章节正文
Deliver; he, his attribute fulfilled,
To the island chorus hand your measures on,
Wed now with harmony: so them, at last,
Night after night, in the open hall of dance,
Shall thirty matted men, to the clapped hand,
Intone and bray and bark. Unfortunate!
Paper and print alone shall honour mine.
THE SONG
LET now the King his ear arouse
And toss the bosky ringlets from his brows,
The while, our bond to implement,
My muse relates and praises his descent.
I
Bride of the shark, her valour first I sing
Who on the lone seas quickened of a King.
She, from the shore and puny homes of men,
Beyond the climber's sea-discerning ken,
Swam, led by omens; and devoid of fear,
Beheld her monstrous paramour draw near.
She gazed; all round her to the heavenly pale,
The simple sea was void of isle or sail -
Sole overhead the unsparing sun was reared -
When the deep bubbled and the brute appeared.
But she, secure in the decrees of fate,
Made strong her bosom and received the mate,
And, men declare, from that marine embrace
Conceived the virtues of a stronger race.
II
Her stern descendant next I praise,
Survivor of a thousand frays: -
In the hall of tongues who ruled the throng;
Led and was trusted by the strong;
And when spears were in the wood,
Like a tower of vantage stood: -
Whom, not till seventy years had sped,
Unscarred of breast, erect of head,
Still light of step, still bright of look,
The hunter, Death, had overtook.
III
His sons, the brothers twain, I sing,
Of whom the elder reigned a King.
No Childeric he, yet much declined
From his rude sire's imperious mind,
Until his day came when he died,
He lived, he reigned, he versified.
But chiefly him I celebrate
That was the pillar of the state,
Ruled, wise of word and bold of mien,
The peaceful and the warlike scene;
And played alike the leader's part
In lawful and unlawful art.
His soldiers with emboldened ears
Heard him laugh among the spears.
He could deduce from age to age
The web of island parentage;
Best lay the rhyme, best lead the dance,
For any festal circumstance:
And fitly fashion oar and boat,
A palace or an armour coat.
None more availed than he to raise
The strong, suffumigating blaze,
Or knot the wizard leaf: none more,
Upon the untrodden windward shore
Of the isle, beside the beating main,
To cure the sickly and constrain,
With muttered words and waving rods,
The gibbering and the whistling gods.
But he, though thus with hand and head
He ruled, commanded, charmed, and led,
And thus in virtue and in might
Towered to contemporary sight -
Still in fraternal faith and love,
Remained below to reach above,
Gave and obeyed the apt command,
Pilot and vassal of the land.
IV
My Tembinok' from men like these
Inherited his palaces,
His right to rule, his powers of mind,
His cocoa-islands sea-enshrined.
Stern bearer of the sword and whip,
A master passed in mastership,
He learned, without the spur of need,
To write, to cipher, and to read;
From all that touch on his prone shore
Augments his treasury of lore,
Eager in age as erst in youth
To catch an art, to learn a truth,
To paint on the internal page
A clearer picture of the age.
His age, you say? But ah, not so!
In his lone isle of long ago,
A royal Lady of Shalott,
Sea-sundered, he beholds it not;
He only hears it far away.
The stress of equatorial day
He suffers; he records the while
The vapid annals of the isle;
Slaves bring him praise of his renown,
Or cackle of the palm-tree town;
The rarer ship and the rare boat
He marks; and only hears remote,
Where thrones and fortunes rise and reel,
The thunder of the turning wheel.
V
For the unexpected tears he shed
At my departing, may his lion head
Not whiten, his revolving years
No fresh occasion minister of tears;
At book or cards, at work or sport,
Him may the breeze across the palace court
For ever fan; and swelling near
For ever the loud song divert his ear.
Schooner 'Equator,' at Sea.
XXXVIII - THE WOODMAN
IN all the grove, nor stream nor bird
Nor aught beside my blows was heard,
And the woods wore their noonday dress -
The glory of their silentness.
From the island summit to the seas,
Trees mounted, and trees drooped, and trees
Groped upward in the gaps. The green
Inarboured talus and ravine
By fathoms. By the multitude
The rugged columns of the wood
And bunches of the branches stood;
Thick as a mob, deep as a sea,
And silent as eternity.
With lowered axe, with backward head,
Late from this scene my labourer fled,
And with a ravelled tale to tell,
Returned. Some denizen of hell,
Dead man or disinvested god,
Had close behind him peered and trod,
And triumphed when he turned to flee.
How different fell the lines with me!
Whose eye explored the dim arcade
Impatient of the uncoming shade -
Shy elf, or dryad pale and cold,
Or mystic lingerer from of old:
Vainly. The fair and stately things,
Impassive as departed kings,
All still in the wood's stillness stood,
And dumb. The rooted multitude
Nodded and brooded, bloomed and dreamed,
Unmeaning, undivined. It seemed
No other art, no hope, they knew,
Than clutch the earth and seek the blue.
'Mid vegetable king and priest
And stripling, I (the only beast)
Was at the beast's work, killing; hewed
The stubborn roots across, bestrewed
The glebe with the dislustred leaves,
And bade the saplings fall in sheaves;
Bursting across the tangled math
A ruin that I called a path,
A Golgotha that, later on,
When rains had watered, and suns shone,
And seeds enriched the place, should bear
And be called garden. Here and there,
I spied and plucked by the green hair
A foe more resolute to live,
The toothed and killing sensitive.
He, semi-conscious, fled the attack;
He shrank and tucked his branches back;
And straining by his anchor-strand,
Captured and scratched the rooting hand.
I saw him crouch, I felt him bite;
And straight my eyes were touched with sight.
I saw the wood for what it was:
The lost and the victorious cause,
The deadly battle pitched in line,
Saw silent weapons cross and shine:
Silent defeat, silent assault,
A battle and a burial vault.
Thick round me in the teeming mud
Brier and fern strove to the blood:
The hooked liana in his gin
Noosed his reluctant neighbours in:
There the green murderer throve and spread,
Upon his smothering victims fed,
And wantoned on his climbing coil.
Contending roots fought for the soil
Like frightened demons: with despair
Competing branches pushed for air.
Green conquerors from overhead
Bestrode the bodies of their dead:
The Caesars of the sylvan field,
Unused to fail, foredoomed to yield:
For in the groins of branches, lo!
The cancers of the orchid grow.
Silent as in the listed ring
Two chartered wrestlers strain and cling;
Dumb as by yellow Hooghly's side
The suffocating captives died;
So hushed the woodlandwarfare goes
Unceasing; and the silent foes
Grapple and smother, strain and clasp
Without a cry, without a gasp.
Here also sound thy fans, O God,
Here too thy banners move abroad:
To the island chorus hand your measures on,
Wed now with harmony: so them, at last,
Night after night, in the open hall of dance,
Shall thirty matted men, to the clapped hand,
Intone and bray and bark. Unfortunate!
Paper and print alone shall honour mine.
THE SONG
LET now the King his ear arouse
And toss the bosky ringlets from his brows,
The while, our bond to implement,
My muse relates and praises his descent.
I
Bride of the shark, her valour first I sing
Who on the lone seas quickened of a King.
She, from the shore and puny homes of men,
Beyond the climber's sea-discerning ken,
Swam, led by omens; and devoid of fear,
Beheld her monstrous paramour draw near.
She gazed; all round her to the heavenly pale,
The simple sea was void of isle or sail -
Sole overhead the unsparing sun was reared -
When the deep bubbled and the brute appeared.
But she, secure in the decrees of fate,
Made strong her bosom and received the mate,
And, men declare, from that marine embrace
Conceived the virtues of a stronger race.
II
Her stern descendant next I praise,
Survivor of a thousand frays: -
In the hall of tongues who ruled the throng;
Led and was trusted by the strong;
And when spears were in the wood,
Like a tower of vantage stood: -
Whom, not till seventy years had sped,
Unscarred of breast, erect of head,
Still light of step, still bright of look,
The hunter, Death, had overtook.
III
His sons, the brothers twain, I sing,
Of whom the elder reigned a King.
No Childeric he, yet much declined
From his rude sire's imperious mind,
Until his day came when he died,
He lived, he reigned, he versified.
But chiefly him I celebrate
That was the pillar of the state,
Ruled, wise of word and bold of mien,
The peaceful and the warlike scene;
And played alike the leader's part
In lawful and unlawful art.
His soldiers with emboldened ears
Heard him laugh among the spears.
He could deduce from age to age
The web of island parentage;
Best lay the rhyme, best lead the dance,
For any festal circumstance:
And fitly fashion oar and boat,
A palace or an armour coat.
None more availed than he to raise
The strong, suffumigating blaze,
Or knot the wizard leaf: none more,
Upon the untrodden windward shore
Of the isle, beside the beating main,
To cure the sickly and constrain,
With muttered words and waving rods,
The gibbering and the whistling gods.
But he, though thus with hand and head
He ruled, commanded, charmed, and led,
And thus in virtue and in might
Towered to contemporary sight -
Still in fraternal faith and love,
Remained below to reach above,
Gave and obeyed the apt command,
Pilot and vassal of the land.
IV
My Tembinok' from men like these
Inherited his palaces,
His right to rule, his powers of mind,
His cocoa-islands sea-enshrined.
Stern bearer of the sword and whip,
A master passed in mastership,
He learned, without the spur of need,
To write, to cipher, and to read;
From all that touch on his prone shore
Augments his treasury of lore,
Eager in age as erst in youth
To catch an art, to learn a truth,
To paint on the internal page
A clearer picture of the age.
His age, you say? But ah, not so!
In his lone isle of long ago,
A royal Lady of Shalott,
Sea-sundered, he beholds it not;
He only hears it far away.
The stress of equatorial day
He suffers; he records the while
The vapid annals of the isle;
Slaves bring him praise of his renown,
Or cackle of the palm-tree town;
The rarer ship and the rare boat
He marks; and only hears remote,
Where thrones and fortunes rise and reel,
The thunder of the turning wheel.
V
For the unexpected tears he shed
At my departing, may his lion head
Not whiten, his revolving years
No fresh occasion minister of tears;
At book or cards, at work or sport,
Him may the breeze across the palace court
For ever fan; and swelling near
For ever the loud song divert his ear.
Schooner 'Equator,' at Sea.
XXXVIII - THE WOODMAN
IN all the grove, nor stream nor bird
Nor aught beside my blows was heard,
And the woods wore their noonday dress -
The glory of their silentness.
From the island summit to the seas,
Trees mounted, and trees drooped, and trees
Groped upward in the gaps. The green
Inarboured talus and ravine
By fathoms. By the multitude
The rugged columns of the wood
And bunches of the branches stood;
Thick as a mob, deep as a sea,
And silent as eternity.
With lowered axe, with backward head,
Late from this scene my labourer fled,
And with a ravelled tale to tell,
Returned. Some denizen of hell,
Dead man or disinvested god,
Had close behind him peered and trod,
And triumphed when he turned to flee.
How different fell the lines with me!
Whose eye explored the dim arcade
Impatient of the uncoming shade -
Shy elf, or dryad pale and cold,
Or mystic lingerer from of old:
Vainly. The fair and stately things,
Impassive as departed kings,
All still in the wood's stillness stood,
And dumb. The rooted multitude
Nodded and brooded, bloomed and dreamed,
Unmeaning, undivined. It seemed
No other art, no hope, they knew,
Than clutch the earth and seek the blue.
'Mid vegetable king and priest
And stripling, I (the only beast)
Was at the beast's work, killing; hewed
The stubborn roots across, bestrewed
The glebe with the dislustred leaves,
And bade the saplings fall in sheaves;
Bursting across the tangled math
A ruin that I called a path,
A Golgotha that, later on,
When rains had watered, and suns shone,
And seeds enriched the place, should bear
And be called garden. Here and there,
I spied and plucked by the green hair
A foe more resolute to live,
The toothed and killing sensitive.
He, semi-conscious, fled the attack;
He shrank and tucked his branches back;
And straining by his anchor-strand,
Captured and scratched the rooting hand.
I saw him crouch, I felt him bite;
And straight my eyes were touched with sight.
I saw the wood for what it was:
The lost and the victorious cause,
The deadly battle pitched in line,
Saw silent weapons cross and shine:
Silent defeat, silent assault,
A battle and a burial vault.
Thick round me in the teeming mud
Brier and fern strove to the blood:
The hooked liana in his gin
Noosed his reluctant neighbours in:
There the green murderer throve and spread,
Upon his smothering victims fed,
And wantoned on his climbing coil.
Contending roots fought for the soil
Like frightened demons: with despair
Competing branches pushed for air.
Green conquerors from overhead
Bestrode the bodies of their dead:
The Caesars of the sylvan field,
Unused to fail, foredoomed to yield:
For in the groins of branches, lo!
The cancers of the orchid grow.
Silent as in the listed ring
Two chartered wrestlers strain and cling;
Dumb as by yellow Hooghly's side
The suffocating captives died;
So hushed the woodlandwarfare goes
Unceasing; and the silent foes
Grapple and smother, strain and clasp
Without a cry, without a gasp.
Here also sound thy fans, O God,
Here too thy banners move abroad:
- attribute [ə´tribju:t]
n.象征 vt.归因于 (初中英语单词) - chorus [´kɔ:rəs] n.合唱；齐声 v.合唱 (初中英语单词)
- harmony [´hɑ:məni] n.调合，协调，和谐 (初中英语单词)
- overhead [´əuvə,hed] ad.当头 a.在头上的 (初中英语单词)
- hunter [´hʌntə] n.猎人；猎狗；猎马 (初中英语单词)
- chiefly [´tʃi:fli] ad.主要地；尤其 (初中英语单词)
- peaceful [´pi:sfəl] a.和平的；平静的 (初中英语单词)
- armour [´ɑ:mə] (=armor) n.甲胄，盔甲 (初中英语单词)
- virtue [´və:tʃu:] n.美德；贞操；长处 (初中英语单词)
- stress [stres] n.强调；压力 vt.强调 (初中英语单词)
- thunder [´θʌndə] n.雷 vi.打雷 vt.吼出 (初中英语单词)
- minister [´ministə] n.部长；大臣 v.伺候 (初中英语单词)
- breeze [bri:z] n.微风；不费力的事 (初中英语单词)
- stream [stri:m] n.河 vi.流出；飘扬 (初中英语单词)
- upward [´ʌpwəd] a.&ad.向上(的)；以上 (初中英语单词)
- backward [´bækwəd] ad.向后 a.向后的 (初中英语单词)
- clutch [klʌtʃ] v.抓住 n.爪子；控制 (初中英语单词)
- vegetable [´vedʒtəbəl] a.&n.蔬菜(的)；植物 (初中英语单词)
- deadly [´dedli] a.致命的 ad.死一般地 (初中英语单词)
- hooked [hukt] a.钩状的；上瘾的 (初中英语单词)
- abroad [ə´brɔ:d] ad.海外；到处；广泛 (初中英语单词)
- monstrous [´mɔnstrəs] a.怪异的；庞大的 (高中英语单词)
- heavenly [´hevənli] a.天的，天空的 (高中英语单词)
- marine [mə´ri:n] a.海的 n.海军陆战队 (高中英语单词)
- descendant [di´sendənt] n.子孙，后裔 (高中英语单词)
- pillar [´pilə] n.支柱 vt.用柱支持 (高中英语单词)
- contemporary [kən´tempərəri] a.&n.同时代的(人) (高中英语单词)
- bearer [´beərə] n.持票人；送信人 (高中英语单词)
- learned [´lə:nid] a.有学问的，博学的 (高中英语单词)
- internal [in´tə:nl] a.内部的；国内的 (高中英语单词)
- unexpected [ʌniks´pektid] a.突然的；意外的 (高中英语单词)
- divert [dai´və:t] vt.转移注意力；消遣 (高中英语单词)
- summit [´sʌmit] n.顶(点)；绝顶 (高中英语单词)
- rugged [´rʌgid] a.不平的；粗犷的 (高中英语单词)
- stately [´steitli] a.庄严的，雄伟的 (高中英语单词)
- stillness [´stilnis] n.不动；无声，寂静 (高中英语单词)
- stubborn [´stʌbən] a.顽固的；坚持的 (高中英语单词)
- crouch [krautʃ] vi.卷缩；蹲伏 (高中英语单词)
- victorious [vik´tɔ:riəs] a.得胜的，胜利的 (高中英语单词)
- strove [strəuv] strive的过去式 (高中英语单词)
- murderer [´mə:dərə] n.杀人犯，凶手 (高中英语单词)
- strain [strein] vt.拉紧 vi.拖 n.张力 (高中英语单词)
- woodland [´wudlənd] n.树林，林地 (高中英语单词)
- warfare [´wɔ:feə] n.战争；斗争；竞争 (高中英语单词)
- smother [´smʌðə] v.抑制；覆盖 n.浓烟 (高中英语单词)
- valour [´vælə] n.英勇，勇猛 (英语四级单词)
- warlike [´wɔ:laik] a.战争的；好战的 (英语四级单词)
- lawful [´lɔ:fəl] a.合法的，守法的 (英语四级单词)
- wizard [´wizəd] n.术士；男巫 (英语四级单词)
- sickly [´sikli] a.多病的；病态的 (英语四级单词)
- vassal [´væsəl] n.诸侯；封臣；属下 (英语四级单词)
- noonday [´nu:ndei] n.正午 (英语四级单词)
- resolute [´rezəlu:t] a.坚决的；不屈不挠的 (英语四级单词)
- reluctant [ri´lʌktənt] a.勉强的；难得到的 (英语四级单词)
- devoid [di´vɔid] a.无...的，缺...的 (英语六级单词)
- vantage [´vɑ:ntidʒ] n.优势；好机会 (英语六级单词)
- imperious [im´piəriəs] a.傲慢的；紧急的 (英语六级单词)
- beating [´bi:tiŋ] n.敲；搅打；失败 (英语六级单词)
- fraternal [frə´tə:nəl] a.兄弟(般)的；友爱的 (英语六级单词)
- equatorial [,ekwə´tɔ:riəl] a.赤道的，近赤道的 (英语六级单词)
- cackle [´kækəl] vi.咯咯叫 n.咯咯叫声 (英语六级单词)
- whiten [´waitn] v.(使)白，变白，漂白 (英语六级单词)
- mystic [´mistik] a.神秘的；难以理解的 (英语六级单词)
- departed [di´pɑ:tid] a.已往的；已故的 (英语六级单词)
- shrank [ʃræŋk] shrink的过去式 (英语六级单词)
文章标签:名著
章节正文
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