章节正文
The darkey played the darkey's game -
We tipped him with a shilling!
Page: 106
We tipped him with a shining bob -
No Tommy Dodd, believe us.
We didn't ``tumble'' to his job -
Ah, why did Pete deceive us!
I, being, as I've said, a bard,
Resolved at once to foster
This mite whose length was just a yard -
This portable impostor!
``This babe'' - I spoke in Wordsworth's tone -
(See Wordsworth's ``Lucy'', neighbour)
``I'll make a darling of my own;
And he'll repay my labour.
``He'll grow as gentle as a fawn -
As quiet as the blossoms
That beautify a land of lawn -
He'll eat no more opossums.
Page: 107
``The child I to myself will take
In a paternal manner;
And ah! he will not swallow snake
In future, or `goanna'.
``Will you reside with me, my dear?''
I asked in accents mellow -
The nigger grinned from ear to ear,
And said, ``All right, old fellow!''
And so my Pete was taken home -
My pretty piccaninny!
And, not to speak of soap or comb,
His cleansing cost a guinea.
``But hang expenses!'' I exclaimed,
``I'll give him education:
A `nig' is better when he's tamed,
Perhaps, than a Caucasian.
Page: 108
``Ethnologists are in the wrong
About our sable brothers;
And I intend to stop the song
Of Pickering and others.''
Alas, I didn't do it though!
Old Pickering's conclusions
Were to the point, as issues show,
And mine were mere delusions.
My inky pet was clothed and fed
For months exceeding forty;
But to the end, it must be said,
His ways were very naughty.
When told about the Land of Morn
Above this world of Mammon,
He'd shout, with an emphatic scorn,
``Ah, gammon, gammon, gammon!''
Page: 109
He never lingered, like the bard,
To sniff at rose expanding.
``Me like,'' he said, ``em cattle-yard -
Fine smell - de smell of branding!''
The soul of man, I tried to show,
Went up beyond our vision.
``You ebber see dat fellow go?''
He asked in sheer derision.
In short, it soon occurred to me
This kid of six or seven,
Who wouldn't learn his A B C,
Was hardly ripe for heaven.
He never lost his appetite -
He bigger grew, and bigger;
And proved, with every inch of height,
A nigger is a nigger.
Page: 110
And, looking from this moment back,
I have a strong persuasion
That, after all, a finished black
Is not the ``clean'' - Caucasian.
Dear Peter from my threshold went,
One morning in the body:
He ``dropped'' me, to oblige a gent -
A gent with spear and waddy!
He shelved me for a boomerang -
We never had a quarrel;
And, if a moral here doth hang,
Why let it hang - the moral!
My mournful tale its course has run -
My Pete, when last I spied him,
Was eating 'possum underdone:
He had his gin beside him.
Page: 111
NARRARA CREEK
(Written in the Shadow of 1872)
FROM the rainy hill-heads, where, in starts and in spasms,
Leaps wild the white torrent from chasms to chasms -
From the home of bold echoes, whose voices of wonder
Fly out of blind caverns struck black by high thunder -
Through gorges august, in whose nether recesses
Is heard the far psalm of unseen wildernesses -
Like a dominant spirit, a strong-handed sharer
Of spoil with the tempest, comes down the Narrara.
Page: 112
Yea, where the great sword of the hurricane cleaveth
The forested fells that the dark never leaveth -
By fierce-featured crags, in whose evil abysses
The clammy snake coils, and the flat adder hisses -
Past lordly rock temples, where Silence is riven
By the anthems supreme of the four winds of heaven -
It speeds, with the cry of the streams of the fountains
It chained to its sides, and dragged down from the mountains!
But when it goes forth from the slopes with a sally -
Being strengthened with tribute from many a valley -
It broadens and brightens, and thereupon marches
Above the stream sapphires and under green arches,
With the rhythm of majesty - careless of cumber -
Its might in repose and its fierceness in slumber -
Till it beams on the plains, where the wind is a bearer
Of words from the sea to the stately Narrara!
Page: 113
Narrara! grand son of the haughty hill torrent,
Too late in my day have I looked at thy current -
Too late in my life to discern and inherit
The soul of thy beauty, the joy of thy spirit!
With the years of the youth and the hairs of the hoary,
I sit like a shadow outside of thy glory;
Nor look with the morning-like feelings, O river,
That illumined the boy in the days gone for ever!
Ah! sad are the sounds of old ballads which borrow
One-half of their grief from the listener's sorrow;
And sad are the eyes of the pilgrim who traces
The ruins of Time in revisited places;
But sadder than all is the sense of his losses
That cometh to one when a sudden age crosses
And cripples his manhood. So, stricken by fate, I
Felt older at thirty than some do at eighty.
Page: 114
Because I believe in the beautiful story,
The poem of Greece in the days of her glory -
That the high-seated Lord of the woods and the waters
Has peopled His world with His deified daughters -
That flowerful forests and waterways streaming
Are gracious with goddesses glowing and gleaming -
I pray that thy singing divinity, fairer
Than wonderful women, may listen, Narrara!
O spirit of sea-going currents! - thou, being
The child of immortals, all-knowing, all-seeing -
Thou hast at thy heart the dark truth that I borrow
For the song that I sing thee, no fanciful sorrow;
In the sight of thine eyes is the history written
Of Love smitten down as the strong leaf is smitten;
And before thee there goeth a phantom beseeching
For faculties forfeited - hopes beyond reaching.
Page: 115
*
*
*
*
*
Thou knowest, O sister of deities blazing
With splendour ineffable, beauty amazing,
What life the gods gave me - what largess I tasted -
The youth thrown away, and the faculties wasted.
I might, as thou seest, have stood in high places,
Instead of in pits where the brand of disgrace is,
A byword for scoffers - a butt and a caution,
With the grave of poor Burns and Maginn for my portion.
But the heart of the Father Supreme is offended,
And my life in the light of His favour is ended;
And, whipped by inflexible devils, I shiver,
With a hollow ``Too late'' in my hearing for ever;
But thou - being sinless, exalted, supernal,
The daughter of diademed gods, the eternal -
Shalt shine in thy waters when time and existence
Have dwindled, like stars, in unspeakable distance.
Page: 116
But the face of thy river - the torrented power
That smites at the rock while it fosters the flower -
Shall gleam in my dreams with the summer-look splendid,
And the beauty of woodlands and waterfalls blended;
And often I'll think of far-forested noises,
And the emphasis deep of grand sea-going voices,
And turn to Narrara the eyes of a lover,
When the sorrowful days of my singing are over.
Page: 117
IN MEMORY OF JOHN FAIRFAX
WRITTEN AFTER READING A TOUCHING POEM BY MRS BROWNING
BECAUSE this man fulfilled his days,
Like one who walks with steadfast gaze
Averted from forbidden ways
With lures of fair, false flowerage deep,
Behold the Lord whose throne is dim
With fires of flaming seraphim -
The Christ that suffered sent for him:
``He giveth His beloved sleep.''
Page: 118
Think not that souls whose deeds august
Put sin to shame and make men just
Become at last the helpless dust
That wintering winds through waste-lands sweep!
The higher life within us cries,
Like some fine spirit from the skies,
``The Father's blessing on us lies -
`He giveth His beloved sleep.'''
Not human sleep - the fitful rest
We tipped him with a shilling!
Page: 106
We tipped him with a shining bob -
No Tommy Dodd, believe us.
We didn't ``tumble'' to his job -
Ah, why did Pete deceive us!
I, being, as I've said, a bard,
Resolved at once to foster
This mite whose length was just a yard -
This portable impostor!
``This babe'' - I spoke in Wordsworth's tone -
(See Wordsworth's ``Lucy'', neighbour)
``I'll make a darling of my own;
And he'll repay my labour.
``He'll grow as gentle as a fawn -
As quiet as the blossoms
That beautify a land of lawn -
He'll eat no more opossums.
Page: 107
``The child I to myself will take
In a paternal manner;
And ah! he will not swallow snake
In future, or `goanna'.
``Will you reside with me, my dear?''
I asked in accents mellow -
The nigger grinned from ear to ear,
And said, ``All right, old fellow!''
And so my Pete was taken home -
My pretty piccaninny!
And, not to speak of soap or comb,
His cleansing cost a guinea.
``But hang expenses!'' I exclaimed,
``I'll give him education:
A `nig' is better when he's tamed,
Perhaps, than a Caucasian.
Page: 108
``Ethnologists are in the wrong
About our sable brothers;
And I intend to stop the song
Of Pickering and others.''
Alas, I didn't do it though!
Old Pickering's conclusions
Were to the point, as issues show,
And mine were mere delusions.
My inky pet was clothed and fed
For months exceeding forty;
But to the end, it must be said,
His ways were very naughty.
When told about the Land of Morn
Above this world of Mammon,
He'd shout, with an emphatic scorn,
``Ah, gammon, gammon, gammon!''
Page: 109
He never lingered, like the bard,
To sniff at rose expanding.
``Me like,'' he said, ``em cattle-yard -
Fine smell - de smell of branding!''
The soul of man, I tried to show,
Went up beyond our vision.
``You ebber see dat fellow go?''
He asked in sheer derision.
In short, it soon occurred to me
This kid of six or seven,
Who wouldn't learn his A B C,
Was hardly ripe for heaven.
He never lost his appetite -
He bigger grew, and bigger;
And proved, with every inch of height,
A nigger is a nigger.
Page: 110
And, looking from this moment back,
I have a strong persuasion
That, after all, a finished black
Is not the ``clean'' - Caucasian.
Dear Peter from my threshold went,
One morning in the body:
He ``dropped'' me, to oblige a gent -
A gent with spear and waddy!
He shelved me for a boomerang -
We never had a quarrel;
And, if a moral here doth hang,
Why let it hang - the moral!
My mournful tale its course has run -
My Pete, when last I spied him,
Was eating 'possum underdone:
He had his gin beside him.
Page: 111
NARRARA CREEK
(Written in the Shadow of 1872)
FROM the rainy hill-heads, where, in starts and in spasms,
Leaps wild the white torrent from chasms to chasms -
From the home of bold echoes, whose voices of wonder
Fly out of blind caverns struck black by high thunder -
Through gorges august, in whose nether recesses
Is heard the far psalm of unseen wildernesses -
Like a dominant spirit, a strong-handed sharer
Of spoil with the tempest, comes down the Narrara.
Page: 112
Yea, where the great sword of the hurricane cleaveth
The forested fells that the dark never leaveth -
By fierce-featured crags, in whose evil abysses
The clammy snake coils, and the flat adder hisses -
Past lordly rock temples, where Silence is riven
By the anthems supreme of the four winds of heaven -
It speeds, with the cry of the streams of the fountains
It chained to its sides, and dragged down from the mountains!
But when it goes forth from the slopes with a sally -
Being strengthened with tribute from many a valley -
It broadens and brightens, and thereupon marches
Above the stream sapphires and under green arches,
With the rhythm of majesty - careless of cumber -
Its might in repose and its fierceness in slumber -
Till it beams on the plains, where the wind is a bearer
Of words from the sea to the stately Narrara!
Page: 113
Narrara! grand son of the haughty hill torrent,
Too late in my day have I looked at thy current -
Too late in my life to discern and inherit
The soul of thy beauty, the joy of thy spirit!
With the years of the youth and the hairs of the hoary,
I sit like a shadow outside of thy glory;
Nor look with the morning-like feelings, O river,
That illumined the boy in the days gone for ever!
Ah! sad are the sounds of old ballads which borrow
One-half of their grief from the listener's sorrow;
And sad are the eyes of the pilgrim who traces
The ruins of Time in revisited places;
But sadder than all is the sense of his losses
That cometh to one when a sudden age crosses
And cripples his manhood. So, stricken by fate, I
Felt older at thirty than some do at eighty.
Page: 114
Because I believe in the beautiful story,
The poem of Greece in the days of her glory -
That the high-seated Lord of the woods and the waters
Has peopled His world with His deified daughters -
That flowerful forests and waterways streaming
Are gracious with goddesses glowing and gleaming -
I pray that thy singing divinity, fairer
Than wonderful women, may listen, Narrara!
O spirit of sea-going currents! - thou, being
The child of immortals, all-knowing, all-seeing -
Thou hast at thy heart the dark truth that I borrow
For the song that I sing thee, no fanciful sorrow;
In the sight of thine eyes is the history written
Of Love smitten down as the strong leaf is smitten;
And before thee there goeth a phantom beseeching
For faculties forfeited - hopes beyond reaching.
Page: 115
*
*
*
*
*
Thou knowest, O sister of deities blazing
With splendour ineffable, beauty amazing,
What life the gods gave me - what largess I tasted -
The youth thrown away, and the faculties wasted.
I might, as thou seest, have stood in high places,
Instead of in pits where the brand of disgrace is,
A byword for scoffers - a butt and a caution,
With the grave of poor Burns and Maginn for my portion.
But the heart of the Father Supreme is offended,
And my life in the light of His favour is ended;
And, whipped by inflexible devils, I shiver,
With a hollow ``Too late'' in my hearing for ever;
But thou - being sinless, exalted, supernal,
The daughter of diademed gods, the eternal -
Shalt shine in thy waters when time and existence
Have dwindled, like stars, in unspeakable distance.
Page: 116
But the face of thy river - the torrented power
That smites at the rock while it fosters the flower -
Shall gleam in my dreams with the summer-look splendid,
And the beauty of woodlands and waterfalls blended;
And often I'll think of far-forested noises,
And the emphasis deep of grand sea-going voices,
And turn to Narrara the eyes of a lover,
When the sorrowful days of my singing are over.
Page: 117
IN MEMORY OF JOHN FAIRFAX
WRITTEN AFTER READING A TOUCHING POEM BY MRS BROWNING
BECAUSE this man fulfilled his days,
Like one who walks with steadfast gaze
Averted from forbidden ways
With lures of fair, false flowerage deep,
Behold the Lord whose throne is dim
With fires of flaming seraphim -
The Christ that suffered sent for him:
``He giveth His beloved sleep.''
Page: 118
Think not that souls whose deeds august
Put sin to shame and make men just
Become at last the helpless dust
That wintering winds through waste-lands sweep!
The higher life within us cries,
Like some fine spirit from the skies,
``The Father's blessing on us lies -
`He giveth His beloved sleep.'''
Not human sleep - the fitful rest
- deceive [di´si:v]
vt.欺骗，欺诈 (初中英语单词) - darling [´dɑ:liŋ] n.爱人 a.亲爱的 (初中英语单词)
- swallow [swɔləu] n.燕子 v.吞，咽；淹没 (初中英语单词)
- appetite [´æpitait] n.欲望；食欲 (初中英语单词)
- oblige [ə´blaidʒ] vt.责成；迫使；使感激 (初中英语单词)
- thunder [´θʌndə] n.雷 vi.打雷 vt.吼出 (初中英语单词)
- supreme [su:´pri:m, sju:-] a.最高的，无上的 (初中英语单词)
- tribute [´tribju:t] n.贡物；献礼；颂词 (初中英语单词)
- valley [´væli] n.谷；河谷；流域 (初中英语单词)
- thereupon [,ðeərə´pɔn] ad.因此；于是 (初中英语单词)
- stream [stri:m] n.河 vi.流出；飘扬 (初中英语单词)
- majesty [´mædʒisti] n.壮丽；崇高；尊严 (初中英语单词)
- careless [´keəlis] a.粗心的；草率的 (初中英语单词)
- slumber [´slʌmbə] v.&n.睡眠；沉睡状态 (初中英语单词)
- greece [gri:s] n.希腊 (初中英语单词)
- gracious [´greiʃəs] a.和蔼可亲的；任慈的 (初中英语单词)
- disgrace [dis´greis] n.耻辱 vt.玷辱；贬黜 (初中英语单词)
- eternal [i´tə:nəl] a.永远的；永恒的 (初中英语单词)
- reading [´ri:diŋ] n.(阅)读；朗读；读物 (初中英语单词)
- christ [kraist] n.基督 int.天啊! (初中英语单词)
- beloved [bi´lʌvd] a.为....所爱的 n.爱人 (初中英语单词)
- helpless [´helpləs] a.无助的，无依靠的 (初中英语单词)
- blessing [´blesiŋ] n.祝福 (初中英语单词)
- reside [ri´zaid] vi.居住；(权利等)属于 (高中英语单词)
- mellow [´meləu] a.芳醇的 v.(使)成熟 (高中英语单词)
- threshold [´θreʃhəuld] n.门槛；入门；开端 (高中英语单词)
- torrent [´tɔrənt] n.奔流，激流，洪流；迸发 (高中英语单词)
- unseen [,ʌn´si:n] a.未看见的 (高中英语单词)
- tempest [´tempist] n.暴风雨 (高中英语单词)
- repose [ri´pəuz] v.&n.(使)休息；安息 (高中英语单词)
- stately [´steitli] a.庄严的，雄伟的 (高中英语单词)
- haughty [´hɔ:ti] a.傲慢的，高傲的 (高中英语单词)
- discern [di´sə:n] v.辩认出 (高中英语单词)
- pilgrim [´pilgrim] n.旅行者；香客 (高中英语单词)
- manhood [´mænhud] n.人格；男子气概 (高中英语单词)
- stricken [´strikən] strike的过去分词 (高中英语单词)
- hearing [´hiəriŋ] n.听力；听证会；审讯 (高中英语单词)
- emphasis [´emfəsis] n.强调；重点 (高中英语单词)
- forbidden [fə´bidn] forbid的过去分词 (高中英语单词)
- throne [θrəun] n.宝座；王位 (高中英语单词)
- exceeding [ik´si:diŋ] a.超越的，非常的 (英语四级单词)
- mournful [´mɔ:nful] a.令人沮丧的 (英语四级单词)
- dominant [´dɔminənt] a.统治的；占优势的 (英语四级单词)
- hurricane [´hʌrikən] n.飓风 (英语四级单词)
- rhythm [´riðəm] n.(诗的)韵律；格律 (英语四级单词)
- divinity [di´viniti] n.神性，神；神学 (英语四级单词)
- sorrowful [´sɔrəuful] a.悲伤的，使人伤心的 (英语四级单词)
- touching [´tʌtʃiŋ] a.动人的 prep.提到 (英语四级单词)
- flaming [´fleimiŋ] a.熊熊燃烧的；热情的 (英语四级单词)
- portable [´pɔ:təbəl] a.轻便的 n.手提打字机 (英语六级单词)
- beautify [´bju:tifai] v.美化，变美 (英语六级单词)
- paternal [pə´tə:nl] a.(象)父亲的；父方的 (英语六级单词)
- emphatic [im´fætik] a.强调的；断然的 (英语六级单词)
- august [ɔ:´gʌst] a.尊严的；威严的 (英语六级单词)
- nether [´neðə] a.下面的；地下的 (英语六级单词)
- lordly [´lɔ:dli] a.高贵的；高傲的 (英语六级单词)
- fierceness [´fiəsnis] n.凶恶，残忍 (英语六级单词)
- smitten [´smitn] smite的过去分词 (英语六级单词)
- phantom [´fæntəm] n.幽灵；幻影 a.幻想的 (英语六级单词)
- unspeakable [ʌn´spi:kəbl] a.不能以言语表达的 (英语六级单词)
- steadfast [´stedfɑ:st, -fæst] a.坚定的，不动摇的 (英语六级单词)
文章标签:名著
章节正文
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