章节正文
Unwarned by those plain letters scrawled on air.
If more than hands' and armsful be our share,
Snatch we for substance we see vapours flit.
Have we not heard derision infinite
When old men play the youth to chase the snare?
Let us be belted athletes, matched for foes,
Or stand aloof, the great Benevolent,
The Lord of Lands no Robber-birds annex,
Where Justice holds the scales with pure intent;
Armed to support her sword;--lest we compose
That Chapter for the historic word on Wrecks.
TRAFALGAR DAY
He leads: we hear our Seaman's call
In the roll of battles won;
For he is Britain's Admiral
Till setting of her sun.
When Britain's life was in her ships,
He kept the sea as his own right;
And saved us from more fell eclipse
Than drops on day from blackest night.
Again his battle spat the flame!
Again his victory flag men saw!
At sound of Nelson's chieftain name,
A deeper breath did Freedom draw.
Each trusty captain knew his part:
They served as men, not marshalled kine:
The pulses they of his great heart,
With heads to work his main design.
Their Nelson's word, to beat the foe,
And spare the fall'n, before them shone.
Good was the hour of blow for blow,
And clear their course while they fought on.
Behold the Envied vanward sweep! -
A day in mourning weeds adored!
Then Victory was wrought to weep;
Then sorrow crowned with laurel soared.
A breezeless flag above a shroud
All Britain was when wind and wave,
To make her, passing human, proud,
Brought his last gift from o'er the grave!
Uprose the soul of him a star
On that brave day of Ocean days:
It rolled the smoke from Trafalger
To darken Austerlitz ablaze.
Are we the men of old, its light
Will point us under every sky
The path he took; and must we fight,
Our Nelson be our battle-cry!
He leads: we hear our Seaman's call
In the roll of battles won;
For he is Britain's Admiral
Till setting of her sun.
THE REVOLUTION
I
Not yet had History's Aetna smoked the skies,
And low the Gallic Giantess lay enchained,
While overhead in ordered set and rise
Her kingly crowns immutably defiled;
Effulgent on funereal piled
Across the vacant heavens, and distrained
Her body, mutely, even as earth, to bear;
Despoiled the tomb of hope, her mouth of air.
II
Through marching scores of winters racked she lay,
Beneath a hoar-frost's brilliant crust,
Whereon the jewelled flies that drained
Her breasts disported in a glistering spray;
She, the land's fount of fruits, enclosed with dust;
By good and evil angels fed, sustained
In part to curse, in part to pray,
Sucking the dubious rumours, till men saw
The throbs of her charged heart before the Just,
So worn the harrowed surface had become:
And still they deemed the dance above was Law,
Amort all passion in a rebel dumb.
III
Then, on the unanticipated day,
Earth heaved, and rose a veinous mound
To roar of the underfloods; and off it sprang,
Ravishing as red wine in woman's form,
A splendid Maenad, she of the delirious laugh,
Her body twisted flames with the smoke-cap crowned;
She of the Bacchic foot; the challenger to the fray,
Bewitchment for the embrace; who sang, who sang
Intoxication to her swarm,
Revolved them, hair, voice, feet, in her carmagnole,
As with a stroke she snapped the Royal staff,
Dealt the awaited blow on gilt decay
(O ripeness of the time! O Retribution sure,
If but our vital lamp illume us to endure!)
And, like a glad releasing of her soul,
Sent the word Liberty up to meet the midway blue,
Her bridegroom in descent to her; and they joined,
In the face of men they joined: attest it true,
The million witnesses, that she,
For ages lying beside the mole,
Was on the unanticipated miracle day
Upraised to midway heaven and, as to her goal,
Enfolded, ere the Immaculate knew
What Lucifer of the Mint had coined
His bride's adulterate currency
Of burning love corrupt of an infuriate hate;
She worthy, she unworthy; that one day his mate:
His mate for that one day of the unwritten deed.
Read backward on the hoar-frost's brilliant crust;
Beneath it read.
Athirst to kiss, athirst to slay, she stood,
A radiance fringed with grim affright;
For them that hungered, she was nourishing food,
For those who sparkled, Night.
Read in her heart, and how before the Just
Her doings, her misdoings, plead.
IV
Down on her leap for him the young Angelical broke
To husband a resurgent France:
From whom, with her dethroning stroke,
Dishonour passed; the dalliance,
That is occasion's yea or nay,
In issues for the soul to pay,
Discarded; and the cleft 'twixt deed and word,
The sinuous lie which warbles the sweet bird,
Wherein we see old Darkness peer,
Cold Dissolution beck, she had flung hence;
And hence the talons and the beak of prey;
Hence all the lures to silken swine
Thronging the troughs of indolence;
With every sleek convolvement serpentine;
The pride in elfin arts to veil an evil leer,
And bid a goatfoot trip it like a fay.
He clasped in this revived, uprisen France,
A valorous dame, of countenance
The lightning's upon cloud: unlit as yet
On brows and lips the lurid shine
Of seas in the night-wind's whirl; unstirred
Her pouch of the centuries' injuries compressed;
The shriek that tore the world as yet unheard:
Earth's animate full flower she looked, intense
For worship, wholly given him, fair
Adoring or desiring; in her bright jet,
Earth's crystal spring to sky: Earth's warrior Best
To win Heaven's Pure up that midway
We vision for new ground, where sense
And spirit are one for the further flight; breast-bare,
Bare-limbed; nor graceless gleamed her disarray
In scorn of the seductive insincere,
But martially nude for hot Bellona's play,
And amorous of the loftiest in her view.
V
She sprang from dust to drink of earth's cool dew,
The breath of swaying grasses share,
Mankind embrace, their weaklings rear,
At wrestle with the tyrannic strong;
Her forehead clear to her mate, virgin anew,
As immortals may be in the mortal sphere.
Read through her launching heart, who had lain long
With Earth and heard till it became her own
Our good Great Mother's eve and matin song:
The humming burden of Earth's toil to feed
Her creatures all, her task to speed their growth,
Her aim to lead them up her pathways, shown
Between the Pains and Pleasures; warned of both,
Of either aided on their hard ascent.
Now when she looked, with love's benign delight
After great ecstasy, along the plains,
What foulest impregnation of her sight
Transformed the scene to multitudinous troops
Of human sketches, quaver-figures, bent,
As were they winter sedges, broken hoops,
Dry udder, vineless poles, worm-eaten posts,
With features like the flowers defaced by deluge rains?
Recked she that some perverting devil had limned
Earth's proudest to spout scorn of the Maker's hand,
Who could a day behold these deathly hosts,
And see, decked, graced, and delicately trimmed,
A ribanded and gemmed elected few,
Sanctioned, of milk and honey starve the land:-
Like melody in flesh, its pleasant game
Olympianwise perform, cloak but the shame:
Beautiful statures; hideous,
By Christian contrast; pranked with golden chains,
And flexile where is manhood straight;
Mortuaries where warm should beat
The brotherhood that keeps blood sweet:
Who dared in cantique impious
Proclaim the Just, to whom was due
Cathedral gratitude in the pomp of state,
For that on those lean outcasts hung the sucker Pains,
On these elect the swelling Pleasures grew.
Surely a devil's land when that meant death for each!
Fresh from the breast of Earth, not thus,
With all the body's life to plump the leech,
Is Nature's way, she knew. The abominable scene
Spat at the skies; and through her veins,
To cloud celestially sown,
Ran venom of what nourishment
Her dark sustainer subterrene
Supplied her, stretched supine on the rack,
Alive in the shrewd nerves, the seething brains,
Under derisive revels, prone
As one clamped fast, with the interminablesenseless blent.
VI
If more than hands' and armsful be our share,
Snatch we for substance we see vapours flit.
Have we not heard derision infinite
When old men play the youth to chase the snare?
Let us be belted athletes, matched for foes,
Or stand aloof, the great Benevolent,
The Lord of Lands no Robber-birds annex,
Where Justice holds the scales with pure intent;
Armed to support her sword;--lest we compose
That Chapter for the historic word on Wrecks.
TRAFALGAR DAY
He leads: we hear our Seaman's call
In the roll of battles won;
For he is Britain's Admiral
Till setting of her sun.
When Britain's life was in her ships,
He kept the sea as his own right;
And saved us from more fell eclipse
Than drops on day from blackest night.
Again his battle spat the flame!
Again his victory flag men saw!
At sound of Nelson's chieftain name,
A deeper breath did Freedom draw.
Each trusty captain knew his part:
They served as men, not marshalled kine:
The pulses they of his great heart,
With heads to work his main design.
Their Nelson's word, to beat the foe,
And spare the fall'n, before them shone.
Good was the hour of blow for blow,
And clear their course while they fought on.
Behold the Envied vanward sweep! -
A day in mourning weeds adored!
Then Victory was wrought to weep;
Then sorrow crowned with laurel soared.
A breezeless flag above a shroud
All Britain was when wind and wave,
To make her, passing human, proud,
Brought his last gift from o'er the grave!
Uprose the soul of him a star
On that brave day of Ocean days:
It rolled the smoke from Trafalger
To darken Austerlitz ablaze.
Are we the men of old, its light
Will point us under every sky
The path he took; and must we fight,
Our Nelson be our battle-cry!
He leads: we hear our Seaman's call
In the roll of battles won;
For he is Britain's Admiral
Till setting of her sun.
THE REVOLUTION
I
Not yet had History's Aetna smoked the skies,
And low the Gallic Giantess lay enchained,
While overhead in ordered set and rise
Her kingly crowns immutably defiled;
Effulgent on funereal piled
Across the vacant heavens, and distrained
Her body, mutely, even as earth, to bear;
Despoiled the tomb of hope, her mouth of air.
II
Through marching scores of winters racked she lay,
Beneath a hoar-frost's brilliant crust,
Whereon the jewelled flies that drained
Her breasts disported in a glistering spray;
She, the land's fount of fruits, enclosed with dust;
By good and evil angels fed, sustained
In part to curse, in part to pray,
Sucking the dubious rumours, till men saw
The throbs of her charged heart before the Just,
So worn the harrowed surface had become:
And still they deemed the dance above was Law,
Amort all passion in a rebel dumb.
III
Then, on the unanticipated day,
Earth heaved, and rose a veinous mound
To roar of the underfloods; and off it sprang,
Ravishing as red wine in woman's form,
A splendid Maenad, she of the delirious laugh,
Her body twisted flames with the smoke-cap crowned;
She of the Bacchic foot; the challenger to the fray,
Bewitchment for the embrace; who sang, who sang
Intoxication to her swarm,
Revolved them, hair, voice, feet, in her carmagnole,
As with a stroke she snapped the Royal staff,
Dealt the awaited blow on gilt decay
(O ripeness of the time! O Retribution sure,
If but our vital lamp illume us to endure!)
And, like a glad releasing of her soul,
Sent the word Liberty up to meet the midway blue,
Her bridegroom in descent to her; and they joined,
In the face of men they joined: attest it true,
The million witnesses, that she,
For ages lying beside the mole,
Was on the unanticipated miracle day
Upraised to midway heaven and, as to her goal,
Enfolded, ere the Immaculate knew
What Lucifer of the Mint had coined
His bride's adulterate currency
Of burning love corrupt of an infuriate hate;
She worthy, she unworthy; that one day his mate:
His mate for that one day of the unwritten deed.
Read backward on the hoar-frost's brilliant crust;
Beneath it read.
Athirst to kiss, athirst to slay, she stood,
A radiance fringed with grim affright;
For them that hungered, she was nourishing food,
For those who sparkled, Night.
Read in her heart, and how before the Just
Her doings, her misdoings, plead.
IV
Down on her leap for him the young Angelical broke
To husband a resurgent France:
From whom, with her dethroning stroke,
Dishonour passed; the dalliance,
That is occasion's yea or nay,
In issues for the soul to pay,
Discarded; and the cleft 'twixt deed and word,
The sinuous lie which warbles the sweet bird,
Wherein we see old Darkness peer,
Cold Dissolution beck, she had flung hence;
And hence the talons and the beak of prey;
Hence all the lures to silken swine
Thronging the troughs of indolence;
With every sleek convolvement serpentine;
The pride in elfin arts to veil an evil leer,
And bid a goatfoot trip it like a fay.
He clasped in this revived, uprisen France,
A valorous dame, of countenance
The lightning's upon cloud: unlit as yet
On brows and lips the lurid shine
Of seas in the night-wind's whirl; unstirred
Her pouch of the centuries' injuries compressed;
The shriek that tore the world as yet unheard:
Earth's animate full flower she looked, intense
For worship, wholly given him, fair
Adoring or desiring; in her bright jet,
Earth's crystal spring to sky: Earth's warrior Best
To win Heaven's Pure up that midway
We vision for new ground, where sense
And spirit are one for the further flight; breast-bare,
Bare-limbed; nor graceless gleamed her disarray
In scorn of the seductive insincere,
But martially nude for hot Bellona's play,
And amorous of the loftiest in her view.
V
She sprang from dust to drink of earth's cool dew,
The breath of swaying grasses share,
Mankind embrace, their weaklings rear,
At wrestle with the tyrannic strong;
Her forehead clear to her mate, virgin anew,
As immortals may be in the mortal sphere.
Read through her launching heart, who had lain long
With Earth and heard till it became her own
Our good Great Mother's eve and matin song:
The humming burden of Earth's toil to feed
Her creatures all, her task to speed their growth,
Her aim to lead them up her pathways, shown
Between the Pains and Pleasures; warned of both,
Of either aided on their hard ascent.
Now when she looked, with love's benign delight
After great ecstasy, along the plains,
What foulest impregnation of her sight
Transformed the scene to multitudinous troops
Of human sketches, quaver-figures, bent,
As were they winter sedges, broken hoops,
Dry udder, vineless poles, worm-eaten posts,
With features like the flowers defaced by deluge rains?
Recked she that some perverting devil had limned
Earth's proudest to spout scorn of the Maker's hand,
Who could a day behold these deathly hosts,
And see, decked, graced, and delicately trimmed,
A ribanded and gemmed elected few,
Sanctioned, of milk and honey starve the land:-
Like melody in flesh, its pleasant game
Olympianwise perform, cloak but the shame:
Beautiful statures; hideous,
By Christian contrast; pranked with golden chains,
And flexile where is manhood straight;
Mortuaries where warm should beat
The brotherhood that keeps blood sweet:
Who dared in cantique impious
Proclaim the Just, to whom was due
Cathedral gratitude in the pomp of state,
For that on those lean outcasts hung the sucker Pains,
On these elect the swelling Pleasures grew.
Surely a devil's land when that meant death for each!
Fresh from the breast of Earth, not thus,
With all the body's life to plump the leech,
Is Nature's way, she knew. The abominable scene
Spat at the skies; and through her veins,
To cloud celestially sown,
Ran venom of what nourishment
Her dark sustainer subterrene
Supplied her, stretched supine on the rack,
Alive in the shrewd nerves, the seething brains,
Under derisive revels, prone
As one clamped fast, with the interminablesenseless blent.
VI
- victory [´viktəri]
n.胜利，战胜 (初中英语单词) - breath [breθ] n.呼吸；气息 (初中英语单词)
- mourning [´mɔ:niŋ] n.悲伤；治丧；戴孝 (初中英语单词)
- wrought [rɔ:t] work 的过去式(分词) (初中英语单词)
- overhead [´əuvə,hed] ad.当头 a.在头上的 (初中英语单词)
- vacant [´veikənt] a.空虚的，无表情的 (初中英语单词)
- brilliant [´briliənt] a.灿烂的；杰出的 (初中英语单词)
- passion [´pæʃən] n.激情；激怒；恋爱 (初中英语单词)
- embrace [im´breis] vt.&n.拥抱；采纳；信奉 (初中英语单词)
- miracle [´mirəkl] n.奇迹；令人惊奇的 (初中英语单词)
- worthy [´wə:ði] a.有价值的；值得的 (初中英语单词)
- backward [´bækwəd] ad.向后 a.向后的 (初中英语单词)
- doings [´du:iŋz] n.行动；所作的事 (初中英语单词)
- shriek [ʃri:k] v.&n.尖叫(声) (初中英语单词)
- worship [´wə:ʃip] n.&v.崇拜；敬仰 (初中英语单词)
- wholly [´həul-li] ad.完全，十足；统统 (初中英语单词)
- crystal [´kristəl] n.水晶 a.水晶的 (初中英语单词)
- warrior [´wɔriə] n.勇士，战士 (初中英语单词)
- vision [´viʒən] n.视觉；想象力；幻影 (初中英语单词)
- flight [flait] n.逃走；飞行；班机 (初中英语单词)
- sprang [spræŋ] spring 的过去式 (初中英语单词)
- forehead [´fɔrid] n.额，前部 (初中英语单词)
- starve [stɑ:v] v.(使)饥饿 (初中英语单词)
- contrast [´kɔntrɑ:st] n.对比 v.使对比(照) (初中英语单词)
- gratitude [´grætitju:d] n.感激，感谢 (初中英语单词)
- historic [his´tɔrik] a.有历史意义的 (高中英语单词)
- laurel [´lɔrəl] n.月桂树(叶)；桂冠 (高中英语单词)
- darken [´dɑ:kən] v.变黑，转暗 (高中英语单词)
- descent [di´sent] n.出身，家世 (高中英语单词)
- corrupt [kə´rʌpt] a.腐败的 v.败坏；贿赂 (高中英语单词)
- silken [´silkən] a.丝制的；柔软光滑的 (高中英语单词)
- virgin [´və:dʒin] a.处女(般)的 n.处女 (高中英语单词)
- mortal [´mɔ:tl] a.致命的 n.凡人 (高中英语单词)
- ecstasy [´ekstəsi] n.狂喜；出神，入迷 (高中英语单词)
- melody [´melədi] n.悦耳的音调；乐曲 (高中英语单词)
- manhood [´mænhud] n.人格；男子气概 (高中英语单词)
- brotherhood [´brʌðəhud] n.兄弟情谊；兄弟关系 (高中英语单词)
- shrewd [ʃru:d] a.精明的；狡猾的 (高中英语单词)
- setting [´setiŋ] n.安装；排字；布景 (英语四级单词)
- trusty [´trʌsti] a.可靠的 n.可信任的 (英语四级单词)
- kingly [´kiŋli] a.国王的 ad.国王似地 (英语四级单词)
- midway [,mid´wei] n.中途 ad.&a.中途(的) (英语四级单词)
- bridegroom [´braidgru:m] n.新郎 (英语四级单词)
- attest [ə´test] v.证明；作证；证实 (英语四级单词)
- unworthy [ʌn´wə:ði] a.不值得的；不足道的 (英语四级单词)
- radiance [´reidjəns] n.发光；光彩；辐射 (英语四级单词)
- dissolution [,disə´lu:ʃən] n.溶解；取消；解除 (英语四级单词)
- wrestle [´resəl] n.&v.摔交；搏斗；角力 (英语四级单词)
- delicately [´delikitli] ad.精美地；微妙地 (英语四级单词)
- abominable [ə´bɔminəbəl] a.可憎的；极坏的 (英语四级单词)
- senseless [´sensləs] a.无知觉的；愚蠢的 (英语四级单词)
- derision [di´riʒən] n.嘲笑，嘲弄 (英语六级单词)
- chieftain [´tʃi:ftən] n.(强盗)首领；族长 (英语六级单词)
- dubious [´dju:biəs] a.怀疑的；可疑的 (英语六级单词)
- immaculate [i´mækjulit] a.纯洁的；无瑕疵的 (英语六级单词)
- animate [´ænimit, ´ænimeit] vt.使有生气；激励 (英语六级单词)
- deluge [´delju:dʒ] n.大洪水 vt.泛滥 (英语六级单词)
- sucker [´sʌkə] n.乳儿；吸管；吸吮者 (英语六级单词)
- interminable [in´tə:minəbəl] a.无终止的；冗长的 (英语六级单词)
文章标签:名著
章节正文
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