For a breeze of morning moves,
And the planet of Love is on high . . .
—Tennyson, Maud (1855)
It is a part of special prudence1 never to do anything because one has an inclination2 to do it; but because it is one’s duty, or is reasonable.
—Matthew Arnold, Notebooks (1868)
The sun was just redly leaving the insubstantial dove-gray waves of the hills behind the Chesil Bank when Charles, not dressed in the clothes but with all the facial expression of an undertaker’s mute, left the doors of the White Lion. The sky was without cloud, washed pure by the previous night’s storm and of a deliciously tender and ethereal blue; the air as sharp as lemon-juice, yet as clean and cleansing3. If you get up at such an hour in Lyme today you will have the town to yourself. Charles, in that earlier-rising age, was not quite so fortunate; but the people who were about had that pleasant lack of social pretension4, that primeval classlessness of dawn population: simple people setting about their day’s work. One or two bade Charles a cheery greeting; and got very peremp-tory nods and curt5 raisings of the ashplant in return. He would rather have seen a few symbolic6 corpses7 littering the streets than those bright faces; and he was glad when he left the town behind him and entered the lane to the Undercliff.
But his gloom (and a self-suspicion I have concealed9, that his decision was really based more on the old sheepstealer’s adage10, on a dangerous despair, than on the nobler movings of his conscience) had an even poorer time of it there; the quick walking sent a flood of warmth through him, a warmth from inside complemented11 by the warmth from without brought by the sun’s rays. It seemed strangely distinct, this undefiled dawn sun. It had almost a smell, as of warm stone, a sharp dust of photons streaming down through space. Each grass-blade was pearled with vapor12. On the slopes above his path the trunks of the ashes and sycamores, a honey gold in the oblique13 sunlight, erected14 their dewy green vaults15 of young leaves; there was something mysteriously religious about them, but of a religion before religion; a druid balm, a green sweetness over all ... and such an infinity16 of greens, some almost black in the further recesses17 of the foliage18; from the most intense emerald to the palest pomona. A fox crossed his path and strangely for a moment stared, as if Charles was the intruder; and then a little later, with an uncanny similarity, with the same divine assumption of possession, a roe19 deer looked up from its browsing20; and stared in its small majesty21 before quietly turning tail and slipping away into the thickets22. There is a painting by Pisanello in the National Gallery that catches exactly such a moment: St. Hubert in an early Renaissance23 forest, confronted by birds and beasts. The saint is shocked, almost as if the victim of a practical joke, all his arrogance24 dowsed by a sudden drench25 of Nature’s profound-est secret: the universal parity26 of existence.
It was not only these two animals that seemed fraught27 with significance. The trees were dense28 with singing birds-blackcaps, whitethroats, thrushes, blackbirds, the cooing of woodpigeons, filling that windless dawn with the serenity29 of evening; yet without any of its sadness, its elegaic quality. Charles felt himself walking through the pages of a bestiary, and one of such beauty, such minute distinctness, that every leaf in it, each small bird, each song it uttered, came from a perfect world. He stopped a moment, so struck was he by this sense of an exquisitely30 particular universe, in which each was appointed, each unique. A tiny wren31 perched on top of a bramble not ten feet from him and trilled its violent song. He saw its glittering black eyes, the red and yellow of its song-gaped throat—a midget ball of feathers that yet managed to make itself the Announcing Angel of evolution: I am what I am, thou shall not pass my being now. He stood as Pisanel-lo’s saint stood, astonished perhaps more at his own astonish-ment at this world’s existing so close, so within reach of all that suffocating32 banality33 of ordinary day. In those few mo-ments of defiant34 song, any ordinary hour or place—and therefore the vast infinity of all Charles’s previous hours and places—seemed vulgarized, coarsened, made garish35. The ap-palling ennui36 of human reality lay cleft37 to the core; and the heart of all life pulsed there in the wren’s triumphant38 throat.
It seemed to announce a far deeper and stranger reality than the pseudo-Linnaean one that Charles had sensed on the beach that earlier morning—perhaps nothing more original than a priority of existence over death, of the individual over the species, of ecology over classification. We take such priorities for granted today; and we cannot imagine the hostile implications to Charles of the obscure message the wren was announcing. For it was less a profounder reality he seemed to see than universal chaos39, looming40 behind the fragile structure of human order.
There was a more immediate41 bitterness in this natural eucharist, since Charles felt in all ways excommunicated. He was shut out, all paradise lost. Again, he was like Sarah—he could stand here in Eden, but not enjoy it, and only envy the wren its ecstasy42.
He took the path formerly43 used by Sarah, which kept him out of sight of the Dairy. It was well that he did, since the sound of a pail being clattered44 warned him that the dairyman or his wife was up and about. So he came into the woods and went on his way with due earnestness. Some paranoiac45 trans-ference of guilt46 now made him feel that the trees, the flowers, even the inanimate things around him were watching him. Flowers became eyes, stones had ears, the trunks of the reproving trees were a numberless Greek chorus.
He came to where the path forked, and took the left branch. It ran down through dense undergrowth and over increasingly broken terrain47, for here the land was beginning to erode48. The sea came closer, a milky49 blue and infinitely50 calm. But the land leveled out a little over it, where a chain of small meadows had been won from the wilderness51; a hundred yards or so to the west of the last of these meadows, in a small gulley that eventually ran down to the cliff-edge, Charles saw the thatched roof of a barn. The thatch52 was mossy and derelict, which added to the already forlorn ap-pearance of the little stone building, nearer a hut than its name would suggest. Originally it had been some grazier’s summer dwelling53; now it was used by the dairyman for storing hay; today it is gone without trace, so badly has this land deteriorated54 during the last hundred years.
Charles stood and stared down at it. He had expected to see the figure of a woman there, and it made him even more nervous that the place seemed so deserted55. He walked down towards it, but rather like a man going through a jungle renowned56 for its tigers. He expected to be pounced57 on; and he was far from sure of his skill with his gun.
There was an old door, closed. Charles walked round the little building. To the east, a small square window; he peered through it into the shadows, and the faint musty-sweet smell of old hay crept up his nostrils58. He could see the beginning of a pile of it at the end of the barn opposite the door. He walked round the other walls. She was not there. He stared back the way he had come, thinking that he must have preceded her. But the rough land lay still in the early morning peace. He hesitated, took out his watch, and waited two or three minutes more, at a loss what to do. Finally he pushed open the door of the barn.
He made out a rough stone floor, and at the far end two or three broken stalls, filled with the hay that was still to be used. But it was difficult to see that far end, since sunlight lanced brilliantly in through the small window. Charles ad-vanced to the slanting59 bar of light; and then stopped with a sudden dread60. Beyond the light he could make out something hanging from a nail in an old stallpost: a black bonnet61. Perhaps because of his reading the previous night he had an icy premonition that some ghastly sight lay below the parti-tion of worm-eaten planks62 beyond the bonnet, which hung like an ominously63 slaked64 vampire65 over what he could not yet see. I do not know what he expected: some atrocious mutila-tion, a corpse8 ... he nearly turned and ran out of the barn and back to Lyme. But the ghost of a sound drew him forward. He craned fearfully over the partition.
1 prudence | |
n.谨慎,精明,节俭 | |
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2 inclination | |
n.倾斜;点头;弯腰;斜坡;倾度;倾向;爱好 | |
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3 cleansing | |
n. 净化(垃圾) adj. 清洁用的 动词cleanse的现在分词 | |
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4 pretension | |
n.要求;自命,自称;自负 | |
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5 curt | |
adj.简短的,草率的 | |
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6 symbolic | |
adj.象征性的,符号的,象征主义的 | |
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7 corpses | |
n.死尸,尸体( corpse的名词复数 ) | |
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8 corpse | |
n.尸体,死尸 | |
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9 concealed | |
a.隐藏的,隐蔽的 | |
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10 adage | |
n.格言,古训 | |
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11 complemented | |
有补助物的,有余格的 | |
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12 vapor | |
n.蒸汽,雾气 | |
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13 oblique | |
adj.斜的,倾斜的,无诚意的,不坦率的 | |
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14 ERECTED | |
adj. 直立的,竖立的,笔直的 vt. 使 ... 直立,建立 | |
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15 vaults | |
n.拱顶( vault的名词复数 );地下室;撑物跳高;墓穴 | |
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16 infinity | |
n.无限,无穷,大量 | |
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17 recesses | |
n.壁凹( recess的名词复数 );(工作或业务活动的)中止或暂停期间;学校的课间休息;某物内部的凹形空间v.把某物放在墙壁的凹处( recess的第三人称单数 );将(墙)做成凹形,在(墙)上做壁龛;休息,休会,休庭 | |
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18 foliage | |
n.叶子,树叶,簇叶 | |
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19 roe | |
n.鱼卵;獐鹿 | |
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20 browsing | |
v.吃草( browse的现在分词 );随意翻阅;(在商店里)随便看看;(在计算机上)浏览信息 | |
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21 majesty | |
n.雄伟,壮丽,庄严,威严;最高权威,王权 | |
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22 thickets | |
n.灌木丛( thicket的名词复数 );丛状物 | |
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23 renaissance | |
n.复活,复兴,文艺复兴 | |
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24 arrogance | |
n.傲慢,自大 | |
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25 drench | |
v.使淋透,使湿透 | |
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26 parity | |
n.平价,等价,比价,对等 | |
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27 fraught | |
adj.充满…的,伴有(危险等)的;忧虑的 | |
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28 dense | |
a.密集的,稠密的,浓密的;密度大的 | |
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29 serenity | |
n.宁静,沉着,晴朗 | |
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30 exquisitely | |
adv.精致地;强烈地;剧烈地;异常地 | |
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31 wren | |
n.鹪鹩;英国皇家海军女子服务队成员 | |
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32 suffocating | |
a.使人窒息的 | |
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33 banality | |
n.陈腐;平庸;陈词滥调 | |
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34 defiant | |
adj.无礼的,挑战的 | |
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35 garish | |
adj.华丽而俗气的,华而不实的 | |
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36 ennui | |
n.怠倦,无聊 | |
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37 cleft | |
n.裂缝;adj.裂开的 | |
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38 triumphant | |
adj.胜利的,成功的;狂欢的,喜悦的 | |
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39 chaos | |
n.混乱,无秩序 | |
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40 looming | |
n.上现蜃景(光通过低层大气发生异常折射形成的一种海市蜃楼)v.隐约出现,阴森地逼近( loom的现在分词 );隐约出现,阴森地逼近 | |
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41 immediate | |
adj.立即的;直接的,最接近的;紧靠的 | |
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42 ecstasy | |
n.狂喜,心醉神怡,入迷 | |
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43 formerly | |
adv.从前,以前 | |
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44 clattered | |
发出咔哒声(clatter的过去式与过去分词形式) | |
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45 paranoiac | |
n.偏执狂患者 | |
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46 guilt | |
n.犯罪;内疚;过失,罪责 | |
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47 terrain | |
n.地面,地形,地图 | |
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48 erode | |
v.侵蚀,腐蚀,使...减少、减弱或消失 | |
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49 milky | |
adj.牛奶的,多奶的;乳白色的 | |
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50 infinitely | |
adv.无限地,无穷地 | |
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51 wilderness | |
n.杳无人烟的一片陆地、水等,荒漠 | |
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52 thatch | |
vt.用茅草覆盖…的顶部;n.茅草(屋) | |
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53 dwelling | |
n.住宅,住所,寓所 | |
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54 deteriorated | |
恶化,变坏( deteriorate的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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55 deserted | |
adj.荒芜的,荒废的,无人的,被遗弃的 | |
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56 renowned | |
adj.著名的,有名望的,声誉鹊起的 | |
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57 pounced | |
v.突然袭击( pounce的过去式和过去分词 );猛扑;一眼看出;抓住机会(进行抨击) | |
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58 nostrils | |
鼻孔( nostril的名词复数 ) | |
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59 slanting | |
倾斜的,歪斜的 | |
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60 dread | |
vt.担忧,忧虑;惧怕,不敢;n.担忧,畏惧 | |
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61 bonnet | |
n.无边女帽;童帽 | |
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62 planks | |
(厚)木板( plank的名词复数 ); 政纲条目,政策要点 | |
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63 ominously | |
adv.恶兆地,不吉利地;预示地 | |
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64 slaked | |
v.满足( slake的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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65 vampire | |
n.吸血鬼 | |
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