1941年1月18日，在纽约卡内基音乐厅国立艺术与文学学院的公开典礼上，诗人朗诵。伟大的缪斯，好久没有离开这大厅了，伟大的歌唱缪斯，伟大的旋律缪斯，唱诗班的歌，你那威严而对位的额头，你那为和谐而造的巨大的喉咙，为了严格的不朽的纯粹的设计，和旋律的线条:今夜，请与椽下的一切同在吧——与我同在吧。如果我用一种过时的语言——过时的语言，过时的语言——来称呼你，那就是，我的心必须，噢，的确必须暂时离开这愤怒的、过分愤怒的现在，退回到某种过去，在那里，最狡诈的邪恶，虽然完全可以肯定地孕育和诞生，但还不是法律。至少是陈旧的，或者是过时的，你说话要庄重，你唱的歌要谨慎，因为时代欺骗了我们，我们今天最常说的话是向我们致敬，欢迎我们来到盛宴上明显的邪恶——或者整天反对他大声喊叫，讲述丑恶的行为和最不寻常的错误。今夜，愿你与这椽下的众生同在——愿你与我同在——但啊，请更多地与那些不自由的人同在。他们被关进战俘营，所有的耻辱和愤怒都必须忍受。那里没有音乐演奏，也没有歌唱，虽然那里有伟大的声音，但干枯的喉咙和厚实的舌头却发不出声音来;他也没有这个心。万物皆美——不，我们不能指望如此;但有个地方专门为它设立了。 Here it may dwell; And with your aid, Melpomene And all thy sister-muses (for ye are, I think, daughters of Memory) Within the tortured mind as well. Reaped are those fields with dragon's-teeth so lately sown; Many the heaped men dying there - so close, hip touches thigh; yet each man dies alone. Music, what overtone For the soft ultimate sigh or the unheeded groan Hast thou—to make death decent, where men slip Down blood to death, no service of grieved heart or ritual lip Transferring what was recently a man and still is warm— Transferring his obedient limbs into the shallow grave where not again a friend shall greet him, Nor hatred do him harm . . . Nor true love run to meet him? In the last hours of him who lies untended On a cold field at night, and sees the hard bright stars Above his upturned face, and says aloud "How strange . . . my life is ended."— If in the past he loved great music much, and knew it well, Let not his lapsing mind be teased by well-beloved but ill- remembered bars — Let the full symphony across the blood-soaked field By him be heard, most pure in every part, The lonely horror of whose painful death is thus repealed, Who dies with quiet tears upon his upturned face, making to glow with softness the hard stars. And bring to those who knew great poetry well Page after page that they have loved but have not learned by heart! We who in comfort to well-lighted shelves Can turn for all the poets ever wrote, Beseech you: Bear to those Who love high art no less than we ourselves, Those who lie wounded, those who in prison cast Strive to recall, to ease them, some great ode, and every stanza save the last. Recall—oh, in the dark, restore them The unremembered lines; make bright the page before them! Page after page present to these, In prison concentrated, watched by barbs of bayonet and wire, Give ye to them their hearts' intense desire— The words of Shelley, Virgil, Sophocles. And thou, O lovely and not sad, Euterpe, be thou in this hall tonight! Bid us remember all we ever had Of sweet and gay delight— We who are free, But cannot quite be glad, Thinking of huge, abrupt disaster brought Upon so many of our kind Who treasure as do we the vivid look on the unfrightened face, The careless happy stride from place to place, And the unbounded regions of untrammelled thought Open as interstellar space To the exploring and excited mind. O Muses, O immortal Nine!— Or do ye languish? Can ye die? Must all go under?— How shall we heal without your help a world By these wild horses torn asunder? How shall we build anew? — How start again? How cure, how even moderate this pain Without you, and you strong? And if ye sleep, then waken! And if ye sicken and do plan to die, Do not that now! Hear us, in what sharp need we cry! For we have help nowhere If not in you! Pity can much, and so a mighty mind, but cannot all things do!— By you forsaken, We shall be scattered, we shall be overtaken! Oh, come! Renew in us the ancient wonder, The grace of life, its courage, and its joy! Weave us those garlands nothi