Now in Virgil's early poem, the Sixth Eclogue, the speaker explains that the writing of pastoral poetry is the stuff that young poets do.

在维吉尔早期的诗篇里，诗人解释道,田园诗歌的创作是年轻诗人的必经之路。

耶鲁公开课 - 弥尔顿课程节选

What good is it -- you'll remember -- what good is it, Milton asks, ; "to tend the homely slighted shepherd's trade"; that's, of course, the vocation of poetry if that shepherd-poet is just going to be struck down in his prime as Edward King had been?

大家可以看到，弥尔顿在这里发出了疑问，“进行平凡微不足道的诗歌创作“，又有何益;,当然，就田园诗人而言，诗歌的天命,是否在于如同爱德华金一般的英年早逝？

耶鲁公开课 - 弥尔顿课程节选

So, what you have to imagine is sometime back, I would argue, in the Mycenaean Period, somebody began making up one of these songs, telling the story of Greeks going to attack the city of Troy.

所以,你们想象一下在过去的某时,我当然是说在迈锡尼文明时期,有人开始创作这些诗歌中的某一首,它描述了希腊人攻打特洛伊的故事

耶鲁公开课 - 古希腊历史简介课程节选

Milton needs to imagine the narrative of the Creation as if the narration itself were taking place in the beginning, as if poetic creation could be a first in the same radical way that the creation of entire universe is obviously a first.

弥尔顿想象的对上帝创造万物的讲述,与上帝创造万物一样发生在太初之时，诗歌创作与整个宇宙的创造,都发生在太初之时。

耶鲁公开课 - 弥尔顿课程节选