《四季随笔》是吉辛的散文代表作。其中对隐士赖克罗夫特醉心于书籍、自然景色与回忆过去生活的描述，其实是吉辛的自述，作者以此来抒发自己的情感，因而本书是一部富有自传色彩的小品文集。

吉辛穷困的一生，对文学名著的爱好与追求，以及对大自然恬静生活的向往，在书中均有充分的反映。本书分为春、夏、秋、冬四个部分，文笔优美，行文流畅，是英国文学中小品文的珍品之一。

以下是由网友分享的《四季随笔》节选 - 夏 02的内容，让我们一起来感受吉辛的四季吧!

I have been spending a week in Somerset. The right June weather put me in the mind for rambling, and my thoughts turned to the Severn Sea. I went to Glastonbury and Wells, and on to Cheddar, and so to the shore of the Channel at Clevedon, remembering my holiday of fifteen years ago, and too often losing myself in a contrast of the man I was then and what I am now. Beautiful beyond all words of description that nook of oldest England; but that I feared the moist and misty winter climate, I should have chosen some spot below the Mendips for my home and resting-place. Unspeakable the charm to my ear of those old names; exquisite the quiet of those little towns, lost amid tilth and pasture, untouched as yet by the fury of modern life, their ancient sanctuaries guarded, as it were, by noble trees and hedges overrun with f lowers. In all England there is no sweeter and more varied prospect than that from the hill of the Holy Thorn at Glastonbury; in all England there is no lovelier musing place than the leafy walk beside the Palace Moat at Wells. As I think of the golden hours I spent there, a passion to which I can give no name takes hold upon me; my heart trembles with an indefinable ecstasy.

我曾在萨默塞特郡度过了一周的时光。当时是六月，美好的天气让我有漫游的心情，思绪于是飞到了塞汶河。我先去了格拉斯顿伯里和威尔斯，又到了切达，接着来到克利夫登的英吉利海峡岸边。一路上我都沉浸在十五年前那个假期的回忆里，常常不自觉地把那时的自己和现在的自己进行对比。那古老的英格兰岬角真是美丽得无法形容，要不是因为对冬天潮湿多雾气候的畏惧，我会选择门迪普斯山下的一个地方安家并作为长眠之地。那些古老的名字在我听来有一种无法言说的魅力，这里的小镇是那么令人心醉的静谧，它们坐落在耕地和草地之间，还未及受到现代喧嚣生活的污染，秀颀的树木和爬满鲜花的树篱守卫着这块古老的庇护地。在英格兰，没有比格拉斯顿伯里的圣荆山上看到的景色更优美多姿的了；在英格兰，没有哪里比威尔斯宫壕边上那条铺满落叶的人行道更适合沉思了。每每想起在那里度过的金色时光，一种莫名的激情便紧紧攫住我，我的心因为一种难以言说的狂喜而战栗。

There was a time of my life when I was consumed with a desire for foreign travel; an impatience of everything familiar fretted me through all the changing year. If I had not at length found the opportunity to escape, if I had not seen the landscapes for which my soul longed, I think I must have moped to death. Few men, assuredly, have enjoyed such wanderings more than I, and few men revive them in memory with a richer delight or deeper longing. But—whatever temptation comes to me in mellow autumn, when I think of the grape and of the olive—I do not believe I shall ever again cross the sea. What remains to me of life and of energy is far too little for the enjoyment of all I know, and all I wish to know, of this dear island.

生命里曾有一个时期，我对海外旅行充满了热望，一年四季，司空见惯的一切让我感到厌烦焦躁。要不是最后找到机会逃离，要不是终于看到了向往的景色，我想我一定会郁郁而终。可以肯定，没有谁比我更享受这样的旅行，没有谁在回忆中能比我感受到更饱满的愉悦和更深沉的向往。但是—当富饶的秋天来临，我想起葡萄和橄榄时，不管这种诱惑有多大—我相信自己都不会再远渡重洋了。我所剩下的生命和精力太过有限，用来享受这块亲爱的岛屿上我知道和希望知道的一切还嫌不够呢。

As a child I used to sleep in a room hung round with prints after English landscape painters—those steel engravings so common half a century ago, which bore the legend, "From the picture in the Vernon1 Gallery." Far more than I knew at the time, these pictures impressed me; I gazed and gazed at them, with that fixed attention of a child which is half curiosity, half reverie, till every line of them was fixed in my mind; at this moment I see the black-and-white landscapes as if they were hanging on the wall before me, and I have often thought that this early training of the imagination—for such it was—has much to do with the passionate love of rural scenery which lurked within me even when I did not recognize it, and which now for many a year has been one of the emotions directing my life. Perhaps, too, that early memory explains why I love a good black-and-white print even more than a good painting. And—to draw yet another inference—here may be a reason for the fact that, through my youth and early manhood, I found more pleasure in Nature as represented by art than in Nature herself. Even during that strange time when hardships and passions held me captive far from any glimpse of the flowering earth, I could be moved, and moved deeply, by a picture of the simplest rustic scene. At rare moments, when a happy chance led me into the National Gallery, I used to stand long before such pictures as "The Valley Farm," "The Cornfield," 2 "Mousehold Heath." 3 In the murk confusion of my heart these visions of the world of peace and beauty from which I was excluded—to which, indeed, I hardly ever gave a thought—touched me to deep emotion. But it did not need—nor does it now—the magic of a master to awake that mood in me. Let me but come upon the poorest little woodcut, the cheapest "process" illustration, representing a thatched cottage, a lane, a field, and I hear that music begin to murmur. It is a passion—Heaven be thanked—that grows with my advancing years. The last thought of my brain as I lie dying will be that of sunshine upon an English meadow.

小时候，我的卧室挂满了英国风景画家的作品—这些钢版画在半个世纪前司空见惯，上面刻着题跋曰：弗农画廊展品仿作。它们给我留下了难以磨灭的印象，虽然当时我并没有意识到。我目不转睛地凝视着它们，带着孩子般半好奇半幻想的眼光，直到每一个线条都镌刻在脑海中。此时，我彷佛能看到那些黑白风景画就挂在面前的墙上，我常常想，这种早期想象力的训练是否和我对乡村景色的热爱有很大关系，这种热爱在我还没认识到之前就暗藏着，并在许多年里成为主导我生活的感情之一。也许，儿时的这些记忆也是我喜欢黑白版画胜于油画的原因。进一步推想，这也许就是为什么在少年和青年时，我更喜欢艺术表现出的自然，甚至胜过自然景色本身。即使在那段不可思议的时期，我被苦难和激情所禁锢着，没看过一眼繁花盛开的大地，一幅最淳朴的乡村风景画作也能深深地打动我。难得有那么几次，我有幸来到国家美术馆，常常在一些诸如《山谷田庄》、《麦田》和《鼠穴荒原》的画作前伫立许久。在我晦暗混乱的心中，这些画境—一个把我排除在外的和平美丽的世界，而我也确实很少期望这样的世界—深深触动了我。然而，要唤醒我心底的情绪，在过去并不需要绘画大师的高超技法，现在也不需要。只要面前放上一幅最拙劣的小木版画或是最廉价的“程式化”插图，描绘一间茅草屋，一条小路，一块田地，我就能听到音乐声响起。感谢老天，这种激情随着我年岁渐长愈加浓烈。在我临终时，头脑里最后一个画面将会是洒在英格兰的草地上的阳光。