The far-famed Pelian ash, which to his sire,
On Pelion’s summit felled, to be the bane
He mounts the hero’s chariot, driven by the noble Automedon, and drawn22 by the three horses, Xanthus, Balius, and Pedasus—or as we should call them, Chestnut23, Dapple, and Swift-foot. The battalions24 of the Myrmidons eagerly gather round their leaders,—even old Ph?nix taking command of one detachment. Achilles himself gives them a few fiery25 words of exhortation26. “They have long chafed27 at their enforced idleness, and clamoured for the battle; lo! there lies the opportunity they have longed for.” Then, standing28 in the midst, he pours from his most costly29 goblet30 the solemn libation to Jove, and prays of him for Patroclus victory and a safe return. The poet tells us, with that licence of prognostication which has been considerably31 abused by some modern writers of fiction, that half the prayer was heard, and half denied.
“Like a pack of ravening32 wolves, hungering for their prey33,” the Myrmidons launch themselves against the enemy. The Trojans recognise, as they believe, in the armed charioteer who heads them, the terrible Achilles, and consternation34 spreads through their ranks. Even Hector, though still fighting gallantly35, is borne back over the stockade36, and the ditch is filled with broken{v.i-115} chariots and struggling horses. Back towards the Trojan lines rolls the tide of battle. Sarpedon, the great Lycian chief, own son to Jupiter, falls by the spear of Patroclus. The ruler of Olympus has hesitated for a while whether he shall interpose to save him; but his fated term of life is come, and there is a mysterious Destiny in this Homeric mythology37, against which even Jupiter seems powerless. All that he can do for his offspring is to insure for his body the rites38 of burial; and by his order the twin brothers, Sleep and Death, carry off the corpse39 to his native shore of Lycia.
But Patroclus has forgotten the parting caution of Achilles. Flushed with his triumph, he follows up the pursuit even to the walls of Troy. But there Apollo keeps guard. Thrice the Greek champion in defiance40 smites41 upon the battlements, and thrice the god shakes the terrible ?gis in his face. A fourth time the Greek lifts his spear, when an awful voice warns him that neither for him, nor yet for his mightier42 master Achilles, is it written in the fates to take Troy. Awe-struck, he draws back from the wall, but only to continue his career of slaughter43 among the Trojans. Apollo meets him in the field, strips from him his helmet and his armour, and shivers his spear in his hand. The Trojan Euphorbus, seeing him at this disadvantage, stabs him from behind, and Hector, following him as he retreats, drives his spear through his body. As the Trojan prince stands over his victim, exulting44 after the fashion of all Homeric heroes in what seems to our taste a barbarous and boastful spirit, Patroclus with his dying breath foretells45 that his slayer46 shall speedily meet his own fate by the avenging47 hand of Achilles. Hector spurns48 the prophecy, and rushes{v.i-116} after the charioteer Automedon, whom the immortal49 horses carry off safe from his pursuit. Then donning the armour of Achilles, so lately worn by Patroclus, he leads on the Trojans to seize the dead body, which Menelaus is gallantly defending. After a long and desperate contest, the Greeks, locking their shields together in close phalanx, succeed in carrying it off, the two Ajaxes keeping the assailants at bay. Jupiter, in pity to the dead hero, casts a veil of darkness round him. But this embarrasses the movements of friends as well as enemies, and gives rise to a characteristic outburst on the part of Ajax, often quoted. He can fight best when he sees his way. “Give us but light, O Jove, and in the light, if thou seest fit, destroy us!”
We have now reached the crisis of the story. The wrath of Achilles against Agamemnon wanes50 and pales before the far more bitter wrath which now fills his whole soul against Hector, as the slayer of his comrade. Young Antilochus, son of Nestor, brings the mournful tidings to his tent, where he sits already foreboding the result, as he sees the Greeks crowding back to their galleys from the field in front of Troy. His grief is frantic—he tears his hair, and heaps dust upon his head, after a fashion which strongly suggests the Eastern character of the tale. His goddess-mother, Thetis “of the silver feet,” hears him,
In the deep ocean-caves,”
and comes with all her train of sea-nymphs to console him, as when before he sat weeping with indignation at the insult of Agamemnon. In vain she strives to comfort him with the thought that his insulted honour has been fully52 satisfied—that the Greeks have bitterly rued{v.i-117} their former treatment of him. He feels only the loss of Patroclus, and curses the hour in which he was born. All that he longs for now is vengeance53 upon Hector. Thetis sorrowfully reminds him that it is written in the book of fate that when Hector falls, his own last hour is near at hand. Be it so, is his reply—death comes in turn to all men, and he will meet it as he may. But he cannot go forth to battle without armour; and the goddess promises that by the morrow’s dawn, Vulcan, the immortal craftsman54, shall furnish him with harness of proof.
The Greeks have fought their way to their vessels55, step by step, with the dead body of Patroclus. But Hector with his Trojans has pressed them close all the way, and even when at the Greek lines seizes the corpse by the feet. Iris56 flies to Achilles with a message from Juno—will he see his dead friend given as a prey to the dogs and vultures?—He is without armour, true; but there is no need for him to adventure himself among the combatants; let him only show himself, let the Trojans but hear his voice, and it is enough. He does so; standing aloft upon the rampart, while Pallas throws her ?gis over him, and surrounds his head with a halo of flashing light, he lifts his mighty voice and thrice shouts aloud. Panic seizes the whole host of Troy, and while they give ground in dismay, the dead Patroclus is borne off to the tent of Achilles.
Night falls on the plain, and separates the combatants. The Trojans, before their evening meal, hold an anxious council, in which Polydamas, as great in debate as Hector is in the field, advises that they should now retire within their walls. Achilles, it is evident, will head the Greeks in the morning, and who shall stand{v.i-118} before him? But the wise counsel of Polydamas meets the same fate as that of Ahithophel; Heaven will not suffer men to listen to it. Minerva perverts57 the understandings of the Trojans, and they prefer the rasher exhortations58 of Hector, who urges them at all hazards to keep the field.
Thetis, meanwhile, has sought out Vulcan, and bespoken59 his skill in the forging of new armour for her son. The lame16 god will work for her, she knows; for in the day when his cruel mother Juno, in wrath at his marvellous ugliness, cast him down from Olympus, she with her sister-goddess Eurynome had nursed him in their bosom61 till he grew strong. She finds him now hard at work at his forges, in the brazen62 halls which he has made for himself in heaven. He is completing at this moment some marvellous machinery63—twenty tripods mounted on wheels of gold (the earliest hint of velocipedes), which are to move of themselves, and carry him to and fro to the assembly of the gods. Another marvel60, too, is to be seen in the Fire-king’s establishment, which has long been the desideratum of modern households, but which modern mechanical science has as yet failed to invent—automaton servants, worked by machinery.
And strength, and skill from heavenly teachers drawn;
These waited duteous at the monarch’s side.”
Willingly, at the request of the sea-goddess, Vulcan plies66 his immortal art. Helmet with crest of gold, breastplate “brighter than the flash of fire,” and the pliant67 greaves that mould themselves to the limb, are soon completed. But the marvel of marvels68 is the{v.i-119} shield. On this the god bestows69 all his skill, and the, poet his most graphic70 description. It is covered with figures of the most elaborate design, wrought in brass71, and tin, and gold, and silver. In its centre are the sun, the moon, and all the host of heaven: round the rim72 flows the mighty ocean-river, which in Homeric as in Eastern mythology encompasses73 the earth; and on its embossed surface, crowded with figures, is embodied74 an epitome75 of human life, such as life was in the days of Homer. The tale is told in twelve compartments76, containing each a scene of peace or war. Three groups represent a city in time of peace: a wedding procession with music and dancing, a dispute in the market-place, and a reference to the judgment77 of the elders gathered in council. Three represent a city in time of war: a siege, an ambuscade, and a battle. Then follow three scenes of outdoor country life: ploughing, the harvest, and the vintage. The lord of the harvest stands looking on at his reapers78, like Boaz. In the vintage scene, the art of the immortal workman is minutely described. The vines are wrought in gold, the props79 are of silver, the grape-bunches are of a purple black, and there is a trench80 round of some dark-hued metal, crowned by a palisade of bright tin. Three pastoral groups complete the circle. First, a herd81 of oxen with herdsmen and their dogs, attacked by lions; secondly82, flocks feeding in a deep valley, with the folds and shepherds’ huts in the distance; and lastly, a festival dance of men and maidens83 in holiday attire84, with the “divine bard,” without whom no festival is complete, singing his lays to his harp85 in the midst, and two gymnasts performing their feats86 for the amusement of the crowd of lookers-on. If any reader should have imagined that Home{v.i-120}r’s song of (it may be) three thousand years ago was rude and inartistic, he has but to read, in the version of any of our best translators, this description of the Shield of Achilles, to be convinced that the poet understood his work to the full as well as the immortal craftsman whom he represents as having wrought it. We need not trouble ourselves with the difficulty of that French critic, who doubted whether so many subjects could really be represented on any shield of manageable size—like Goldsmith’s rustics87 who marvelled88, in the case of the village schoolmaster,
“That one small head could carry all he knew.”
It is only necessary to point to the clever design of Flaxman for its realisation, and its actual embodiment (with the moderate diameter of three feet) in the shield cast by Pitts.
点击收听单词发音
1 imminent | |
adj.即将发生的,临近的,逼近的 | |
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2 peril | |
n.(严重的)危险;危险的事物 | |
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3 chide | |
v.叱责;谴责 | |
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4 follower | |
n.跟随者;随员;门徒;信徒 | |
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5 outspoken | |
adj.直言无讳的,坦率的,坦白无隐的 | |
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6 upbraids | |
v.责备,申斥,谴责( upbraid的第三人称单数 ) | |
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7 obduracy | |
n.冷酷无情,顽固,执拗 | |
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8 doom | |
n.厄运,劫数;v.注定,命定 | |
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9 unwilling | |
adj.不情愿的 | |
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10 armour | |
(=armor)n.盔甲;装甲部队 | |
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11 crest | |
n.顶点;饰章;羽冠;vt.达到顶点;vi.形成浪尖 | |
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12 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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13 galleys | |
n.平底大船,战舰( galley的名词复数 );(船上或航空器上的)厨房 | |
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14 wrath | |
n.愤怒,愤慨,暴怒 | |
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15 indifference | |
n.不感兴趣,不关心,冷淡,不在乎 | |
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16 lame | |
adj.跛的,(辩解、论据等)无说服力的 | |
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17 forth | |
adv.向前;向外,往外 | |
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18 mighty | |
adj.强有力的;巨大的 | |
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19 poise | |
vt./vi. 平衡,保持平衡;n.泰然自若,自信 | |
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20 mightiest | |
adj.趾高气扬( mighty的最高级 );巨大的;强有力的;浩瀚的 | |
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21 centaur | |
n.人首马身的怪物 | |
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22 drawn | |
v.拖,拉,拔出;adj.憔悴的,紧张的 | |
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23 chestnut | |
n.栗树,栗子 | |
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24 battalions | |
n.(陆军的)一营(大约有一千兵士)( battalion的名词复数 );协同作战的部队;军队;(组织在一起工作的)队伍 | |
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25 fiery | |
adj.燃烧着的,火红的;暴躁的;激烈的 | |
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26 exhortation | |
n.劝告,规劝 | |
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27 chafed | |
v.擦热(尤指皮肤)( chafe的过去式 );擦痛;发怒;惹怒 | |
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28 standing | |
n.持续,地位;adj.永久的,不动的,直立的,不流动的 | |
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29 costly | |
adj.昂贵的,价值高的,豪华的 | |
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30 goblet | |
n.高脚酒杯 | |
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31 considerably | |
adv.极大地;相当大地;在很大程度上 | |
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32 ravening | |
a.贪婪而饥饿的 | |
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33 prey | |
n.被掠食者,牺牲者,掠食;v.捕食,掠夺,折磨 | |
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34 consternation | |
n.大为吃惊,惊骇 | |
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35 gallantly | |
adv. 漂亮地,勇敢地,献殷勤地 | |
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36 stockade | |
n.栅栏,围栏;v.用栅栏防护 | |
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37 mythology | |
n.神话,神话学,神话集 | |
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38 rites | |
仪式,典礼( rite的名词复数 ) | |
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39 corpse | |
n.尸体,死尸 | |
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40 defiance | |
n.挑战,挑衅,蔑视,违抗 | |
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41 smites | |
v.猛打,重击,打击( smite的第三人称单数 ) | |
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42 mightier | |
adj. 强有力的,强大的,巨大的 adv. 很,极其 | |
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43 slaughter | |
n.屠杀,屠宰;vt.屠杀,宰杀 | |
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44 exulting | |
vi. 欢欣鼓舞,狂喜 | |
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45 foretells | |
v.预言,预示( foretell的第三人称单数 ) | |
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46 slayer | |
n. 杀人者,凶手 | |
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47 avenging | |
adj.报仇的,复仇的v.为…复仇,报…之仇( avenge的现在分词 );为…报复 | |
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48 spurns | |
v.一脚踢开,拒绝接受( spurn的第三人称单数 ) | |
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49 immortal | |
adj.不朽的;永生的,不死的;神的 | |
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50 wanes | |
v.衰落( wane的第三人称单数 );(月)亏;变小;变暗淡 | |
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51 aged | |
adj.年老的,陈年的 | |
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52 fully | |
adv.完全地,全部地,彻底地;充分地 | |
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53 vengeance | |
n.报复,报仇,复仇 | |
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54 craftsman | |
n.技工,精于一门工艺的匠人 | |
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55 vessels | |
n.血管( vessel的名词复数 );船;容器;(具有特殊品质或接受特殊品质的)人 | |
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56 iris | |
n.虹膜,彩虹 | |
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57 perverts | |
n.性变态者( pervert的名词复数 )v.滥用( pervert的第三人称单数 );腐蚀;败坏;使堕落 | |
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58 exhortations | |
n.敦促( exhortation的名词复数 );极力推荐;(正式的)演讲;(宗教仪式中的)劝诫 | |
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59 bespoken | |
v.预定( bespeak的过去分词 );订(货);证明;预先请求 | |
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60 marvel | |
vi.(at)惊叹vt.感到惊异;n.令人惊异的事 | |
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61 bosom | |
n.胸,胸部;胸怀;内心;adj.亲密的 | |
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62 brazen | |
adj.厚脸皮的,无耻的,坚硬的 | |
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63 machinery | |
n.(总称)机械,机器;机构 | |
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64 wrought | |
v.引起;以…原料制作;运转;adj.制造的 | |
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65 endued | |
v.授予,赋予(特性、才能等)( endue的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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66 plies | |
v.使用(工具)( ply的第三人称单数 );经常供应(食物、饮料);固定往来;经营生意 | |
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67 pliant | |
adj.顺从的;可弯曲的 | |
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68 marvels | |
n.奇迹( marvel的名词复数 );令人惊奇的事物(或事例);不平凡的成果;成就v.惊奇,对…感到惊奇( marvel的第三人称单数 ) | |
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69 bestows | |
赠给,授予( bestow的第三人称单数 ) | |
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70 graphic | |
adj.生动的,形象的,绘画的,文字的,图表的 | |
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71 brass | |
n.黄铜;黄铜器,铜管乐器 | |
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72 rim | |
n.(圆物的)边,轮缘;边界 | |
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73 encompasses | |
v.围绕( encompass的第三人称单数 );包围;包含;包括 | |
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74 embodied | |
v.表现( embody的过去式和过去分词 );象征;包括;包含 | |
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75 epitome | |
n.典型,梗概 | |
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76 compartments | |
n.间隔( compartment的名词复数 );(列车车厢的)隔间;(家具或设备等的)分隔间;隔层 | |
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77 judgment | |
n.审判;判断力,识别力,看法,意见 | |
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78 reapers | |
n.收割者,收获者( reaper的名词复数 );收割机 | |
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79 props | |
小道具; 支柱( prop的名词复数 ); 支持者; 道具; (橄榄球中的)支柱前锋 | |
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80 trench | |
n./v.(挖)沟,(挖)战壕 | |
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81 herd | |
n.兽群,牧群;vt.使集中,把…赶在一起 | |
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82 secondly | |
adv.第二,其次 | |
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83 maidens | |
处女( maiden的名词复数 ); 少女; 未婚女子; (板球运动)未得分的一轮投球 | |
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84 attire | |
v.穿衣,装扮[同]array;n.衣着;盛装 | |
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85 harp | |
n.竖琴;天琴座 | |
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86 feats | |
功绩,伟业,技艺( feat的名词复数 ) | |
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87 rustics | |
n.有农村或村民特色的( rustic的名词复数 );粗野的;不雅的;用粗糙的木材或树枝制作的 | |
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88 marvelled | |
v.惊奇,对…感到惊奇( marvel的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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