约瑟夫·康拉德是英国的著名小说家，《青春》是他的短篇小说，讲述了充满青春激情的小伙子马洛的首次东方之旅。选文描绘的是马洛工作的“圣地”号货船在黑夜里着火后，即将沉入大海的悲壮情景。

　　Between the darkness of earth and heaven she was burning fiercely upon a disc of purple sea shot by the blood-red play of gleams; upon a disc of water glittering and sinister. A high, clear flame, an immense and lonely flame, ascended from the ocean, and from its summit the black smoke poured continuously at the sky. She burned furiously, mournful and imposing like a funeral pile kindled in the night, surround-ed by the sea, watched over by the stars.
　　A magnificent death had come like a grace, like a gift, like a reward to that old ship at the end of her laborious days. The surrender of her weary ghost to the keeping of stars and sea was stirring like the sight of a glorious triumph. The masts fell just before daybreak, and for a moment there was a burst and turmoil of sparks that seemed to fill with flying fire the night patient and watchful, the vast night lying silent upon the sea.