原文：
WHEN 2 I am in a serious humour, I very often walk by myself in Westminster Abbey, where the gloominess of the place, and the use to which it is applied, with the solemnity of the building, and the condition of the people who lie in it, are apt to fill the mind with a kind of melancholy, or rather thoughtfulness, that is not disagreeable. I yesterday passed a whole afternoon in the churchyard, the cloisters, and the church, amusing myself with the tombstones and inscriptions that I met with in those several regions of the dead. Most of them recorded nothing else of the buried person, but that he was born upon one day, and died upon another: the whole history of his life being comprehended in those two circumstances, that are common to all mankind. I could not but look upon these registers of existence, whether of brass or marble, as a kind of satire upon the departed persons; who had left no other memorial of them, but that they were born and that they died. They put me in mind of several persons mentioned in the battles of heroic poems, who have sounding names given them, for no other reason but that they may be killed, and are celebrated for nothing but being knocked on the head.The life of these men is finely described in Holy Writ by “the path of an arrow,” which is immediately closed up and lost.
Upon my going into the church, I entertained myself with the digging of a grave; and saw in every shovelful of it that was thrown up, the fragment of a bone or skull intermixt with a kind of fresh mouldering earth, that some time or other had a place in the composition of a human body. Upon this, I began to consider with myself what innumerable multitudes of people lay confused together under the pavement of that ancient cathedral; how men and women, friends and enemies, priests and soldiers, monks and prebendaries, were crumbled amongst one another, and blended together in the same common mass; how beauty, strength, and youth, with old age, weakness and deformity, lay undistinguished in the same promiscuous heap of matter.
参考译文：
每当心情沉重的时候,我常独自一人去威斯敏斯特教堂游逛。肃穆的氛围、教堂神圣职能、庄严的建筑、埋藏地下之人的地位，让人不禁满是抑郁之情，或者思绪万千，但并无不快．昨天我在墓地、回廊与教堂中渡过了整整一个下午，在各个墓区中观看坟墓与碑文。其中大部分除了死者的生辰祭日之外，别无其它．死者的一生仅用这所有人都难以逃避的两个日期来概括，这不禁让我觉得眼前这些证明死者活过的事物，无论是铜的还是大理石的，都是对死者的一种讽刺．他们没有留下任何其它供人缅怀之物，只有生死之期．他们使我想起英雄史诗中提到的战争中的人物．他们名声响亮，不为别的原因，只是因为他们战死沙场，只是因为他们壮烈牺牲而被人们怀念．他们的一生正如圣经中描绘的那样＂如箭飞逝＂：一闪而过，不见踪影．
我走进教堂，正好赶上有人挖墓．扔出的每一锨腐土中，都混杂着骨头或头颅的碎片。曾几何时，这些碎片还是人身体的一部份呢！看到这个情景，我暗自思忖，在这座古老教堂甬道下面混埋着何等众多的人呀；无论男人还是女人，朋友还是敌人，牧师还是士兵，修士还是受俸者，全都化碎片，混成一堆．美丽、强壮、年轻的人和年老、体衰、畸形的人都毫无区别地融入同一片泥土。
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