诗人却钟情于夕阳，吟唱：夕阳无限好，只是近黄昏。画家爱画夕阳，只惑于眼前景色，未必缘于诗人的感伤。我有时下午一点钟便背着画箱出发，赶到那遥远的高地或海岸，早早守候着，准备捕捉无限好的夕阳。日西斜，我和我已支撑开的画架的投影不断伸长的时候，明蓝的天空渐渐转向紫蓝，紫红，于是晚霞满天，满天的晚霞卫护着，隐蔽着太阳归去。日落西山，黑夜很快就吞噬了眼前的世界。这瞬息万变的夕照与晨曦同样不易绘画，摄影师捕获的夕阳也往往与晨曦不易区分。莫奈的名作《日出的印象》似乎也可混淆为日落的印象。殷红的太阳在地平线上升起来，又在地平线上沉落下去，她在太空中放出的热与光芒原是一样的，只是由于地面上早晚热量发散的差异，显示了不同的天际色彩反映。晨曦的背景略偏温凉，偏冷调，夕阳则沐浴于温暖的氛围中。这些微妙的色调变化对画家最敏感，但笔底的色调却还是难于到位，故人们往往不易区别作品中表现的是晨曦还是夕阳。

　　Poets love sunset, chanting: "O, the splendor of sunset, only to be marred by the approach of night." So do painters, although usually for a different reason—they're only triggered by the visual impact itself, not by a deep feeling for departing beauty. Sometimes I will set off at one in the afternoon, with the painter's box on my back, towards the highland or the seashore, waiting to capture the splendor of sunset. As the fiery ball sinks to its daily doom, the shadows of my own figure and the easel I had brought were increasingly lengthened on the sandy ground. The sky, once so blue, turns a purplish blue and then a purplish red. It soon changes into a vast expanse of multihued clouds. Escorted by them, the sun disappears below the horizon. Darkness finally falls, engulfing everything within its sphere. This fleeting splendor is just as hard to catch in a painting as daybreak. Sunset glows captured by a photographer are, too, hardly distinguishable from the first glimmer of day. Even Monet's renowned piece, "Impressions, Sunrise (Impression, Soleil Levant)," can easily be mistaken for a sunset scene. A bright sunrise, after all, isn't that different from a bright sunset. The sun emits the same heat and splendor whether it's sunrise or sundown. Only due to the different ways heat spreads on the earth's surface in the early mornings and late afternoons, different hues are seen around the horizon at different times of day. The background for first streaks of daylight tends to be lukewarm or chilly, whereas the setting sun is usually immersed in an aura of profuse warmth. A painter can be sensitive enough to such slight variations in tone, but sometimes he finds it hard to adjust them to his satisfaction. The subtle difference between sunrise and sundown is hard to define anyway.

　　然而人生的晨曦与夕阳却是那么分明，会有人错认青春与迟暮吗？人们爱晨曦，也爱夕阳。人们爱青春，也爱迟暮吗？旭日东升，夕阳西下，虽相隔只12个小时，短短的12个小时，但她们永远不会相见。有人幻想晨曦与夕阳有朝一日碰面了，那将是怎样的欢欣啊!那是青春与迟暮的拥抱，人之始与人之终的交接，父与子的继承。太阳，独自悠悠在寰宇循行，无端被晨曦和夕阳各分了一半，难道只是缘于对人生朝暮的呼应？

　　However, the distinction between sunrise and sundown in a man's life is clear-cut. Nobody will confuse senility with the flowering of youth. People can love both sunrise and sundown. But whereas they love youth, do they also love old age? There is only a gap of twelve hours between sunrise and sundown, yet the one will never have the chance to greet the other. Well-intentioned people like to imagine a meeting of the two. How wonderful if this fantasy could become a reality! It would be a hug between youth and age, the beginning of a human life linking hands with its end, the continuation of a father's existence through is son's flesh and blood. The sun, traveling alone across the heavenly dome, is bound to be split up, with one half of it going to dawn, and the other half, dusk. Doesn't this coincide with the futility of life's sunrise and sundown trying to look each other in the face?