青春

作者：（美）塞缪尔·厄尔曼（1840-1924）

 青春不是年华一段，而是心境一种；青春不是粉颊嫣然，不是朱唇艳红，不是膑膝矫健，它是风发意气，是梦幻畅想，是澎湃激情；青春是生命的泉涌，清醇流淌。

 挥洒青春，豪情万丈盖怯懦，喜迎冒险不贪安。气概坦坦常若此，六旬不让二十先。年岁有增，非谓老矣；背弃理想，迟暮迅至。

岁月荏苒，尽可令肌肤枯皱；热忱不再，必招致灵魂萎靡。愁肠烦难，惊恐不安，自信荡然，则心灵为之扭曲，心神落归灰烬。

不论岁高花甲，还是年少二八，心里无不装着猎奇探异之诱惑，童真不衰之求索，还有那生存博弈之快活。在你我的心怀之中，皆藏有电台一架；只要能从天上、人间接收美好、期盼、欢快、勇气和力量的讯息，你就会风华常青。

一旦天线倒地，心神便雪打冰捶，凄凄然阴郁愤世，意冷心灰，纵然你二十年华，业已是老暮垂悲；然若你树展天线，去捕捉乐观电波，则及至耄耋就木，仍有望青春相随。

【原文】

Samuel Ullman's "Youth"

 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.

Source: Margaret England Armbrester. Samuel Ullman and "Youth": The Life, The Legacy. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1993.