A Face on Which Time Makes but Little Impression
A Saturday afternoon in November was approaching the time of twilight1, and the vast tract2 of unenclosed wild known as Egdon Heath embrowned itself moment by moment. Overhead the hollow stretch of whitish cloud shutting out the sky was as a tent which had the whole heath for its floor.
The heaven being spread with this pallid3 screen and the earth with the darkest vegetation, their meeting-line at the horizon was clearly marked. In such contrast the heath wore the appearance of an instalment of night which had taken up its place before its astronomical4 hour was come: darkness had to a great extent arrived hereon, while day stood distinct in the sky. Looking upwards5, a furze-cutter would have been inclined to continue work; looking down, he would have decided6 to finish his faggot and go home. The distant rims7 of the world and of the firmament8 seemed to be a division in time no less than a division in matter. The face of the heath by its mere9 complexion10 added half an hour to evening; it could in like manner retard11 the dawn, sadden noon, anticipate the frowning of storms scarcely generated, and intensify12 the opacity13 of a moonless midnight to a cause of shaking and dread14.
In fact, precisely15 at this transitional point of its nightly roll into darkness the great and particular glory of the Egdon waste began, and nobody could be said to understand the heath who had not been there at such a time. It could best be felt when it could not clearly be seen, its complete effect and explanation lying in this and the succeeding hours before the next dawn; then, and only then, did it tell its true tale. The spot was, indeed, a near relation of night, and when night showed itself an apparent tendency to gravitate together could be perceived in its shades and the scene. The sombre stretch of rounds and hollows seemed to rise and meet the evening gloom in pure sympathy, the heath exhaling17 darkness as rapidly as the heavens precipitated18 it. And so the obscurity in the air and the obscurity in the land closed together in a black fraternization towards which each advanced halfway19.
The place became full of a watchful20 intentness now; for when other things sank blooding to sleep the heath appeared slowly to awake and listen. Every night its Titanic21 form seemed to await something; but it had waited thus, unmoved, during so many centuries, through the crises of so many things, that it could only be imagined to await one last crisis--the final overthrow22.
It was a spot which returned upon the memory of those who loved it with an aspect of peculiar23 and kindly24 congruity25. Smiling champaigns of flowers and fruit hardly do this, for they are permanently26 harmonious27 only with an existence of better reputation as to its issues than the present. Twilight combined with the scenery of Egdon Heath to evolve a thing majestic28 without severity, impressive without showiness, emphatic29 in its admonitions, grand in its simplicity30. The qualifications which frequently invest the facade31 of a prison with far more dignity than is found in the facade of a palace double its size lent to this heath a sublimity32 in which spots renowned33 for beauty of the accepted kind are utterly34 wanting. Fair prospects35 wed16 happily with fair times; but alas36, if times be not fair! Men have oftener suffered from, the mockery of a place too smiling for their reason than from the oppression of surroundings oversadly tinged37. Haggard Egdon appealed to a subtler and scarcer instinct, to a more recently learnt emotion, than that which responds to the sort of beauty called charming and fair.
Indeed, it is a question if the exclusive reign38 of this orthodox beauty is not approaching its last quarter. The new Vale of Tempe may be a gaunt waste in Thule; human souls may find themselves in closer and closer harmony with external things wearing a sombreness distasteful to our race when it was young. The time seems near, if it has not actually arrived, when the chastened sublimity of a moor39, a sea, or a mountain will be all of nature that is absolutely in keeping with the moods of the more thinking among mankind. And ultimately, to the commonest tourist, spots like Iceland may become what the vineyards and myrtle gardens of South Europe are to him now; and Heidelberg and Baden be passed unheeded as he hastens from the Alps to the sand dunes40 of Scheveningen.
The most thoroughgoing ascetic41 could feel that he had a natural right to wander on Egdon--he was keeping within the line of legitimate42 indulgence when he laid himself open to influences such as these. Colours and beauties so far subdued43 were, at least, the birthright of all. Only in summer days of highest feather did its mood touch the level of gaiety. Intensity44 was more usually reached by way of the solemn than by way of the brilliant, and such a sort of intensity was often arrived at during winter darkness, tempests, and mists. Then Egdon was aroused to reciprocity; for the storm was its lover, and the wind its friend. Then it became the home of strange phantoms45; and it was found to be the hitherto unrecognized original of those wild regions of obscurity which are vaguely46 felt to be compassing us about in midnight dreams of flight and disaster, and are never thought of after the dream till revived by scenes like this.
It was at present a place perfectly47 accordant with man's nature--neither ghastly, hateful, nor ugly; neither commonplace, unmeaning, nor tame; but, like man, slighted and enduring; and withal singularly colossal48 and mysterious in its swarthy monotony. As with some persons who have long lived apart, solitude49 seemed to look out of its countenance50. It had a lonely face, suggesting tragical51 possibilities.
This obscure, obsolete52, superseded53 country figures in Domesday. Its condition is recorded therein as that of heathy, furzy, briary wilderness--"Bruaria." Then follows the length and breadth in leagues; and, though some uncertainty54 exists as to the exact extent of this ancient lineal measure, it appears from the figures that the area of Egdon down to the present day has but little diminished. "Turbaria Bruaria"--the right of cutting heath-turf--occurs in charters relating to the district. "Overgrown with heth and mosse," says Leland of the same dark sweep of country.
Here at least were intelligible55 facts regarding landscape--far-reaching proofs productive of genuine satisfaction. The untameable, Ishmaelitish thing that Egdon now was it always had been. Civilization was its enemy; and ever since the beginning of vegetation its soil had worn the same antique brown dress, the natural and invariable garment of the particular formation. In its venerable one coat lay a certain vein56 of satire57 on human vanity in clothes. A person on a heath in raiment of modern cut and colours has more or less an anomalous58 look. We seem to want the oldest and simplest human clothing where the clothing of the earth is so primitive59.
To recline on a stump60 of thorn in the central valley of Egdon, between afternoon and night, as now, where the eye could reach nothing of the world outside the summits and shoulders of heathland which filled the whole circumference61 of its glance, and to know that everything around and underneath62 had been from prehistoric63 times as unaltered as the stars overhead, gave ballast to the mind adrift on change, and harassed64 by the irrepressible New. The great inviolate65 place had an ancient permanence which the sea cannot claim. Who can say of a particular sea that it is old? Distilled66 by the sun, kneaded by the moon, it is renewed in a year, in a day, or in an hour. The sea changed, the fields changed, the rivers, the villages, and the people changed, yet Egdon remained. Those surfaces were neither so steep as to be destructible by weather, nor so flat as to be the victims of floods and deposits. With the exception of an aged67 highway, and a still more aged barrow presently to be referred to--themselves almost crystallized to natural products by long continuance--even the trifling68 irregularities were not caused by pickaxe, plough, or spade, but remained as the very finger-touches of the last geological change.
The above-mentioned highway traversed the lower levels of the heath, from one horizon to another. In many portions of its course it overlaid an old vicinal way, which branched from the great Western road of the Romans, the Via Iceniana, or Ikenild Street, hard by. On the evening under consideration it would have been noticed that, though the gloom had increased sufficiently69 to confuse the minor70 features of the heath, the white surface of the road remained almost as clear as ever.
1 twilight | |
n.暮光,黄昏;暮年,晚期,衰落时期 | |
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2 tract | |
n.传单,小册子,大片(土地或森林) | |
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3 pallid | |
adj.苍白的,呆板的 | |
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4 astronomical | |
adj.天文学的,(数字)极大的 | |
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5 upwards | |
adv.向上,在更高处...以上 | |
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6 decided | |
adj.决定了的,坚决的;明显的,明确的 | |
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7 rims | |
n.(圆形物体的)边( rim的名词复数 );缘;轮辋;轮圈 | |
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8 firmament | |
n.苍穹;最高层 | |
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9 mere | |
adj.纯粹的;仅仅,只不过 | |
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10 complexion | |
n.肤色;情况,局面;气质,性格 | |
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11 retard | |
n.阻止,延迟;vt.妨碍,延迟,使减速 | |
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12 intensify | |
vt.加强;变强;加剧 | |
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13 opacity | |
n.不透明;难懂 | |
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14 dread | |
vt.担忧,忧虑;惧怕,不敢;n.担忧,畏惧 | |
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15 precisely | |
adv.恰好,正好,精确地,细致地 | |
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16 wed | |
v.娶,嫁,与…结婚 | |
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17 exhaling | |
v.呼出,发散出( exhale的现在分词 );吐出(肺中的空气、烟等),呼气 | |
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18 precipitated | |
v.(突如其来地)使发生( precipitate的过去式和过去分词 );促成;猛然摔下;使沉淀 | |
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19 halfway | |
adj.中途的,不彻底的,部分的;adv.半路地,在中途,在半途 | |
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20 watchful | |
adj.注意的,警惕的 | |
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21 titanic | |
adj.巨人的,庞大的,强大的 | |
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22 overthrow | |
v.推翻,打倒,颠覆;n.推翻,瓦解,颠覆 | |
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23 peculiar | |
adj.古怪的,异常的;特殊的,特有的 | |
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24 kindly | |
adj.和蔼的,温和的,爽快的;adv.温和地,亲切地 | |
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25 congruity | |
n.全等,一致 | |
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26 permanently | |
adv.永恒地,永久地,固定不变地 | |
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27 harmonious | |
adj.和睦的,调和的,和谐的,协调的 | |
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28 majestic | |
adj.雄伟的,壮丽的,庄严的,威严的,崇高的 | |
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29 emphatic | |
adj.强调的,着重的;无可置疑的,明显的 | |
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30 simplicity | |
n.简单,简易;朴素;直率,单纯 | |
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31 facade | |
n.(建筑物的)正面,临街正面;外表 | |
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32 sublimity | |
崇高,庄严,气质高尚 | |
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33 renowned | |
adj.著名的,有名望的,声誉鹊起的 | |
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34 utterly | |
adv.完全地,绝对地 | |
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35 prospects | |
n.希望,前途(恒为复数) | |
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36 alas | |
int.唉(表示悲伤、忧愁、恐惧等) | |
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37 tinged | |
v.(使)发丁丁声( ting的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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38 reign | |
n.统治时期,统治,支配,盛行;v.占优势 | |
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39 moor | |
n.荒野,沼泽;vt.(使)停泊;vi.停泊 | |
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40 dunes | |
沙丘( dune的名词复数 ) | |
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41 ascetic | |
adj.禁欲的;严肃的 | |
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42 legitimate | |
adj.合法的,合理的,合乎逻辑的;v.使合法 | |
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43 subdued | |
adj. 屈服的,柔和的,减弱的 动词subdue的过去式和过去分词 | |
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44 intensity | |
n.强烈,剧烈;强度;烈度 | |
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45 phantoms | |
n.鬼怪,幽灵( phantom的名词复数 ) | |
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46 vaguely | |
adv.含糊地,暖昧地 | |
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47 perfectly | |
adv.完美地,无可非议地,彻底地 | |
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48 colossal | |
adj.异常的,庞大的 | |
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49 solitude | |
n. 孤独; 独居,荒僻之地,幽静的地方 | |
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50 countenance | |
n.脸色,面容;面部表情;vt.支持,赞同 | |
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51 tragical | |
adj. 悲剧的, 悲剧性的 | |
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52 obsolete | |
adj.已废弃的,过时的 | |
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53 superseded | |
[医]被代替的,废弃的 | |
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54 uncertainty | |
n.易变,靠不住,不确知,不确定的事物 | |
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55 intelligible | |
adj.可理解的,明白易懂的,清楚的 | |
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56 vein | |
n.血管,静脉;叶脉,纹理;情绪;vt.使成脉络 | |
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57 satire | |
n.讽刺,讽刺文学,讽刺作品 | |
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58 anomalous | |
adj.反常的;不规则的 | |
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59 primitive | |
adj.原始的;简单的;n.原(始)人,原始事物 | |
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60 stump | |
n.残株,烟蒂,讲演台;v.砍断,蹒跚而走 | |
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61 circumference | |
n.圆周,周长,圆周线 | |
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62 underneath | |
adj.在...下面,在...底下;adv.在下面 | |
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63 prehistoric | |
adj.(有记载的)历史以前的,史前的,古老的 | |
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64 harassed | |
adj. 疲倦的,厌烦的 动词harass的过去式和过去分词 | |
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65 inviolate | |
adj.未亵渎的,未受侵犯的 | |
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66 distilled | |
adj.由蒸馏得来的v.蒸馏( distil的过去式和过去分词 );从…提取精华 | |
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67 aged | |
adj.年老的,陈年的 | |
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68 trifling | |
adj.微不足道的;没什么价值的 | |
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69 sufficiently | |
adv.足够地,充分地 | |
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70 minor | |
adj.较小(少)的,较次要的;n.辅修学科;vi.辅修 | |
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