Why, my very Bible seems a new book as I ponder its pages by the banks of the Derwent. What a different story the Old Testament17 would have had to tell if Jerusalem had stood by the side of a river like this! The Jews never forgave the frowning Providence18 that denied to their fair city a river. They heard how Babylon stood proudly surveying 165the shining waters of the Euphrates, how Nineveh was beautified by the lordly Tigris, how Thebes glittered in stately grandeur19 on the Nile, and how Rome sat in state beside the Tiber; and they were consumed with envy because no broad river protected them from their foes20, and bore to their gates the wealthy merchandise of many lands. I never noticed until I dwelt by these blue waters how all the Psalms21 and prophecies are coloured by this phase of Judean life. The prophets were for ever dreaming of the river; the psalmists were for ever singing of the river. Nothing delighted the people like a vision, such as visited Ezekiel, of a broad river rushing out from Jerusalem. No greater or more glowing message ever reached the disconsolate22 and riverless people than when Isaiah proclaimed, ‘The glorious Lord will be unto us a place of broad rivers and streams, wherein shall go no galley23 with oars24, neither shall gallant25 ship pass thereby26!’ Jehovah, that is to say, shall impart to Jerusalem all the advantages of a river without any of its attendant dangers. Many a faithless river, by bearing the destroyer on its bosom27 to the city gates, had proved the undoing28 of the people after all. But no such fate shall overwhelm Jerusalem. And, hearing this, the riverless city was comforted.
It is recorded of the Right. Hon. John Burns 166that, in the days when he was President of the Local Government Board, he found himself strolling on the Terrace of the House of Commons, surveying, with all the transports of a born Londoner, the shining waters of the Thames. His reverie was, however, rudely interrupted by a supercilious29 American who was inclined to regard with scornful contempt the object of Mr. Burns’ ecstatic admiration. ‘After all,’ the American demanded, ‘what is it but a ditch compared with the Missouri or the Mississippi?’ This was more than even a Cabinet Minister could be expected to stand. ‘The Missouri and the Mississippi!’ Mr. Burns exclaimed in a fine burst of patriotic30 indignation. ‘The Missouri and the Mississippi are water, sir, and nothing but water; but that,’ pointing to the Thames, ‘that, sir, is liquid history, liquid history!’ Yes, Mr. Burns is quite right. The Thames has a glory of its own among the world’s historic streams, although it is only a matter of degree. All rivers are liquid history. The records of the world’s great rivers constitute themselves, to all intents and purposes, the history of the race. To take a single illustration, it is obvious that the student who has mastered the history and hydrography of the Niger, the Congo, the Zambesi, the Orange, and the Nile has little more to learn about Africa. From the times of which Herodotus writes, when Cyrus lost his temper 167with the Tigris, and turned it out of its channel for drowning one of his sacred white horses, rivers have loomed31 very largely in the annals of human history. Indeed, Professor Shailer Mathews, in The Making of To-morrow, says that there never was, until recent times, a nation that did not paddle or sail its way into history. Civilization, he says, got its first start on water. ‘In the early days rivers were thoroughfares, and they continued to be thoroughfares until the middle of last century. Even the United States was born on water. It was easier to get to New Orleans from Montreal by way of the Mississippi than overland.’ One has only to conjure32 up the wealthy historical traditions that cluster about the names of the Euphrates and the Nile, the Indus and the Volga, the Rhine and the Danube, the Tiber and the Thames, in order to convince himself that the records of the world’s great waterways are inextricably interwoven with the annals of the human race.
We cannot, however, disguise from ourselves the fact that the affection that we feel for our rivers is not based solely33, or even primarily, on utilitarian34 considerations. Nobody supposes that it is the navigable qualities of the Ganges that have led the Hindus to believe that to die on its banks, or to drink before death of its waters, is to secure to themselves everlasting35 felicity. Yet, when we attempt to 168account in so many words for the fascination36 of the river, the task becomes intricate and difficult. Macaulay spent his thirty-eighth birthday on the banks of the Rhone, and transferred his impressions to his journal. ‘I was delighted,’ he says, ‘by my first sight of the blue, rushing, healthful-looking river. I thought, as I wandered along the quay37, of the singular love and veneration38 which rivers excite in those who live on their banks; of the feeling of the Hindus about the Ganges, of the Hebrews about the Jordan, of the Egyptians about the Nile, of the Romans about the Tiber, and of the Germans about the Rhine. Is it that rivers have, in a greater degree than almost any other inanimate object, the appearance of animation39, and something resembling character? They are sometimes slow and dark-looking; sometimes fierce and impetuous; sometimes bright, dancing, and almost flippant.’ However that may be, the fact itself remains40; and it is surprising that our literature does not more adequately reflect this marked peculiarity41. Macaulay himself felt the lack, and dreamed of writing a great epic42 poem on the Thames. ‘I wonder,’ he said, ‘that no poet has thought of writing such a poem. Surely there is no finer subject of the sort than the whole course of the river from Oxford43 downwards44.’ But a century has gone by and the poem has not been penned. Shakespeare 169dwelt beside the Avon; Goethe loved to stroll among the willows45 on the banks of the Lahn; Coleridge was born, and spent the most impressionable years of his life in the beautiful valley of the Otter46. And one of the tenderest idylls of our literary history is the picture of Wordsworth wandering hand in hand with Dorothy among the most delightful47 river scenery of which even England can boast. Yet, beyond a few sonnets48 and snippets, nothing came of it all. Neither the laughing little streams nor the more majestic and historic waterways have ever yet found their laureates.
But there are compensations. If the bards49 have been strangely and unaccountably irresponsive to the music of the waters, our great prose writers have caught its murmur50 and its meaning. Two particularly, John Bunyan and Rudyard Kipling, have given us the classics of the river. Bunyan’s river—the river that all the pilgrims had to cross—is too familiar to need more than the merest mention. And as for Mr. Kipling, he, like Bunyan, is a writer of both poetry and prose. As a poet he has failed to do justice to the river, as all the poets have failed. He has given us a snippet, as all the poets have done. He makes the Thames tells its own tale, and a wonderful tale it is.
170I remember the bat-winged lizard51 birds,
The Age of Ice and the mammoth52 herds53;
And the giant tigers that stalked them down
Through Regent’s Park into Camden Town;
And I remember like yesterday
The earliest Cockney who came my way,
When he pushed through the forest that lined the Strand54,
With paint on his face and a club in his hand.
But I forgave Kipling for not having repaired the omission55 of the older poets when I read Kim. Kim is the greatest story of a river that has ever been written. Who can forget the old lama and his long, long search for the River? Buddha56, he thought, once took a bow and fired an arrow from its string, and, where that arrow fell, there sprang up a river ‘whose nature, by our Lord’s beneficence, is that whoso bathes in it washes away all taint57 and speckle of sin.’ And so, through Mr. Kipling’s four hundred vivid pages, there wanders the old lama, through city and rice-fields, over hills and across plains, asking, always asking, one everlasting question: ‘The River; the River of the Arrow; the River that can cleanse58 from Sin; where is the River? Where, oh, where is the River?’ All India, all the world seems to enter into that ceaseless cry. It is the deepest, oldest, latest cry of the universal heart: ‘The River; the River of the Arrow; the River 171that can cleanse from Sin; where is the River? Where, oh, where is the River?’ And it is the Church’s unspeakable privilege to take the old lama’s hand and to point his sparkling eyes to the cleansing59 fountains.
点击收听单词发音
1 picturesque | |
adj.美丽如画的,(语言)生动的,绘声绘色的 | |
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2 smack | |
vt.拍,打,掴;咂嘴;vi.含有…意味;n.拍 | |
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3 contemplate | |
vt.盘算,计议;周密考虑;注视,凝视 | |
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4 lash | |
v.系牢;鞭打;猛烈抨击;n.鞭打;眼睫毛 | |
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5 winding | |
n.绕,缠,绕组,线圈 | |
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6 texture | |
n.(织物)质地;(材料)构造;结构;肌理 | |
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7 fabric | |
n.织物,织品,布;构造,结构,组织 | |
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8 intimacies | |
亲密( intimacy的名词复数 ); 密切; 亲昵的言行; 性行为 | |
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9 majestic | |
adj.雄伟的,壮丽的,庄严的,威严的,崇高的 | |
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10 glide | |
n./v.溜,滑行;(时间)消逝 | |
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11 standing | |
n.持续,地位;adj.永久的,不动的,直立的,不流动的 | |
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12 admiration | |
n.钦佩,赞美,羡慕 | |
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13 abruptly | |
adv.突然地,出其不意地 | |
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14 offender | |
n.冒犯者,违反者,犯罪者 | |
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15 shuffle | |
n.拖著脚走,洗纸牌;v.拖曳,慢吞吞地走 | |
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16 habitual | |
adj.习惯性的;通常的,惯常的 | |
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17 testament | |
n.遗嘱;证明 | |
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18 providence | |
n.深谋远虑,天道,天意;远见;节约;上帝 | |
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19 grandeur | |
n.伟大,崇高,宏伟,庄严,豪华 | |
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20 foes | |
敌人,仇敌( foe的名词复数 ) | |
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21 psalms | |
n.赞美诗( psalm的名词复数 );圣诗;圣歌;(中的) | |
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22 disconsolate | |
adj.忧郁的,不快的 | |
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23 galley | |
n.(飞机或船上的)厨房单层甲板大帆船;军舰舰长用的大划艇; | |
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24 oars | |
n.桨,橹( oar的名词复数 );划手v.划(行)( oar的第三人称单数 ) | |
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25 gallant | |
adj.英勇的,豪侠的;(向女人)献殷勤的 | |
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26 thereby | |
adv.因此,从而 | |
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27 bosom | |
n.胸,胸部;胸怀;内心;adj.亲密的 | |
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28 undoing | |
n.毁灭的原因,祸根;破坏,毁灭 | |
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29 supercilious | |
adj.目中无人的,高傲的;adv.高傲地;n.高傲 | |
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30 patriotic | |
adj.爱国的,有爱国心的 | |
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31 loomed | |
v.隐约出现,阴森地逼近( loom的过去式和过去分词 );隐约出现,阴森地逼近 | |
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32 conjure | |
v.恳求,祈求;变魔术,变戏法 | |
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33 solely | |
adv.仅仅,唯一地 | |
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34 utilitarian | |
adj.实用的,功利的 | |
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35 everlasting | |
adj.永恒的,持久的,无止境的 | |
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36 fascination | |
n.令人着迷的事物,魅力,迷恋 | |
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37 quay | |
n.码头,靠岸处 | |
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38 veneration | |
n.尊敬,崇拜 | |
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39 animation | |
n.活泼,兴奋,卡通片/动画片的制作 | |
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40 remains | |
n.剩余物,残留物;遗体,遗迹 | |
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41 peculiarity | |
n.独特性,特色;特殊的东西;怪癖 | |
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42 epic | |
n.史诗,叙事诗;adj.史诗般的,壮丽的 | |
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43 Oxford | |
n.牛津(英国城市) | |
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44 downwards | |
adj./adv.向下的(地),下行的(地) | |
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45 willows | |
n.柳树( willow的名词复数 );柳木 | |
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46 otter | |
n.水獭 | |
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47 delightful | |
adj.令人高兴的,使人快乐的 | |
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48 sonnets | |
n.十四行诗( sonnet的名词复数 ) | |
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49 bards | |
n.诗人( bard的名词复数 ) | |
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50 murmur | |
n.低语,低声的怨言;v.低语,低声而言 | |
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51 lizard | |
n.蜥蜴,壁虎 | |
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52 mammoth | |
n.长毛象;adj.长毛象似的,巨大的 | |
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53 herds | |
兽群( herd的名词复数 ); 牧群; 人群; 群众 | |
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54 strand | |
vt.使(船)搁浅,使(某人)困于(某地) | |
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55 omission | |
n.省略,删节;遗漏或省略的事物,冗长 | |
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56 Buddha | |
n.佛;佛像;佛陀 | |
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57 taint | |
n.污点;感染;腐坏;v.使感染;污染 | |
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58 cleanse | |
vt.使清洁,使纯洁,清洗 | |
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59 cleansing | |
n. 净化(垃圾) adj. 清洁用的 动词cleanse的现在分词 | |
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