother’s, and a fine one.

[00:16.39]There is a feeling of Eternity in youth,which makes us amend for everything.

[00:21.98]To be young is to be as one of the Immortal Gods.

[00:26.14]One half of time indeed is flown

[00:28.98]—the other half remains in store for us with all its countless treasures,

[00:33.46]for there is no line drawn, and we see no limit to our hopes and wishes.

[00:39.05]We make the coming age our own —

[00:41.67]The vast, the unbounded prospect lies before us.

[00:46.16]Death, old age, are words without a meaning that pass by us

[00:51.63]like the idea air which we regard not.

[00:54.58]Others may have undergone,or may still be liable to them—we“bear a charmed life”,

[01:01.91]which laughs to scorn all such sickly fancies.

[01:05.52]As in setting out on delightful journey,we strain our eager gaze forward

[01:11.43]—Bidding the lovely scenes at distance hail!

[01:15.15]And see no end to the landscape, new objects presenting themselves as we advance.

[01:21.27]So, in the commencement of life, we set no bounds to our inclinations,

[01:26.31]nor to the unrestricted opportunities of gratifying them.

[01:30.69]We have as yet found no obstacle,no disposition to flag;

[01:36.26]and it seems that we can go on so forever.

[01:39.54]We look round in a new world,full of life, and motion, and ceaseless progress,

[01:45.79]and feel in ourselves all the vigor and spirit to keep pace with it,

[01:50.27]and do not foresee from any present symptoms how we shall be left behind

[01:56.28]in the natural course of things, decline into old age, and drop into the grave.

[02:02.09]It is the simplicity, and as it were abstractedness of our feelings in youth,

[02:08.76]that (so to speak) identifies us with nature,

[02:13.13]and (our experience being slight and our passions strong)

[02:17.51]deludes us into a belief of being immortal like it.