Hanging from the wall in rags, too wet even to flap, are the remains18 of an auctioneer’s announcement of a sale at the house behind. Mahogany—oak chests—certain ounces of silver—two thousand books—portraits and landscapes and pictures of horses and game—of all these and how much else has the red house been disem[236]bowelled? It is all shadowy within, behind the windows, like the eyes of a corpse19, and without sound, or form, or light, and it is for no one that the creeper magnificently arrays itself in bediamonded crimson20 and gold that throbs21 and wavers in the downpour. The martins are still there, and their play up and down before the twenty windows is a senseless thing, like the play of children outside a chamber22 of agony or grief. They seem to be machines going on and on when their master and purpose are dead. But then, too, there is gradually a consolation23, a restfulness, a deceit, a forgetting, in the continuity of their movement and their unchanged voices. The two hundred autumns perpetuated24 in the tones of the bricks are in vain. Strangers will come, no doubt—I hope they will not—and be pleased, actually proud, at this mellowness25, which ought to have died with the last of the family that built the house.
The tall horse-chestnuts throw down their fruit out of the crisp, rusty26 foliage27 and it rolls darkly burnished28 out of the pods white as mushrooms in the rain, and where it falls it lies, and no child gathers it, and the harvest waggons29 have crushed a thousand under their wheels. The moss30 is beginning to encrust the gravel31 for the soft feet of the ghosts, of the old men and the mothers and the maids and the school-boys and tottering32 babes that have trodden it once. Now that they are all gone, every one, they seem always to have been ghosts, with loud, happy voices and wails33 of sorrow, with smiles, dark looks, passionate34 splendours, bright hair, the bright brown hair as of red deer in the men, the long, heavy coils of living odorous gold in the women, but flitting to and fro, footless, unconfined, like the swallows, returning and wander[237]ing up and down, as if they had left something behind in their home.
When I first entered the house by an accident in passing that way, a great-grandfather, a granddaughter and her son were alone in the house, with two servants. The mother, early widowed, had come with her child to minister to the last days of the ancient man. The house was by then full of the reports of death. In almost every room there had been a deathbed. For it had always been full of life; there was never such a house for calling back its children; the sons of it brought their wives, and the daughters their husbands, and often an excuse was made for one pair to stay on indefinitely; and thus it came to be full also of death. This granddaughter, however, had stayed, as she wished to believe, against her will, because the old man was so fond of his great-grandchild. She was a beautiful, strong woman, with the dark, lustrous36 skin, gold hair, perfect clear features, proud step and prouder voice, of all the family; she had shone before a thousand eyes; and yet she stayed on and on, obsessed37 by the multitudinous memories of the house alone under the Downs.
Her grandfather would talk of nothing but his father and his grandfather, the lawyers, the captains, the scholars, whose bones were under the churchyard elms, and his sons and their sons, all of them also now dead. He had their childish ways by heart, the childish ways of men who were white-haired at his birth as well as of those who went golden-haired but yesterday into the grave; and all their names, their stately, their out-of-the-way names, and those which recorded the maiden38 names of their mothers; their nicknames, too, a whole book of[238] them; the legends about the most conspicuous39, their memorable40 speeches and acts, down to the names of their very dolls, and their legends also, which, of course, recurred41 again and again in the family fantasy. Every tree and field and gate and room was connected with some one of the dear and beauteous or brave dead, with their birth, their deeds, their ends.
The portraits of many of them, at least one to every generation, hung on the walls, and it was curious to notice, what never any one of them could see, except the granddaughter, the progress and the decline from generation to generation. The earliest of all had sailed and buccaneered with Henry Morgan, a great lover and destroyer of life. It was from him that the expression and air of them all had descended42. Love and battle had carved his face. Out from behind his bold but easy face peered a prophetic pitifulness, just as behind the loaded brown clouds of drifting storm peers the innocence43 of blue, and upon it white clouds that are thin and waved like an infant’s hair. Upon this model his descendants’ faces had been carved, not by love and battle, but by his might alone. Even the tender women flaunted44 it. It nestled, an eagle, among the old man’s snows; it possessed45 the little child, and he had nothing but the face of the buccaneer, like an eaglet in a cage.
A house is a perdurable garment, giving and taking of life. If it only fit, straightway it begins to chronicle our days. It beholds46 our sorrows and our joys; its untale-bearing walls know all our thoughts, and if it be such a house as grows after the builders are gone, our thoughts presently owe much to it; we have but to glance at a certain shadow or a curve in the wall-paper pattern to[239] recall them, softened47 as by an echo, and that corner or that gable starts many a fancy that reaches beyond the stars, many a fancy gay or enriched with regrets. It is aware of birth, marriage and death; and who dares say that there is not kneaded into the stones a record more pleasing than brass48? With what meanings the vesperal beam slips through a staircase window in autumn! The moon has an expression proper to us alone, nested among our limes, or heaving an ivory shoulder above the neighbour roofs. As we enter a room in our house we are conscious of a fitness in its configuration49 that defies mathematics. Rightly used, such a space will inspire a stately ordering of our lives; it is, in another respect, the amplest canvas for the art of life. It becomes so much a part of us that we exclaim—
“This beautiful house in sand and stone:
What will it be in heaven?”
This beautiful house under the Downs was already more than “sand and stone.” It was a giant, very gentle but very powerful, and adding to its power the lore50 of the family it was irresistible51. This young mother had all the lore by heart and loved it, yet had fought against it. She had been happy when her child had grown at first unlike her own family and much like her husband’s; but no! his hair grew lighter52, his nose was as those of her brothers’ in bud, and now that he was five he was not a child so much as an incarnation of the family, a sort of graven image to which the old man bowed down, and with all the more fervour because of that weakness in the boy which others thought imbecility. The old man, too, had been not only a man but a family; now that the child was[240] there he waited, garrulously53 contented54, for his release from the post. So contented was he that when the granddaughter left her child with him, and after delays and excuses and delays disappeared into the blank, indifferent abyss of the multitude far away who knew not the house and the family, he was not only contented but glad at heart, for it was a rebel that was gone.
For several years the white beard and the poor child lived together happily, turning over old memories, old books, old toys, taking the old walks through the long garden, past, but not into, the beech15 wood that a whim55 of the old man’s had closed against even himself, against all save the birds and the squirrels; over the high downs and back into the deep vale which had produced that delicate physical beauty and those gracious lusty ways beyond which it seemed that men and women could hardly go in earthly life. Very happy were those two, and very placid56; but within a week their tragic57 peace was perfected. The boy fell out of one of the apple-trees and was killed. The old man could not but stumble over that small grave into his own, and here is the end, the unnoted, the common end, and the epitaph written by the auctioneer and the rain.
Much as I love rain, heavy or light, freakish or continuous, I am glad to be out of it for a little while and to open a book of ballads58 by a solitary60 fire at “The White Horse,” and soon to close it after reading again the lines—
“O then bespake her daughter dear,
She was baith jimp and sma’:
‘O row me in a pair o’ sheets,
And tow me owre the wa’!’
[241]
They row’d her in a pair o’ sheets,
And tow’d her owre the wa’;
But on the point o’ Gordon’s spear
She gat a deadly fa’.
O bonnie, bonnie was her mouth,
And cherry were her cheeks,
And clear, clear was her yellow hair,
Whereon the red blood dreeps.
Then wi’ his spear he turn’d her owre;
He said, ‘Ye are the first that e’er
I wish’d alive again.’
He cam’ and lookit again at her;
O gin her skin was white!
‘I might hae spared that bonnie face
To hae been some man’s delight.
I cannot look on that bonnie face
As it lies on the grass.’
‘Wha looks to freits, my master dear,
Its freits will follow them;
Let it ne’er be said that Edom o’ Gordon
I cannot help wondering whether the great work done in the last century and a half towards the recovery of old ballads in their integrity will have any effect beyond the entertainment of a few scientific men and lovers of what is ancient, now that the first effects upon Wordsworth and his contemporaries have died away. Can it possibly give a vigorous impulse to a new school of poetry that shall treat the life of our time and what in past times has most meaning for us as freshly as those ballads did the life of their time? It is possible; and it is surely impossible that such examples of simple, realistic narrative65 shall[242] be quite in vain. Certainly the more they are read the more they will be respected, and not only because they often deal with heroic matters heroically, but because their style is commonly so beautiful, their pathos66 so natural, their observation of life so fresh, so fond of particular detail—its very lists of names being at times real poetry.
Sometimes the style is equal and like to that of the most accomplished67 poetry, as in the stanza68—
“The Ynglyshe men let ther boys (bows) be,
And pulde owt brandes that were brighte;
It was a hevy syght to se
Bryght swordes on basnites lyght.”
Or in—
“God send the land deliverance
Frae every reaving, riding Scot!
We’ll sune hae neither cow nor ewe,
We’ll sune hae neither staig nor stot.”
It is equally good in passages where the poet simply expresses his hearty69 delight in something which his own eyes have seen among his neighbours, as in—
“He had horse and harness for them all,
Goodly steeds were all milke-white:
O the golden bands an about their necks,
And their weapons, they were all alike....”
And, by the way, do not touches like these often reveal the stamp of individuals upon pieces which are loosely said to have been “composed by the folk”? They quite do away with the notion that ballads were composed by a number of people, after the fashion of a story in the game of “Consequences.” In fact, it is one of the pleasures of reading ballads to watch for those things[243] which show us the heart of one man who stands out by himself. Such a one was the man who said—
“I dreamt I pu’d the heather green
Wi’ my true love on Yarrow.”
And who was that unhappy one who served a king for seven years and only once saw the king’s daughter, and that was through a gimlet-hole? Two were putting on her gown, two putting on her shoes, five were combing down her hair—
“Her neck and breast was like the snow—
Then from the bore I was forced to go.”
Was he the man who made it a common thing to speak in ballads of “combing her yellow hair”?
What a poet, too, was he who put that touch into “Bewick and Grahame,” where the father throws down his glove as a challenge to his son and the son stoops to pick it up, and says—
“O father, put on your glove again,
The wind hath blown it from your hand.”
It is one of the most delicate things, and with it the stanza in the same ballad59 where the father praises the son for his victory over a friend, but the son, hating the battle which would not have been fought if the fathers had not quarrelled in their wine, says—
“Father, could ye not drink your wine at home
And letten me and my brother be?”
And the mind of a poet is to be seen in the whole of some ballads and in every detail, as for example in the three perfect verses—
[244]
“O lang, lang may their ladies sit
Wi’ their fans into their hand,
Or ere they see Sir Patrick Spens
Come sailing to the land.
O lang, lang may the ladies stand,
Wi’ their gold combs in their hair,
For they’ll see them na mair.
Half-owre, half-owre to Aberdour,
It’s fiftie fadom deep,
And there lies guid Sir Patrick Spens,
Wi’ the Scots lords at his feet.”
This ballad is one peculiar71 to our island, and no one can seriously deny that some one of its authors was one of the greatest writers of narrative poetry that ever lived.
点击
收听单词发音
收听单词发音 |
1
deserted
|
|
| adj.荒芜的，荒废的，无人的，被遗弃的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
2
frenzied
|
|
| a.激怒的；疯狂的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
3
tinkling
|
|
| n.丁当作响声 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
4
bleating
|
|
| v.（羊，小牛）叫( bleat的现在分词 )；哭诉；发出羊叫似的声音；轻声诉说 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
5
muffled
|
|
| 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） | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
6
desolate
|
|
| adj.荒凉的，荒芜的；孤独的，凄凉的；v.使荒芜，使孤寂 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
7
descending
|
|
| n. 下行 adj. 下降的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
8
chrysanthemums
|
|
| n.菊花( chrysanthemum的名词复数 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
9
standing
|
|
| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
10
aloof
|
|
| adj.远离的；冷淡的，漠不关心的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
11
lesser
|
|
| adj.次要的，较小的；adv.较小地，较少地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
12
ascent
|
|
| n.(声望或地位)提高；上升，升高；登高 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
13
impetus
|
|
| n.推动，促进，刺激；推动力 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
14
beeches
|
|
| n.山毛榉( beech的名词复数 )；山毛榉木材 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
15
beech
|
|
| n.山毛榉；adj.山毛榉的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
16
descends
|
|
| v.下来( descend的第三人称单数 )；下去；下降；下斜 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
17
haze
|
|
| n.霾，烟雾；懵懂，迷糊；vi.(over)变模糊 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
18
remains
|
|
| n.剩余物，残留物；遗体，遗迹 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
19
corpse
|
|
| n.尸体，死尸 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
20
crimson
|
|
| n./adj.深(绯)红色(的)；vi.脸变绯红色 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
21
throbs
|
|
| 体内的跳动( throb的名词复数 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
22
chamber
|
|
| n.房间，寝室；会议厅；议院；会所 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
23
consolation
|
|
| n.安慰，慰问 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
24
perpetuated
|
|
| vt.使永存（perpetuate的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
25
mellowness
|
|
| 成熟； 芳醇； 肥沃； 怡然 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
26
rusty
|
|
| adj.生锈的；锈色的；荒废了的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
27
foliage
|
|
| n.叶子，树叶，簇叶 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
28
burnished
|
|
| adj.抛光的，光亮的v.擦亮（金属等），磨光( burnish的过去式和过去分词 )；被擦亮，磨光 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
29
waggons
|
|
| 四轮的运货马车( waggon的名词复数 )； 铁路货车； 小手推车 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
30
moss
|
|
| n.苔，藓，地衣 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
31
gravel
|
|
| n.砂跞；砂砾层；结石 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
32
tottering
|
|
| adj.蹒跚的，动摇的v.走得或动得不稳( totter的现在分词 )；踉跄；蹒跚；摇摇欲坠 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
33
wails
|
|
| 痛哭，哭声( wail的名词复数 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
34
passionate
|
|
| adj.热情的，热烈的，激昂的，易动情的，易怒的，性情暴躁的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
35
wan
|
|
| (wide area network)广域网 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
36
lustrous
|
|
| adj.有光泽的；光辉的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
37
obsessed
|
|
| adj.心神不宁的,鬼迷心窍的,沉迷的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
38
maiden
|
|
| n.少女，处女；adj.未婚的，纯洁的，无经验的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
39
conspicuous
|
|
| adj.明眼的，惹人注目的；炫耀的，摆阔气的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
40
memorable
|
|
| adj.值得回忆的，难忘的，特别的，显著的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
41
recurred
|
|
| 再发生，复发( recur的过去式和过去分词 )； 治愈 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
42
descended
|
|
| a.为...后裔的，出身于...的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
43
innocence
|
|
| n.无罪；天真；无害 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
44
flaunted
|
|
| v.炫耀，夸耀( flaunt的过去式和过去分词 )；有什么能耐就施展出来 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
45
possessed
|
|
| adj.疯狂的；拥有的，占有的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
46
beholds
|
|
| v.看，注视( behold的第三人称单数 )；瞧；看呀；（叙述中用于引出某人意外的出现）哎哟 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
47
softened
|
|
| （使）变软( soften的过去式和过去分词 )； 缓解打击； 缓和； 安慰 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
48
brass
|
|
| n.黄铜；黄铜器，铜管乐器 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
49
configuration
|
|
| n.结构，布局，形态，(计算机)配置 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
50
lore
|
|
| n.传说；学问，经验，知识 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
51
irresistible
|
|
| adj.非常诱人的，无法拒绝的，无法抗拒的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
52
lighter
|
|
| n.打火机，点火器；驳船；v.用驳船运送；light的比较级 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
53
garrulously
|
|
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
|
54
contented
|
|
| adj.满意的，安心的，知足的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
55
whim
|
|
| n.一时的兴致，突然的念头；奇想，幻想 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
56
placid
|
|
| adj.安静的，平和的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
57
tragic
|
|
| adj.悲剧的，悲剧性的，悲惨的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
58
ballads
|
|
| 民歌，民谣，特别指叙述故事的歌( ballad的名词复数 )； 讴 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
59
ballad
|
|
| n.歌谣，民谣，流行爱情歌曲 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
60
solitary
|
|
| adj.孤独的，独立的，荒凉的；n.隐士 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
61
boon
|
|
| n.恩赐，恩物，恩惠 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
62
dooms
|
|
| v.注定( doom的第三人称单数 )；判定；使…的失败（或灭亡、毁灭、坏结局）成为必然；宣判 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
63
daunted
|
|
| 使（某人）气馁，威吓( daunt的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
64
dame
|
|
| n.女士 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
65
narrative
|
|
| n.叙述，故事；adj.叙事的，故事体的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
66
pathos
|
|
| n.哀婉，悲怆 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
67
accomplished
|
|
| adj.有才艺的；有造诣的；达到了的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
68
stanza
|
|
| n.（诗）节，段 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
69
hearty
|
|
| adj.热情友好的；衷心的；尽情的，纵情的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
70
wailing
|
|
| v.哭叫，哀号( wail的现在分词 )；沱 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
71
peculiar
|
|
| adj.古怪的，异常的；特殊的，特有的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
| 欢迎访问英文小说网 |