听播客学英语 154 Blessed

 　　In a podcast last week, I talked about a pop group called the Zimmers. The Zimmers are all elderly people, who want to show the world that old people can be fun and creative. A few days ago I found a short poem about being old. It is by Barbara Beuler Wegner, but I am afraid that I have not been able to find out anything more either about the poem or about the writer. Here it is:

　　Blessed are they who understand

　　My faltering¹ steps and shaking hand.

　　Blessed are those who know my ears today

　　Will strain to catch the words they say.

　　Blessed are they who with a cheery smile

　　Stop to chat for a little while.

　　Blessed are those who never say

　　“You’ve told us that story twice today”.

　　Blessed are those who make it known

　　That I’m loved, respected and not alone.

　　The word “blessed” is a religious word. It means being favoured by God. In modern English we would normally say “blest”, rather than “blessed”. But the writer was thinking about a famous passage in the Bible in which Jesus tells us what sort of people are closest to God. They are not the rich people, or the powerful people, or the famous people. They are poor people, people who carry great sorrow, people who show mercy, people who suffer, and so on. In a modern English Bible, the word that Jesus uses for these people is “blest”. But older people like me remember a much older English translation of the Bible. In England we call it the Authorised Version of the Bible. In America, they call it the King James Bible, because it was translated into English at the beginning of the 17th century, in the reign² of King James I. (Do you remember the podcast about the Fifth of November? King James was the king whom Guy Fawkes tried to blow up.) The Authorised Version of the Bible is sometimes difficult to understand, because it uses English which is very different from modern English. But it is very beautiful and poetic³, and it was the version of the Bible used in churches in England for more than 300 years. And in the Authorised Version, the word which Jesus uses to talk about people who are close to God is “blessed”. And that is why the word “blessed” is used in this poem.

1 faltering   

犹豫的，支吾的，蹒跚的

参考例句：

• The economy shows no signs of faltering. 经济没有衰退的迹象。
• I canfeel my legs faltering. 我感到我的腿在颤抖。

2 reign   

n.统治时期，统治，支配，盛行；v.占优势

参考例句：

• The reign of Queen Elizabeth lapped over into the seventeenth century.伊丽莎白王朝延至17世纪。
• The reign of Zhu Yuanzhang lasted about 31 years.朱元璋统治了大约三十一年。

3 poetic   

adj.富有诗意的，有诗人气质的，善于抒情的

参考例句：

• His poetic idiom is stamped with expressions describing group feeling and thought.他的诗中的措辞往往带有描写群体感情和思想的印记。
• His poetic novels have gone through three different historical stages.他的诗情小说创作经历了三个不同的历史阶段。