They looked at one another kindly3 but with a question piercing through the kindness and an effort to divine the unknowable without betraying curiosity. The kindness did, in fact, melt away the almost physical obstacle of twenty years spent apart and in ignorance of one another.
“When did you leave the old place?” said the sailor.
“Soon after you did yourself, Harry; just after the shipwreck4 of the Wild Swan; twenty-one, twenty-two—yes, twenty-two years ago.”
“Is it so long? I could have sworn you had that beard when I saw you last,” and the sailor looked at him in a way that showed he had already bridged the twenty-two years and knew the man.
“Yes, twenty-two years.”
“And do you ever go back to the old place? How’s Charlie Nash, and young Woolford, and the shepherd?”
[96]
“Let me see——”
“Oh, didn’t you know? She took ill very soon after you went away, and then they thought she was all right again; but they could not quite get rid of the cough, and it got bad in the winter, and all through the spring it was worse.”
“And so she died in the summer.”
“So she did.”
“Oh, Christ! but what times we had.”
And then, in reminiscences fast growing gay—the mere7 triumph of memory, the being able to add each to the other’s store, was a satisfaction—they told the story of a pretty country girl whom they had quarrelled over until she grew too proud for both; how heavy was her hair; how she could run, and nobody was like her for finding a wasps’-nest. Her boldness and carelessness filled them with envy still.
“I reckon we old ones would call her a tomboy now,” said the sailor.
“I should say we would.”
“Now, I wonder what sort of a wife she would have made?”
“Hum, I don’t know....”
“Do you remember that day her and you and me got lost in the forest?”
“Yes, and we were there all night, and I got a hiding for it.”
“Not Maggie.”
“Not poor Maggie.”
“And when we couldn’t see our way any more we[97] lifted her up into that old beech8 where the green woodpecker’s nest was.”
“Yes, and you took off your coat and breeches to cover her up.”
“And so did you, though I reckon one would have been enough now I come to think of it.”
“I don’t know about that. But how we did have to keep on the move all night to keep warm.”
“And dared not go very far for fear of losing the tree.”
“And in the morning I wondered what we should do about getting back our clothes.”
“You wanted me to go because my shirt hadn’t any holes in it.”
“But we both went together.”
“And, before we had made up our minds which should go first and call, up she starts. Lord, how she did laugh!”
“Ay, she did.”
“And says, ‘Now, that’s all my eye and Betty Martin, boys’; and so did we laugh, and I never felt a bit silly either. She was a good sort of girl, she was. Man and woman, I never met the likes of her, never heard tell of the equal of her,” said the sailor musingly9.
“Married, Harry?”
“No, nor likely to be, I don’t think. And yourself?”
“Well, I was.... I married Maggie.... It was after the first baby....”
A small boy in a corner could not get on with his novelette: he stared open-mouthed and open-eyed, now and then unconsciously imitating their faces; or he would correct this mere wonderment and become shy and uncomfortable at the frank ways of these men talking[98] aloud in a crowded carriage, and utterly10 regardless of others, about private matters.
A trim shop assistant pretended to read about the cricket, but listened, and could not conceal11 his cold contempt for men so sunken as to give themselves away like this.
A dark, thin, genial, pale-faced puritan clerk looked pitifully—with some twinkles of superiority that asked for recognition from his fellow-passengers—these children, for as such he regarded them, and would not wholly condemn14.
Others occasionally jerked out a glance or rolled a leaderless eye or rustled15 a newspaper without losing the dense16 veil over their individuality that made them tombs, monuments, not men.
One sat gentle, kindly, stupidly envying these two their spirited free talk, their gestures, the hearty17 draughts18 of life which they seemed to have taken.
All were botanists19 who had heard and spoken words but had no sense of the beauty and life of the flower because fate had refused, or education destroyed, the gift of liberty and of joy.
SURREY.
Then I saw a huge silence of meadows, of woods, and beyond these, of hills that raised two breasts of empurpled turf into the sky; and, above the hills, one mountain of cloud that beamed as it reposed21 in the blue as in a sea. The white cloud buried London with a requiescat in pace.
I like to think how easily Nature will absorb London as she absorbed the mastodon, setting her spiders to spin[99] the winding-sheet and her worms to fill in the grave, and her grass to cover it pitifully up, adding flowers—as an unknown hand added them to the grave of Nero. I like to see the preliminaries of this toil22 where Nature tries her hand at mossing the factory roof, rusting23 the deserted24 railway metals, sowing grass over the deserted platforms and flowers of rose-bay on ruinous hearths25 and walls. It is a real satisfaction to see the long narrowing wedge of irises27 that runs alongside and between the rails of the South-Eastern and Chatham Railway almost into the heart of London. And there are many kinds of weather when the air is full of voices prophesying28 desolation. The outer suburbs have almost a moorland fascination29 when fog lies thick and orange-coloured over their huge flat wastes of grass, expectant of the builder, but does not quite conceal the stark30 outlines of a traction31 engine, some procumbent timber, a bonfire and frantic32 figures darting33 about it, and a?rial scaffolding far away. Other fields, yet unravished but menaced, the fog restores to a primeval state. And what a wild noise the wind makes in the telegraph wires as in wintry heather and gorse! When the waste open spaces give way to dense streets there is a common here and a lawn there, where the poplar leaves, if it be November, lie taintless35 on the grass, and the starlings talk sweet and shrill36 and cold in the branches, and nobody cares to deviate37 from the asphalte path to the dewy grass: the houses beyond the green mass themselves gigantic, remote, dim, and the pulse of London beats low and inaudible, as if she feared the irresistible38 enemy that is drawing its lines invisibly and silently about her on every side. If a breeze arises it makes that sound of the dry curled leaves chafing39 along the pavement; at night[100] they seem spies in the unguarded by-ways. But there are also days—and spring and summer days, too—when a quiet horror thicks and stills the air outside London.
The ridges40 of trees high in the mist are very grim. The isolated41 trees stand cloaked in conspiracies42 here and there about the fields. The houses, even whole villages, are translated into terms of unreality as if they were carved in air and could not be touched; they are empty and mournful as skulls45 or churches. There is no life visible; for the ploughmen and the cattle are figures of light dream. All is soft and grey. The land has drunken the opiate mist and is passing slowly and unreluctantly into perpetual sleep. Trees and houses are drowsed beyond awakening46 or farewell. The mind also is infected, and gains a sort of ease from the thought that an eternal and universal rest is at hand without any cry or any pain.
SUSSEX.
The road skirts the marshland, the stream and the town, and goes through a gap in the Downs towards another range and more elms and farms at its feet. Stately walks the carter’s boy with his perpendicular48 brass-bound whip, alongside four waggon-horses, while the carter rides. It is a pleasant thing to see them going to their work in the early gold of the morning, fresh, silent, their horses jingling49, down the firm road. If they were leading their team to yoke50 them to the chariot of the sun they could not be more noble. They are the first men I have seen this morning, and truly they create for a little while the illusion that they are going to guide the world and that all will be well in the golden freshness under the blue.
[101]
The road now divides to go round the base of the Downs, but a farm track sets out to climb them. There, at the corner, is a church, on the very edge of the flat vale and its elms and ashes in the midst of meadows; a plain towered church, but with a rough churchyard, half graveyard51 and half orchard52, its grass and parsley and nettle53 uncut under the knotty54 apple trees, splashed with silver and dull gold-green, dotted by silver buds among yellow-lichened branches that are matted densely55 as a magpie’s nest. The dust from the high road powders the nettles56 and perfects the arresting melancholy57 of the desolation, so quiet, so austere58, and withal as airy as a dream remembered. But above are the Downs, green and sweet with uplifting grass, and beyond them the sea, darkly gleaming under lustrous59 white cliffs and abrupt61 ledges62 of turf, in the south; in the south-east a procession of tufted trees going uphill in single file; in the south-west the dazzling slate44 roofs of a distant town, two straight sea walls and two steamers and their white wakes; northward63 the most beautiful minor64 range in all the downland, isolated by a river valley at the edge of which it ends in a gulf65 of white quarry66, while on the other side it heaves and flows down almost to the plain, but rises again into a lesser67 hill with woods, and then slowly subsides68. Within a few square miles it collects every beauty of the chalk hill; its central height is a dome69 of flawless grass only too tender to be majestic70; and that is supported by lesser rounds and wavering lines of approach in concavity and convexity, playgrounds for the godlike shadows and lights, that prolong the descent of the spent wave of earth into the plain.
An uncertain path keeps to the highest ridge5. The[102] sides of the Downs are invaded by long stream-like gorse-sided coombes, of which the narrow floor is palest green grass. The highest points command much of earth, all of heaven. They are treeless, but occasionally the turf is over-arched by the hoops72 of a brier thicket73, the new foliage74 pierced by upright dead grey grass. They are the haunt of the swift, the home of wheatear and lark75 and of whatsoever76 in the mind survives or is born in this pure kingdom of grass and sky. Ahead, they dip to a river and rise again, their sweep notched77 by a white road.
At the inland end of this river valley is an antique red-tiled large village or small town, a perfect group of human dwellings78, as inevitable79 as the Downs, dominated by a mound80 and on it a windmill in ruin; mothered by a church at the river’s edge. Under the sign of “Ye Olde ——” is a room newly wainscoted in shining matchboard. Its altar—its little red sideboard—is symmetrically decorated by tiers and rows of lemonade, cherry cider and ginger81 ale bottles, many-coloured, and in the midst of these two syphons of soda-water. The doorways83 and windows are draped in white muslin, the hearth26 filled by a crinkled blue paper fan; the mantelpiece supports a dozen small vases. The oilcloth is new and odorous and bright. There are pink geraniums in salmon-coloured bowls on the table; a canary in a suspended cage; and on the walls a picture of a girl teasing a dog with a toy mouse.
At the cross-roads is a group of old slated43 white farm buildings and a tiled farmhouse85 of brick and flint; and above, at the top of a slope of down, is a grey spire86 and two orange roofs of cottages amidst a round cluster of trees; the sheep graze and their bells tittle-tattle. The[103] seaward-going road alongside but above the river dips then under steep banks of blackthorn and parsley to a village of flint where another spire rises out of the old roofs of a farmhouse and its family of barns and lodges87; a nightingale sings at hand, a wheeling pewit cries and gleams over the blue ripples88 of the river. Across the water a shallow scoop89 has been carved by Nature out of the side of the down; it is traversed by two diverging90 paths which alone are green, for the rest of the surface is of gorse and, full in the face of the sun, forms a mossy cirrus over the mist of its own warm shade. The down beside the road is now all cowslips among its scattered91 bramble and thorn, until it is cloven by a tributary92 bay, a quarter of a mile in length, marshy93 at first and half-filled by elms and willows94, but at its higher end occupied, behind ash trees and an orchard, by a farmhouse, a circular domed95 building and a barn, all having roofs of ochre tile, except the thatched barn, and grey stained walls; a straight road goes to the house along the edge of the marsh47 and elms. Grey plover96 whistle singly on the wet borders of the stream or make a concerted whimper of two or three.
A little beyond is a larger bay of the same kind, bordered by a long curving road entirely97 lined by elms dividing it from the broad meadow that has an elm rookery in a corner under the steep clean slope of down; at the end is a church singing to itself with all its bells in the solitude98. And the hedges are full of strong young thrushes which there is no one to frighten—is there any prettier dress than the speckled feathers of their breasts and the cape99 of brown over their shoulders and backs, as they stir the dew in May?
Then the valley opens wide and the river doubles in[104] gleaming azure100 about a narrow spit of grass, in sight of a sharp white fall of chalk, into the lucid101 quiet sea. At this bend a company of sycamores girds and is one with a group of tiled and thatched and gabled buildings, of ochre, brown and rose. The road crosses the river and a path leads near the sea, between mustard flower, lucerne, beans, corn and grass, in flint-walled fields, to a church and farm of flint, overtopped by embowering chestnuts103, ilex and the elms of rooks; and below there is another valley and river, a green pathless marsh, at whose edge five noisy belching104 chimneys stand out of a white pit. The path, over turf, rises to the Downs, passing a lonely flint barn with rich dark roof and a few sycamores for mates. This is the cornland, and the corn bunting sings solitary105 and monotonous106, and the linnets twitter still in flocks. Above and around, the furzy coombes are the home of blackbirds that have a wilder song in this world of infinite corn below and grass above, and but one house. Violets and purple orchis (and its white buds) cloud the turf. On the other side the Downs sink to gently clustered and mounded woods and yet more corn surrounding a thatched flint barn, a granary and cart-lodge, and, again, a farm under sycamores.
The soft-ribbed grey sky of after-sunset is slowly moving, kindly and promising107 rain. The air is still, the road dusty, but the hedges tender green, and the grasshopper108 lark sings under the wild parsley of the roadside and the sedge-warbler in the sallows.
Just beyond is the town by the beautiful domed hill, a town of steep lanes and wallflowers on old walls and such a date as 1577 modestly inscribed109 on a doorway82; its long old street, sternly adapted to the needs of shopkeepers[105] and gentry110, looks only old-fashioned, its age being as much repressed as if it were a kind of sin or originality111. This is that spirit which would quarrel with the stars for not being in straight lines like print, the spirit of one who, having been disturbed while shaving by the sight of a favourite cat in the midst of her lovers and behaving after the manner of her kind, gives orders during the long mid-day meal that she shall be drowned forthwith, or—no—to-morrow, which is Monday. This is that spirit which says—
Nature is never stiff, and none recognizes this fact better than —— & Son, and their now well-known and natural-looking rockeries have reclaimed112 many a dreary113 bit of landscape. At —— they showed me photographs of various country seats where the natural-looking scenery has been evolved by their artistic114 taste and ingenuity115 out of the most ordinary efforts of Nature. Thus a dull old mill-stream has, with the aid of rockeries and appropriate vegetation, been converted into a wonderfully picturesque116 spot, an ordinary brook117 was transformed into a lovely woodland scene, with ferns, mosses118, and lichens119 growing among the rockeries, and the shores of an uninteresting lake became undulating banks of beauty by the same means; while the beautiful rockeries in —— Park were also the work of this firm. —— & Son have other ways, too, of beautifying gardens and grounds by the judicious120 use of balustrades, fountains, quaint121 figures, etc., made of “—— terra-cotta,” or artificial stone, which is far more durable122 than real stone or marble, not so costly123, and impervious124 to frost and all weathers, although it takes the vegetation in the same way, and after a year’s exposure it can scarcely be distinguished125 from antique stone. In it the great spécialité here just now is “sundials,” the latest craze; for without a sundial no ancient or up-to-date garden is considered complete.
[106]
Nevertheless the town smells heartily126 of cattle, sheep, and malt; a rookery and white orchard confront the railway station, and in the midst of the streets the long grass is rough and wet and full of jonquils round ancient masonry127: seen from a height the town shares the sunlight equally with massy foliage and finds its place as a part of Nature, and the peregrine takes it in its sweep.
The turtle-doves have come and the oaks are budding bronze in the Weald. The steep roadside banks are cloaked in grass, violet, and primrose128 still, and robin-run-in-the-hedge and stitchwort and cuckoo flowers, and the white-throats talk in the hazel copses. A brooklet129 runs in a hollow that would almost hold the Thames, and crossing the road fills a rushy mill-pond deep below, and makes a field all golden and shining with marigold. Just beyond, a gnarled lime avenue leads to a grey many-windowed house of stone within a stately park. Opposite the gate an old woman sits on the grass, her feet in the dust at the edge of the road; motor-cars sprinkle her and turn her black to drab; she sits by the wayside eternally, expecting nothing.
Turn out of this main road, and by-ways that tempt12 neither cyclists nor motorists go almost as straight. Here is no famous house, not a single inn or church, but only the unspoilt Weald, and far away, a long viaduct that carries noiseless trains against the sky above hollow meadows. Bluebell130, primrose, anemone—anemone, primrose, bluebell—star and cloud the lush banks and the roots of the blackthorns, hazels and maples131 of the hedge. A stream washes the roots of many oaks, and flows past flat fields of dusky grass, cuckoo flower and marigold,—black pines at the verge132. The light smoke of a roadside fire[107] ascends133 into the new leaves of the hazels where two tramps are drying their clothes. Many oaks are down, and lie pale and gleaming like mammoth134 bones among the bluebells135 in plantations136 roughened by old flint pits.
The faggots of oak tops and cords of twisted timber are being made up; the woodmen light a fire and the chips fly from the axes. It is only to these men that I am a stranger as I walk through the land. At first I admire the hardihood and simplicity137 of their necessary toil among the oaks, but they lift their dark eyes, and then—it is as strange as when I pass a white embowered house, and the road is muffled138 with straw, and I hear by chance that some one unknown is dying behind that open window through which goes the thrush’s song and the children’s homeward chatter139. Neither townsman or countryman, I cannot know them. The countryman knows their trades and their speech, and is of their kind; the townsman’s curiosity wins him a greeting. But in May at least I am content, in the steep little valley made by a tributary of the Medway, its sides wooded with oak and the flowers glad of the sun among the lately cleared undergrowth, and the cuckoo now in this oak and now in that, and the turtle-doves whose voices, in the soft lulls140 after rain, make the earth seem to lie out sleek141 in the sun, stretching itself to purr with eyes closed. The cuckoo is gone before we know what his cry is to tell us or to remind us of.
There are few things as pleasant as the thunder and lightning of May that comes in the late afternoon, when the air is as solid as the earth with stiff grey rain for an hour. There is no motion anywhere save of this perpendicular river, of the swaying rain-hit bough142 and quiver[108]ing leaf. But through it all the thrushes sing, and jolly as their voices are the roars and echoes of the busy thunder quarrying143 the cliffs of heaven. And then the pleasure of being so wet that you may walk through streams and push through thickets144 and be none the wetter for it.
Before it is full night the light of the young moon falls for a moment out of a troubled but silent sky upon the young corn, and the tranquil145 bells are calling over the woods.
Then in the early morning the air is still and warm, but so moist that there is a soul of coolness in the heat, and never before were the leaves of the sorrel and wood sanicle and woodruff, and the grey-green foliage and pallid146 yellow flowers of the large celandine, so fair. The sudden wren’s song is shrewd and sweet and banishes147 heaviness. The huge chestnut102 tree is flowering and full of bees. The parsley towers delicately in bloom. The beech boughs148 are encased in gliding149 crystal. The nettles, the millions of nettles in a bed, begin to smell of summer. In the calm and sweet air the turtle-doves murmur150 and the blackbirds sing—as if time were no more—over the mere.
The roads, nearly dry again, are now at their best, cool and yet luminous151, and at their edges coloured rosy152 or golden brown by the sheddings of the beeches153, those gloves out of which the leaves have forced their way, pinched and crumpled154 by the confinement155. At the bend of a broad road descending156 under beeches these parallel lines of ruddy chaff157 give to two or three days in the year a special and exquisite158 loveliness, if the weather be alternately wet and bright and the long white roads and virgin159 beeches are a temptation. What quests they propose![109] They take us away to the thin air of the future or to the underworld of the past. This one takes us to the old English sweetness and robustness160 of an estate of large meadows, sound oak trees not too close together, and a noble house within an oak-paled park. A poet and a man lives there, one who recalls those other poets—they are not many—who please us over the gulf of time almost as much by the personal vigour161 and courage which we know to have been theirs or is suggested by their work, men like Chaucer, Sidney, Ben Jonson, Drayton, Byron, William Morris, and among the living —— and —— and ——. I think we should miss their poems more than some greater men’s if they were destroyed. They stand for their time more clearly than the greatest. For example, Chaucer’s language, ideas and temper make it impossible for us to read his work, no matter in how remote a study or garden, shut out from time and change, without feeling that he and all those who rode, and talked and were young with him are skeletons or less, though Catullus or Milton may be read with no such feeling. Chaucer seems to remind us of what once we were. His seems a golden age. He wrote before Villon had inaugurated modern literature with the cry—
Mais où sont les neiges d’antan?
before men appear to us to have learned how immense is the world and time. But we, looking back, with the help of this knowledge, see in the work of this man who filled a little nook of time and space with gaiety, something apart from us, an England, a happy island which his verses made. His gaiety bathes the land in the light of a golden age and the freshness of all the May days we can never recover. He “led a lusty life in May”: “in his[110] lust60 present was all his thought.” And the gaiety is no less in the sorrowful passages than in the joyful162; when, for example, he compares the subjection of the fierce, proud Troilus to love, with the whipping of a spirited horse; when he uses the apparent commonplace about age creeping in “always as still as stone” upon fresh youth; when he exclaims to the false Jason—
Have at thee, Jason! now thy horne is blowe;
or cries at the fate of Ugolino’s children—
Allas, Fortune! it was greet crueltee
Swiche briddes for to putte in swich a cage!
Even in Griselda’s piteous cry—
O tendre, O deere, O yonge children myne,
there is an intimation that in those words her sorrow is being spent and that, though it will be renewed, it will be broken up by joyfulness163 many times before her death. For, as Chaucer’s laughter is assuredly never completed by a sigh, so there is something hearty in his tears that hints of laughter before and after. His was a sharp surprising sorrow that came when he was forced to see the suffering of lovely humanity. He is all gaiety; but it has two moods. Sorrow never changes him more than shadow changes a merry brook. In both moods he seems to speak of a day when men had not only not so far outstripped164 the lark and nightingale as we have done, but had moments when their joy was equal to the lark’s above the grey dew of May dawns. And thus, if we only had to thank Chaucer for the gaiety which is left behind in his poems, as the straw of a long-past harvest clings to the thorns of a narrow lane, we could never be thankful enough.
[111]
I feel that Chaucer was the equal of those of whom he wrote, as Homer was the equal of Achilles and Odysseus, just as Byron was the peer of the noblest of the Doges and of the ruined Emperor whom he addressed as—
Vain froward child of Empire! say
Are all thy playthings snatched away?
Byron is one of the few poets whose life it was ever necessary to write. His acts were representative; from his Harrow meditations165 on a tomb to his death on the superb pedestal of Missolonghi, they are symbolic166. His life explains nearly everything in his poetry. The life and the poetry together make an incomparable whole. Most lives of poets stand to their work as a block of unhewn marble stands to the statue finished and unveiled; if the marble is not as much forgotten as was Pygmalion’s when Galatea breathed and sighed. Byron’s poetry without his life is not finished; but with it, it is like a statue by Michael Angelo or Rodin that is actually seen to grow out of the material. He was a man before he was a poet. Other poets may once have been men; they are not so now. We read their lives after their poetry and we forget them. It is by their poetry that they survive—blithe or pathetic or glorious, but dim, ghosts who are become a part of the silence of libraries and lovers’ hearts. They are dead but for the mind that enjoys and the voice that utters their verse. I had not the smallest curiosity about Mr. Swinburne when he was alive and visible. When I think of him, I think of Rosamund speaking to Eleanor or Tristram to Isoud; he has given up his life to them. But with Byron it is different. If all record of him could be destroyed, more than half of him would be lost. For I think that it is upon the life and the portraits[112] and the echoes that are still reverberating167 in Europe, that we found our belief that he is a great man. Without them he would be an interesting rhetorician, perhaps little more. There are finer poems than his “Mazeppa,” but the poet is the equal of that wild lover and of the great King who slept while the tale was told.
And Shelley, too, is an immortal168 sentiment. Men may forget to repeat his verses; they can never be as if Shelley had never been. He is present wherever love and rapture169 are. He is a part of all high-spirited and pure audacity170 of the intellect and imagination, of all clean-handed rebellion, of all infinite endeavour and hope. The remembered splendour of his face is more to us than Parliaments; one strophe of his odes is more nourishing than a rich man’s gold....
Under those oaks in May I could wish to see these men walking together, to see their gestures and brave ways. It is the poet there who all but creates them for me. But only one can I fairly see because I have seen him alive and speaking. Others have sent up their branches higher among the stars and plunged171 their roots deeper among the rocks and waters. But he and Chaucer and Jonson and Byron have obviously much plain humanity in their composition. They have a brawn172 and friendliness173 not necessarily connected with poetry. We use no ceremony—as we do with some other poets—with Morris when we read—
And brought me the summer again; and here on the grass I lie,
Or the end of “Thunder in the Garden”—
[113]
Then we turned from the blossoms, and cold were they grown:
In the trees the wind westering moved;
Till over the threshold back fluttered her gown,
And in the dark house was I loved.
There is a humanity of this world and moment in Morris’s feeling for Nature with which no other poet’s except Whitman’s can be compared. Except in the greatest—the unaccomplished things—in “Leaves of Grass” there is no earth-feeling in the literature of our language so majestic and yet so tender as in “The Message of the March Wind.” With him poetry was not, as it has tended more and more to be in recent times, a matter as exclusive as a caste. He was not half-angel or half-bird, but a man on close terms with life and toil, with the actual, troublous life of every day, with toil of the hands and brain together; in short, a many-sided citizen. He was one whom Skarphedin the son of Njal of Bergthorsknoll would not have disdained176, and when he spoke20 he seemed indignant at the feebleness of words, one that should have used a sword and might have lamented177 with the still later poet—
And unashamed the faces of the pit
And no whirled edge of blaze to hit
Although ready is he,
Wearing the same righteous steel
Upon his limbs, helmed as he was then
When he made olden war;
There is no indignation among men,
The Spirit has no scimitar
[114]
Into the Spirit’s hands?
That he may be a captain of the Lord
The crop of wicked men....
O for that anger in the hands
Of Spirit! To us, O righteous sword,
Come thou and clear our lands,
O fire, O indignation of the Lord![2]
Bitter it is to think of that talk and laughter of shadows on the long lawns under those oaks; for though their shadows are even yet better than other men’s bone or blood, never yet did dead man lift up a hand to strike a blow or lay a brick. In a churchyard behind I saw the tombstone of one Robert Page, born in the year 1792 here in Sussex, and dead in 1822—not in the Bay of Spezzia but in Sussex. He scared the crows, ploughed the clay, fought at Waterloo and lost an arm there, was well pleased with George the Fourth, and hoed the corn until he was dead. That is plain sense, and I wish I could write the life of this exact contemporary of Shelley. That is quite probably his great granddaughter, black-haired, of ruddy complexion185, full lips, large white teeth, black speechless eyes, dressed in a white print dress and stooping in the fresh wind to take clean white linen186 out of a basket, and then rising straight as a hazel wand, on tiptoe, her head held back and slightly on one side while she pegs187 the clothes to the line and praises the weather to a passer-by. She is seventeen, and of such is the kingdom of earth.
Now at the coming on of night the wind has carried away all the noises of the world. The lucid air under the[115] hazels of the lane is dark as if with dream, and the roadway leads glimmering188 straight on to a crystal planet low in the purple of the west. I cannot hear my footsteps, so full charged is the silence. I am no more in this tranquillity189 than one of the trees. The way seems paved that some fair spirit may pass down in perfect beauty and bliss190 and ease. The leaves will hail it and the blue sky lean down to bless, and the planet lend its beams for a path. Suddenly, the name of Mary is called by some one invisible. Mary! For a little while the cry is repeated more loudly but always sweetly; then the caller is entranced by the name, by the sound of her own voice and the silence into which it falls as into a well, and it grows less and less and ceases and is dead except in the brain of the bearer. I thought of all the music to ear and mind of that sound of “m.” I suppose the depth of its appeal is due to its place at the beginning of the word “mother,” or rather to the need of the soul which gave it that place; and it is a sound as dear to the animals as to us, since the ewe hears it first from her lamb and the cow from her calf191 as the woman from her child. It is the main sound in “music,” “melody,” “harmony,” “measure,” “metre,” “rhythm,” “minstrel,” “madrigal.” It endears even sadness by its presence in “melancholy,” “moan” and “mourn.” It makes melody on the lips of friends and lovers, in the names of “mistress,” “comrade,” “mate,” “companion.” It murmurs192 autumnally in all mellow193 sounds, in the music of wind and insect and instrument. To “me” and “mine” it owes a meaning as deep as to “mother.” And this mild air could bear no more melodious194 burden than the name that floated upon it and sank into it, down, down, to reveal its infinite depth—Mary!
[116]
There are parks on both sides of the road, bounded by hedges or high brick walls, and the public road has all the decorum of a drive. For a mile the very ivy195 which is destined196 to adorn197 the goodly wall and spread into forms as grand as those at Godstow Nunnery is protected by wire netting. Doves croon in the oaks: underneath198, hazel and birch flicker199 their new leaves over the pools of bluebells. The swallows fly low over every tuft of the roadside grass and glance into every bay of the wood, and then out above the white road, from which they rebound200 suddenly and turn, displaying the white rays of their tails. Now and then a gateway201 reveals the park. The ground undulates, but is ever smooth. It is of the mellow green of late afternoon. Bronzed oak woods bound the undulations, and here and there a solitary tree stands out on the grass and shows its poise202 and complexity203 with the added grace of new leaf. The cattle graze as on a painted lawn. A woman in a white dress goes indolent and stately towards the rhododendrons and rook-haunted elms. The scene appears to have its own sun, mellow and serene204, that knows not moorland or craggy coast or city. Only a thousand years of settled continuous government, of far-reaching laws, of armies and police, of roadmaking, of bloody205 tyranny and tyranny that poisons quietly without blows, could have wrought206 earth and sky into such a harmony. It is a thing as remote from me here on the dusty road as is the green evening sky and all its tranquillity of rose and white, and even more so because the man in the manor207 house behind the oaks is a puzzle to me, while the sky is always a mystery with which I am content. At such an hour the house and lawns and trees are more wonderfully fortified208 by the centuries of time[117] than by the walls and gamekeepers. They weave an atmosphere about it. We bow the head and reverence209 the labour of time in smoothing the grass, mellowing210 the stone and the manners of the inhabitants, and yet an inevitable conflict ensues in the mind between this respect and the feeling that it is only a respect for surfaces, that a thousand years is a heavy price to pay for the maturing of park and house and gentleman, especially as he is most likely to be a well-meaning parasite211 on those who are concerned twenty-four hours a day about the difficulty of living and about what to do when they are alive.
No, it is the alien remote appearance of the house and land serene in the May evening light which creates this reverence in the mind. It is not feudalism, or the old nobility and gentility, that we are bowing down to, but only to Nature without us and the dream within us. It is certainly not pure envy. Nor yet is it for the same reason as made Borrow reflect when he saw the good house at the end of an avenue of noble oaks near Llandovery—
“... A plain but comfortable gentleman’s seat with wings. It looked south down the dale. ‘With what satisfaction I could live in that house,’ said I to myself, ‘if backed by a couple of thousand a year. With what gravity could I sign a warrant in its library, and with what dreamy comfort translate an ode of Lewis Glyn Cothi, my tankard of rich ale beside me. I wonder whether the proprietor212 is fond of the old bard213 and keeps good ale. Were I an Irishman instead of a Norfolk man I would go in and ask him.’”
Not if he were a Welshman, either. For I at least know that in no other man’s house should I be better off[118] than I am, and I lack the confidence to think I could make any use of his income. I would as soon envy a tramp because he has no possessions, or a navvy because he walks like a hero as he pushes a heavy trolley214 before him, his loose jacket fitting him as a mane fits a lion. To envy a man is to misunderstand him or yourself.
Nor yet is it pure admiration215. That is what I feel for something external that can be described as right, as having absolute individuality and inevitableness of form. For example, I admire certain groups that are the result of what we call chance—an arrangement of fishing boats going out to sea, first one, then at a long interval216 two close together, a fourth a little behind, and then by ones and pairs and clusters at different intervals217; or the four or five oaks left in a meadow that was once a copse; or the fruit fallen on autumn rime34; or sunset clouds that pause darkly along the north-west in a way that will never be seen again; or of tragic218 figures at such a moment as when Polyxena, among the Grecian youths, gave her throat to the dagger219 of Neoptolemus, and fell beautiful in death.
No. Those houses are castles in Spain. They are fantastic architecture. We have made them out of our spirit stuff and have set our souls to roam their corridors and look out of their casements220 upon the sea or the mountains or the clouds. It is because they are accessible only to the everywhere wandering irresistible and immortal part of us that they are beautiful. There is no need for them to be large or costly or antique. The poorest house can do us a like service. In a town, for example, and in a suburb, I have had the same yearning221 when, on a fine still morning of May or June, in streets away from the traffic, I have seen through the open windows a cool[119] white-curtained shadowy room, and in it a table with white cloths and gleaming metal and glass laid thereon, and nobody has yet come down to open the letters. It all seems to be the work of spirit hands. It is beautiful and calm and celestial222, and is a profound pleasure—tinged by melancholy—to see. It gives a sense of fitness—for what? For something undivined, imperfectly known, guessed at, or hoped for, in ourselves; for a wider and less tainted223 beauty, for a greater grace. Or it may not be a house at all, but a hill-top five miles off, up which winds a white road in two long loops between a wood and the turf. The grass is smooth and warm and bright at the summit in the blue noon; or in the horizontal sunbeams each stem is lit so that the hill is transmuted224 into a glowing and insubstantial thing; and then, at noon or evening, something in me flies at the sight and desires to tread that holy ground. It is an odd world where everything is fleeting225 yet the soul desires permanence even for fancies so unprofitable as this.
And so these thoughts at the sight of the great houses mingle226 with the thoughts that grow at twilight227 and fade gradually away in the windless night when the sky is soft-ridged all over with white clouds and in the dark vales between them are the stars. Then, for it is Saturday, follows another pleasure of the umbrageous228 white country roads at night—the high contented229 voices of children talking to father and mother as they go home from the market town. The parents move dark-clothed, silent, laden230; the children flit about them with white hats or pinafores. Their voices travel far and long after they are invisible in the mist that washes over the fields in long white firths, but die away as the misty231 night blots232 out[120] the hills, the clouds, the stars, the trees, and everything but the branches overhead and the white parsley flowers floating along the hedge. There is no breath of wind. The owls84 are quiet. The air is full of the scent71 of holly13 flower and may and nettles and of the sound of a little stream among the leaves.
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1
ponderous
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| adj.沉重的，笨重的，(文章)冗长的 | |
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harry
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| vt.掠夺，蹂躏，使苦恼 | |
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kindly
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| adj.和蔼的，温和的，爽快的；adv.温和地，亲切地 | |
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shipwreck
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| n.船舶失事，海难 | |
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5
ridge
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| n.山脊；鼻梁；分水岭 | |
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genial
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| adj.亲切的，和蔼的，愉快的，脾气好的 | |
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mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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beech
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| n.山毛榉；adj.山毛榉的 | |
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musingly
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| adv.沉思地，冥想地 | |
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10
utterly
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| adv.完全地，绝对地 | |
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conceal
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| v.隐藏，隐瞒，隐蔽 | |
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tempt
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| vt.引诱，勾引，吸引，引起…的兴趣 | |
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holly
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| n.[植]冬青属灌木 | |
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condemn
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| vt.谴责，指责；宣判(罪犯)，判刑 | |
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15
rustled
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| v.发出沙沙的声音( rustle的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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dense
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| a.密集的，稠密的，浓密的；密度大的 | |
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hearty
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| adj.热情友好的；衷心的；尽情的，纵情的 | |
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18
draughts
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| n. <英>国际跳棋 | |
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19
botanists
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| n.植物学家，研究植物的人( botanist的名词复数 ) | |
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20
spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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reposed
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| v.将（手臂等）靠在某人（某物）上( repose的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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toil
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| vi.辛劳工作，艰难地行动；n.苦工，难事 | |
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rusting
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| n.生锈v.（使）生锈( rust的现在分词 ) | |
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deserted
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| adj.荒芜的，荒废的，无人的，被遗弃的 | |
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hearths
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| 壁炉前的地板，炉床，壁炉边( hearth的名词复数 ) | |
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hearth
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| n.壁炉炉床，壁炉地面 | |
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irises
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| n.虹( iris的名词复数 )；虹膜；虹彩；鸢尾（花） | |
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prophesying
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| v.预告，预言( prophesy的现在分词 ) | |
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fascination
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| n.令人着迷的事物，魅力，迷恋 | |
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stark
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| adj.荒凉的；严酷的；完全的；adv.完全地 | |
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31
traction
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| n.牵引；附着摩擦力 | |
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32
frantic
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| adj.狂乱的，错乱的，激昂的 | |
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33
darting
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| v.投掷，投射( dart的现在分词 )；向前冲，飞奔 | |
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34
rime
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| n.白霜；v.使蒙霜 | |
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35
taintless
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| adj.无污点的，纯洁清白的 | |
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shrill
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| adj.尖声的；刺耳的；v尖叫 | |
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37
deviate
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| v.(from)背离，偏离 | |
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irresistible
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| adj.非常诱人的，无法拒绝的，无法抗拒的 | |
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39
chafing
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| n.皮肤发炎v.擦热（尤指皮肤）( chafe的现在分词 )；擦痛；发怒；惹怒 | |
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40
ridges
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| n.脊( ridge的名词复数 )；山脊；脊状突起；大气层的)高压脊 | |
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41
isolated
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| adj.与世隔绝的 | |
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conspiracies
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| n.阴谋，密谋( conspiracy的名词复数 ) | |
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43
slated
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| 用石板瓦盖( slate的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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slate
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| n.板岩，石板，石片，石板色，候选人名单；adj.暗蓝灰色的，含板岩的；vt.用石板覆盖，痛打，提名，预订 | |
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skulls
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| 颅骨( skull的名词复数 )； 脑袋； 脑子； 脑瓜 | |
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awakening
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| n.觉醒，醒悟 adj.觉醒中的；唤醒的 | |
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marsh
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| n.沼泽，湿地 | |
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perpendicular
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| adj.垂直的，直立的；n.垂直线，垂直的位置 | |
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jingling
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| 叮当声 | |
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50
yoke
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| n.轭；支配；v.给...上轭，连接，使成配偶 | |
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51
graveyard
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| n.坟场 | |
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52
orchard
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| n.果园，果园里的全部果树，(美俚)棒球场 | |
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53
nettle
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| n.荨麻；v.烦忧，激恼 | |
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knotty
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| adj.有结的，多节的，多瘤的，棘手的 | |
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densely
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| ad.密集地；浓厚地 | |
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nettles
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| n.荨麻( nettle的名词复数 ) | |
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57
melancholy
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| n.忧郁，愁思；adj.令人感伤（沮丧）的，忧郁的 | |
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austere
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| adj.艰苦的；朴素的，朴实无华的；严峻的 | |
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59
lustrous
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| adj.有光泽的；光辉的 | |
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60
lust
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| n.性(淫)欲；渴(欲)望；vi.对…有强烈的欲望 | |
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abrupt
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| adj.突然的，意外的；唐突的，鲁莽的 | |
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62
ledges
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| n.（墙壁，悬崖等）突出的狭长部分( ledge的名词复数 )；（平窄的）壁架；横档；（尤指）窗台 | |
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northward
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| adv.向北；n.北方的地区 | |
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64
minor
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| adj.较小(少)的，较次要的；n.辅修学科；vi.辅修 | |
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gulf
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| n.海湾；深渊，鸿沟；分歧，隔阂 | |
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66
quarry
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| n.采石场；v.采石；费力地找 | |
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67
lesser
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| adj.次要的，较小的；adv.较小地，较少地 | |
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68
subsides
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| v.（土地）下陷（因在地下采矿）( subside的第三人称单数 )；减弱；下降至较低或正常水平；一下子坐在椅子等上 | |
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69
dome
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| n.圆屋顶，拱顶 | |
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70
majestic
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| adj.雄伟的，壮丽的，庄严的，威严的，崇高的 | |
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71
scent
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| n.气味，香味，香水，线索，嗅觉；v.嗅，发觉 | |
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72
hoops
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| n.箍( hoop的名词复数 )；（篮球）篮圈；（旧时儿童玩的）大环子；（两端埋在地里的）小铁弓 | |
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73
thicket
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| n.灌木丛，树林 | |
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74
foliage
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| n.叶子，树叶，簇叶 | |
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75
lark
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| n.云雀，百灵鸟；n.嬉戏，玩笑；vi.嬉戏 | |
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76
whatsoever
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| adv.（用于否定句中以加强语气）任何；pron.无论什么 | |
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77
notched
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| a.有凹口的，有缺口的 | |
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78
dwellings
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| n.住处，处所( dwelling的名词复数 ) | |
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79
inevitable
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| adj.不可避免的，必然发生的 | |
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80
mound
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| n.土墩，堤，小山；v.筑堤，用土堆防卫 | |
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81
ginger
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| n.姜，精力，淡赤黄色；adj.淡赤黄色的；vt.使活泼，使有生气 | |
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82
doorway
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| n.门口，(喻)入门；门路，途径 | |
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83
doorways
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| n.门口，门道( doorway的名词复数 ) | |
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84
owls
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| n.猫头鹰( owl的名词复数 ) | |
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85
farmhouse
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| n.农场住宅（尤指主要住房） | |
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86
spire
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| n.(教堂)尖顶，尖塔，高点 | |
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87
lodges
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| v.存放( lodge的第三人称单数 )；暂住；埋入；（权利、权威等）归属 | |
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88
ripples
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| 逐渐扩散的感觉( ripple的名词复数 ) | |
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89
scoop
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| n.铲子，舀取，独家新闻；v.汲取，舀取，抢先登出 | |
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90
diverging
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| 分开( diverge的现在分词 )； 偏离； 分歧； 分道扬镳 | |
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91
scattered
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| adj.分散的，稀疏的；散步的；疏疏落落的 | |
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92
tributary
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| n.支流；纳贡国；adj.附庸的；辅助的；支流的 | |
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93
marshy
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| adj.沼泽的 | |
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94
willows
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| n.柳树( willow的名词复数 )；柳木 | |
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95
domed
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| adj. 圆屋顶的, 半球形的, 拱曲的 动词dome的过去式和过去分词形式 | |
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96
plover
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| n.珩，珩科鸟，千鸟 | |
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97
entirely
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| ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地 | |
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98
solitude
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| n. 孤独; 独居,荒僻之地,幽静的地方 | |
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99
cape
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| n.海角，岬；披肩，短披风 | |
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100
azure
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| adj.天蓝色的，蔚蓝色的 | |
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101
lucid
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| adj.明白易懂的，清晰的，头脑清楚的 | |
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102
chestnut
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| n.栗树，栗子 | |
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103
chestnuts
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| n.栗子( chestnut的名词复数 )；栗色；栗树；栗色马 | |
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104
belching
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| n. 喷出，打嗝 动词belch的现在分词形式 | |
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105
solitary
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| adj.孤独的，独立的，荒凉的；n.隐士 | |
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106
monotonous
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| adj.单调的，一成不变的，使人厌倦的 | |
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107
promising
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| adj.有希望的，有前途的 | |
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108
grasshopper
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| n.蚱蜢，蝗虫，蚂蚱 | |
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109
inscribed
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| v.写，刻( inscribe的过去式和过去分词 )；内接 | |
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110
gentry
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| n.绅士阶级，上层阶级 | |
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111
originality
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| n.创造力，独创性；新颖 | |
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112
reclaimed
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| adj.再生的；翻造的；收复的；回收的v.开拓( reclaim的过去式和过去分词 )；要求收回；从废料中回收（有用的材料）；挽救 | |
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113
dreary
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| adj.令人沮丧的，沉闷的，单调乏味的 | |
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114
artistic
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| adj.艺术(家)的，美术(家)的；善于艺术创作的 | |
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115
ingenuity
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| n.别出心裁；善于发明创造 | |
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116
picturesque
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| adj.美丽如画的，（语言）生动的，绘声绘色的 | |
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117
brook
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| n.小河，溪；v.忍受，容让 | |
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118
mosses
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| n. 藓类, 苔藓植物 名词moss的复数形式 | |
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119
lichens
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| n.地衣( lichen的名词复数 ) | |
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120
judicious
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| adj.明智的，明断的，能作出明智决定的 | |
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121
quaint
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| adj.古雅的，离奇有趣的，奇怪的 | |
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122
durable
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| adj.持久的，耐久的 | |
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123
costly
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| adj.昂贵的，价值高的，豪华的 | |
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124
impervious
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| adj.不能渗透的，不能穿过的，不易伤害的 | |
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125
distinguished
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| adj.卓越的，杰出的，著名的 | |
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126
heartily
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| adv.衷心地，诚恳地，十分，很 | |
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127
masonry
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| n.砖土建筑；砖石 | |
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128
primrose
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| n.樱草，最佳部分， | |
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129
brooklet
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| n. 细流, 小河 | |
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130
bluebell
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| n.风铃草 | |
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131
maples
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| 槭树，枫树( maple的名词复数 )； 槭木 | |
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132
verge
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| n.边，边缘；v.接近，濒临 | |
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133
ascends
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| v.上升，攀登( ascend的第三人称单数 ) | |
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134
mammoth
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| n.长毛象；adj.长毛象似的，巨大的 | |
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135
bluebells
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| n.圆叶风铃草( bluebell的名词复数 ) | |
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136
plantations
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| n.种植园，大农场( plantation的名词复数 ) | |
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137
simplicity
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| n.简单，简易；朴素；直率，单纯 | |
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138
muffled
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| adj.（声音）被隔的；听不太清的；（衣服）裹严的；蒙住的v.压抑，捂住( muffle的过去式和过去分词 )；用厚厚的衣帽包着（自己） | |
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139
chatter
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| vi.／n.喋喋不休；短促尖叫；(牙齿)打战 | |
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140
lulls
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| n.间歇期（lull的复数形式）vt.使镇静，使安静（lull的第三人称单数形式） | |
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141
sleek
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| adj.光滑的，井然有序的；v.使光滑，梳拢 | |
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142
bough
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| n.大树枝，主枝 | |
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143
quarrying
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| v.采石；从采石场采得( quarry的现在分词 )；从（书本等中）努力发掘（资料等）；在采石场采石 | |
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144
thickets
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| n.灌木丛( thicket的名词复数 )；丛状物 | |
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145
tranquil
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| adj. 安静的, 宁静的, 稳定的, 不变的 | |
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146
pallid
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| adj.苍白的，呆板的 | |
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147
banishes
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| v.放逐，驱逐( banish的第三人称单数 ) | |
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148
boughs
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| 大树枝( bough的名词复数 ) | |
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149
gliding
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| v. 滑翔 adj. 滑动的 | |
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150
murmur
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| n.低语，低声的怨言；v.低语，低声而言 | |
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151
luminous
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| adj.发光的，发亮的；光明的；明白易懂的；有启发的 | |
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152
rosy
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| adj.美好的，乐观的，玫瑰色的 | |
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153
beeches
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| n.山毛榉( beech的名词复数 )；山毛榉木材 | |
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154
crumpled
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| adj. 弯扭的, 变皱的 动词crumple的过去式和过去分词形式 | |
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155
confinement
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| n.幽禁，拘留，监禁；分娩；限制，局限 | |
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156
descending
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| n. 下行 adj. 下降的 | |
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157
chaff
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| v.取笑，嘲笑；n.谷壳 | |
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158
exquisite
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| adj.精美的；敏锐的；剧烈的，感觉强烈的 | |
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159
virgin
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| n.处女，未婚女子；adj.未经使用的；未经开发的 | |
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160
robustness
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| 坚固性，健壮性；鲁棒性 | |
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161
vigour
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| （=vigor）n.智力，体力，精力 | |
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162
joyful
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| adj.欢乐的，令人欢欣的 | |
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163
joyfulness
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164
outstripped
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| v.做得比…更好，（在赛跑等中）超过( outstrip的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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165
meditations
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| 默想( meditation的名词复数 )； 默念； 沉思； 冥想 | |
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166
symbolic
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| adj.象征性的，符号的，象征主义的 | |
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167
reverberating
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| 回响，回荡( reverberate的现在分词 )； 使反响，使回荡，使反射 | |
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168
immortal
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| adj.不朽的；永生的，不死的；神的 | |
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169
rapture
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| n.狂喜；全神贯注；着迷；v.使狂喜 | |
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170
audacity
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| n.大胆，卤莽，无礼 | |
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171
plunged
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| v.颠簸( plunge的过去式和过去分词 )；暴跌；骤降；突降 | |
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172
brawn
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| n.体力 | |
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173
friendliness
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| n.友谊，亲切，亲密 | |
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174
slain
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| 杀死，宰杀，杀戮( slay的过去分词 )； (slay的过去分词) | |
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175
meddled
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| v.干涉，干预（他人事务）( meddle的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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176
disdained
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| 鄙视( disdain的过去式和过去分词 )； 不屑于做，不愿意做 | |
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177
lamented
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| adj.被哀悼的，令人遗憾的v.（为…）哀悼，痛哭，悲伤( lament的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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178
infamy
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| n.声名狼藉，出丑，恶行 | |
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179
snarl
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| v.吼叫，怒骂，纠缠，混乱；n.混乱，缠结，咆哮 | |
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180
wield
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| vt.行使，运用，支配；挥，使用(武器等) | |
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181
impudence
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| n.厚颜无耻；冒失；无礼 | |
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182
foulness
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| n. 纠缠, 卑鄙 | |
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183
wilt
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| v.(使)植物凋谢或枯萎；(指人)疲倦，衰弱 | |
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184
mow
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| v.割（草、麦等），扫射，皱眉；n.草堆，谷物堆 | |
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185
complexion
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| n.肤色；情况，局面；气质，性格 | |
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186
linen
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| n.亚麻布，亚麻线，亚麻制品；adj.亚麻布制的，亚麻的 | |
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187
pegs
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| n.衣夹( peg的名词复数 )；挂钉；系帐篷的桩；弦钮v.用夹子或钉子固定( peg的第三人称单数 )；使固定在某水平 | |
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188
glimmering
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| n.微光，隐约的一瞥adj.薄弱地发光的v.发闪光，发微光( glimmer的现在分词 ) | |
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189
tranquillity
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| n. 平静, 安静 | |
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190
bliss
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| n.狂喜，福佑，天赐的福 | |
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191
calf
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| n.小牛，犊，幼仔，小牛皮 | |
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192
murmurs
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| n.低沉、连续而不清的声音( murmur的名词复数 )；低语声；怨言；嘀咕 | |
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193
mellow
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| adj.柔和的；熟透的；v.变柔和；(使)成熟 | |
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194
melodious
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| adj.旋律美妙的，调子优美的，音乐性的 | |
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195
ivy
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| n.常青藤，常春藤 | |
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196
destined
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| adj.命中注定的；(for)以…为目的地的 | |
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197
adorn
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| vt.使美化，装饰 | |
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198
underneath
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| adj.在...下面，在...底下；adv.在下面 | |
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199
flicker
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| vi./n.闪烁，摇曳，闪现 | |
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200
rebound
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| v.弹回；n.弹回，跳回 | |
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201
gateway
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| n.大门口，出入口，途径，方法 | |
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202
poise
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| vt./vi. 平衡，保持平衡；n.泰然自若，自信 | |
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203
complexity
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| n.复杂(性)，复杂的事物 | |
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204
serene
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| adj. 安详的，宁静的，平静的 | |
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205
bloody
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| adj.非常的的；流血的；残忍的；adv.很；vt.血染 | |
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206
wrought
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| v.引起；以…原料制作；运转；adj.制造的 | |
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207
manor
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| n.庄园，领地 | |
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208
fortified
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| adj. 加强的 | |
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209
reverence
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| n.敬畏，尊敬，尊严；Reverence:对某些基督教神职人员的尊称；v.尊敬，敬畏，崇敬 | |
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210
mellowing
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| 软化，醇化 | |
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211
parasite
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| n.寄生虫；寄生菌；食客 | |
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proprietor
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| n.所有人；业主；经营者 | |
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bard
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| n.吟游诗人 | |
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trolley
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| n.手推车，台车；无轨电车；有轨电车 | |
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admiration
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| n.钦佩，赞美，羡慕 | |
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interval
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| n.间隔，间距；幕间休息，中场休息 | |
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intervals
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| n.[军事]间隔( interval的名词复数 )；间隔时间；[数学]区间；（戏剧、电影或音乐会的）幕间休息 | |
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tragic
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| adj.悲剧的，悲剧性的，悲惨的 | |
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dagger
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| n.匕首，短剑，剑号 | |
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casements
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| n.窗扉( casement的名词复数 ) | |
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yearning
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| a.渴望的；向往的；怀念的 | |
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celestial
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| adj.天体的；天上的 | |
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tainted
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| adj.腐坏的；污染的；沾污的；感染的v.使变质( taint的过去式和过去分词 )；使污染；败坏；被污染，腐坏，败坏 | |
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transmuted
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| v.使变形，使变质，把…变成…( transmute的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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fleeting
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| adj.短暂的，飞逝的 | |
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226
mingle
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| vt.使混合，使相混；vi.混合起来；相交往 | |
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twilight
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| n.暮光，黄昏；暮年，晚期，衰落时期 | |
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228
umbrageous
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| adj.多荫的 | |
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contented
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| adj.满意的，安心的，知足的 | |
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230
laden
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| adj.装满了的；充满了的；负了重担的；苦恼的 | |
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misty
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| adj.雾蒙蒙的，有雾的 | |
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232
blots
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| 污渍( blot的名词复数 )； 墨水渍； 错事； 污点 | |
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