[英國]戴維·赫伯特·勞倫斯/David Herbert Lawrence
戴維·赫伯特·勞倫斯（1885-1930），英國詩人、小說家、散文家。出生於礦工家庭，當過屠戶會計、廠商雇員和小學教師，曾在國內外漂泊十多年，對現實持批判否定態度。他寫過詩，但主要寫長篇小說，共有10部，最著名的為《虹》（1915）《戀愛中的女人》（1921）和《查泰萊夫人的情人》（1928）。《虹》通過自耕農布蘭文的三代家史，描寫了19世紀中葉以來大工業吞食小農經濟的過程，猛烈抨擊了金錢罪惡和帝國主義戰爭。
North of the Alps, the everlasting winter is interrupted by summers that struggle and soon yield;south of the Alps, the everlasting summer is interrupted by spasmodic and spiteful winters that never get a real hold, but that are mean and dogged. The in between, in either case, is just as it may be. But the lands of the sun are south of the Alps, forever.
In the morning, the sun shines strong on the horizontal green cloud-puffs of the pines, the sky is clear and full of life, the water runs hastily, still browned by the last juice of crushed olives. And there the earth's bowl of crocuses is amazing. You cannot believe that the flowers are really still. They are open with such delight, and their pistil thrust is so red-orange, and they are so many, all reaching out wide and marvellous, that it suggests a perfect ecstasy of radiant, thronging movement, lit-up violet and orange, and surging in some invisible rhythm of concerted, delightful movement. You cannot believe they do not move, and make some sort of crystalline sound of delight. If you sit still and watch, you begin to move with them, like moving with the stars, and you feel the sound of their radiance. All the little cells of the flowers must be leaping with flowery life and utterance.
And now that it is March, there is a rush of flowers. Down by the other stream, which turns sideways to the sun, and tangles the brier and bramble, down where the hellebore has stood so wan and dignified all winter, there are now white tufts of primroses, suddenly come. Among the tangle and near the water-lip, tufts and bunches of primroses, in abundance. Yet they look more wan, more pallid, more flimsy than English primroses. They lack some of the full wonder of the northern flowers. One tends to overlook them, to turn to the great, solemn-faced purple violets that rear up from the bank, and above all, to the wonderful little towers of the grape hyacinth.