It seemed good to be a monk1, if life could be all sunshine, and quietude, and beauty like that. As you waited in the shadow of the great stone-flagged portico2, while your coming was announced, this feeling grew deeper with every moment. The garden sloped down to the river’s edge, winding3 footway, and green lawn, and kitchen-plot all alike girdled and barricaded4 with rich-hued autumn flowers. Through the mass of crimson5 fuchsia and many-coloured dahlia and hollyhock, bowers6 of pink and white geranium with stems as thick as your wrist, ancient apple-trees drooping7 under their burden of scarlet8 fruit, crowding jungles of roses, you could see the bright waters sweeping9 by, and hear their busy sound as they won a way amidst the rocky boulders10 strewing11 the bed of the tortuous12 Devon stream.
Here and there in the sunny field-of-view visible through the arched doorway13, black-robed figures were quietly at work: some digging; others gathering14 apples in the orchard15; one sturdy brother was mowing16 the Abbot’s lawn, the bright blade coming perilously17 near his fluttering skirts at every stroke; another went by trundling a wheelbarrow full of green vegetables for the refectory table. There was a distant cackle of poultry18, blending oddly with the solemn chant that came from the chapel19 hard by. Robins20 sang everywhere, and starlings clucked and whistled in the valerian that topped the great encircling wall. But wherever you looked, whatever drew away your attention for the moment, you were sure to come back to the consideration of one preponderant yet inexplicable21 thing. A steady, deep note was upon the air. Rich and resonant22, it seemed to come from all directions at once. The dim, grey-vaulted entrance-porch was full of it. Looking up into the dusk of oaken beams overhead, there it seemed at its strangest and loudest. Queerest fact of all, it appeared to have some mysterious affinity23 with the sunshine, for when a stray white argosy of cloud came drifting over the azure24 and obscured for a minute the glad light, this full, sonorous25 note died suddenly away, rising as swiftly again to its old power and volume when the sunbeams glowed back once more over the spacious26 garden, and over the riverside willows27 that shed their gold of dying leafage with every breath of the soft south wind.
It was not until you stepped outside, and looked upward over the face of the old building, that you realised what it all meant. From its foundation to the highest stone of the ancient bell-turret, the whole front of the place was thickly mantled28 with ivy29 in full flower, and every yellow tuft of blossom was besieged30 with bees. There seemed tens of thousands of them, hovering31 and humming everywhere; and thousands more arriving with every moment out of the blue air, or darting32 off again fully33 laden34, and away to some invisible bourne over the ruddy roof of orchard trees.
Intent on this vociferous35 wonder, you do not catch the footfall on the gravel-path in your rear, or see the sombre figure of the Abbot as he comes towards you, the sweep of his black frock setting all the marigolds nodding behind him, as though from a sudden flaw of wind. And now you have another pleasurable disillusionment as to monkish36 conditions of being. Trudging37 along the deep-cut Devonshire lanes on your way to the Abbey, through the rain of falling autumn leaves, you pictured the place to yourself as a kind of sacred sink of desolation, inhabited by a crew of sour-visaged anchorites, who found only godlessness in sunshine, and in cakes-and-ale nothing but assured perdition. But here, coming towards you, smiling, and with outstretched hand, is the last kind of human being you expected to see. Clad from head to foot in sober black, with, for ornament38, but the one plain silver cross swinging at his breast, the Abbot shows, unmistakably, for a gentleman of cultured and enlightened mien39. A fine, swarthy face, kind, calm eyes behind gold spectacles, a voice like an old violin, and a grip of the hand that makes you wince40 with its abounding41 welcome, all combine to set you there and then at your ease; and talk begins at once on the old, familiar plane among bee-keepers—the quick, enthusiastic interchange, each participant as ready a listener as learner, common all the world over, wherever flowers grow and men love bees.
The brothers of the old Benedictine monastery—so the Abbot tells you, as he leads the way towards the hives, through the sun-riddled labyrinth—have kept bees, probably, for more than a thousand years. There is no doubt that the original abbey building stood there, in the wooded cleft42 of Devon valley, so long ago as the sixth century, nor little question that its founder43 was a bee-man, for he was contemporary and friend of the great St Modonnoc who himself first taught Irishmen to keep bees.
“Monks44, in the very earliest times, were almost invariably apiculturists,” argues the Abbot. He stops in the orchard, the more impressively to quote Latin, the glib45 leaf-shadows playing the while over his tonsured46 head. “Lac et mel; panis, vena rudis. Milk and honey, and coarse oaten bread. At least we know, from our chronicles, that these were the common daily fare of our Order more than eight hundred years ago; and honey remains47 a part of our food to this day.”
Thus overawed with the centuries, you begin to form a mental picture of the bee-garden you are about to visit, voyaging so pleasantly through winding path and shady thicket48, with the bell-like sound of the water growing clearer and clearer at every step. With all that hoary49 tradition of the ages behind them, you promise yourself, these monks will have clung to their bee-keeping mediævalism as to some sacred, inviolable thing. There will be no movable comb-frames, nor American sections, nor weird50, foreign races of bees. They will never have heard even of foul-brood, or napthol-beta, or the host of things that bless or curse modern apiculture at every turn of the way. But, instead, there will be a tangled51 wilderness52 of late blossom, such as only Devonshire can show in November; dome-shaped hives of straw, each with its singing company about it; perhaps a superannuated53 brother or two quietly making straw hackles to shield the hives against coming winter weather; even, perchance, the smell of burning brimstone on the air, as the last remnant of the honey-harvest is gathered in the ancient way, by “taking up” the strongest and the weakest colonies of bees.
And then a wicket-gate in the old wall determines the path and your ruminations together. A sudden burst of sunshine; the rich medley54 of sound from fourscore hives lifting high above the song of the purling stream; and you are out on the broad, green river-bank, looking on at a scene very different from the one you have expected.
There are no old-fashioned hives; they are all of the latest, most scientific pattern, ranged under the shelter of the wall in two wide terraces of close-shaven turf, looking southward over the stream. There are outhouses of the most approved design, where all the business of a modern apiary55 is going on. Here and there you see black-frocked figures at work, dexterously56 examining the colonies. There is the deep, whirring note of honey-extractors; the clamour of carpenters’ tools; the faint, sickly smell from the wax-boilers; all the familiar evidences of bee-farming carried on in the most modern, twentieth-century way.
As you look down the long, trim avenue of gaily-painted hives your companion has a quiet side-glance upon you, obviously noting your disappointment.
“What would you?” says he, and his deep voice rings like a passing-bell for all your dreams. “Everything must move with the times, or must inevitably57 perish. Modernism, rightly understood, is God’s fairest, most priceless gift to the universe. It is a crucible58 through which all things of true metal must pass to lose the accumulated dross59 of the ages, keeping their original pure substance, but taking the new shape required of them by latter-day needs. It is so with the old, dim windows of man’s faith; daily the glass is being taken out, smelted60 down, purified, replaced; we can see abroad into distances now never before visible. And so it must prove even with bee-keeping, which is one of the oldest human occupations in the world.”
He waves his hand towards the sunny prospect61 before you. Beyond the river the burning apple-woods soar steadily62 upward; and high above these, stretching away to meet the blue sky, lie the Devon moorlands, once all rose-red with blossoming heather, but now, parched63 and brown, except where a grey crag or rock puts forth64 its jagged head.
“It is a fine thing, perhaps,” says the Abbot, thoughtfully swinging his silver cross in the sunbeams, “to love old, ignorant customs, old, benighted65, useless errors, for their picturesqueness66 and beauty alone. But don’t you think it is a still finer thing to teach poor people how they may win from the common hillside plenty of rich, nourishing food at almost no cost at all? And that is what we are doing here. Modern bee-science, it is true, gives us only an ugly utilitarian67 hive. It sweeps away all the bright, iridescent68 cobwebs in they path of bee-keeping, and substitutes hard fact for pretty fairy-tale. But the sum of it all is that the poor cottager gains, not twenty or thirty pounds at most of coarse, unsaleable sweet food from his hives, but perhaps hundredweights of pure, choice, section-honey, which, sold in the proper market, will clothe his children comfortably, and make it possible for them to lead decent human lives.”
点击收听单词发音
1 monk | |
n.和尚,僧侣,修道士 | |
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2 portico | |
n.柱廊,门廊 | |
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3 winding | |
n.绕,缠,绕组,线圈 | |
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4 barricaded | |
设路障于,以障碍物阻塞( barricade的过去式和过去分词 ); 设路障[防御工事]保卫或固守 | |
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5 crimson | |
n./adj.深(绯)红色(的);vi.脸变绯红色 | |
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6 bowers | |
n.(女子的)卧室( bower的名词复数 );船首锚;阴凉处;鞠躬的人 | |
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7 drooping | |
adj. 下垂的,无力的 动词droop的现在分词 | |
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8 scarlet | |
n.深红色,绯红色,红衣;adj.绯红色的 | |
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9 sweeping | |
adj.范围广大的,一扫无遗的 | |
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10 boulders | |
n.卵石( boulder的名词复数 );巨砾;(受水或天气侵蚀而成的)巨石;漂砾 | |
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11 strewing | |
v.撒在…上( strew的现在分词 );散落于;点缀;撒满 | |
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12 tortuous | |
adj.弯弯曲曲的,蜿蜒的 | |
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13 doorway | |
n.门口,(喻)入门;门路,途径 | |
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14 gathering | |
n.集会,聚会,聚集 | |
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15 orchard | |
n.果园,果园里的全部果树,(美俚)棒球场 | |
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16 mowing | |
n.割草,一次收割量,牧草地v.刈,割( mow的现在分词 ) | |
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17 perilously | |
adv.充满危险地,危机四伏地 | |
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18 poultry | |
n.家禽,禽肉 | |
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19 chapel | |
n.小教堂,殡仪馆 | |
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20 robins | |
n.知更鸟,鸫( robin的名词复数 );(签名者不分先后,以避免受责的)圆形签名抗议书(或请愿书) | |
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21 inexplicable | |
adj.无法解释的,难理解的 | |
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22 resonant | |
adj.(声音)洪亮的,共鸣的 | |
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23 affinity | |
n.亲和力,密切关系 | |
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24 azure | |
adj.天蓝色的,蔚蓝色的 | |
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25 sonorous | |
adj.响亮的,回响的;adv.圆润低沉地;感人地;n.感人,堂皇 | |
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26 spacious | |
adj.广阔的,宽敞的 | |
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27 willows | |
n.柳树( willow的名词复数 );柳木 | |
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28 mantled | |
披着斗篷的,覆盖着的 | |
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29 ivy | |
n.常青藤,常春藤 | |
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30 besieged | |
包围,围困,围攻( besiege的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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31 hovering | |
鸟( hover的现在分词 ); 靠近(某事物); (人)徘徊; 犹豫 | |
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32 darting | |
v.投掷,投射( dart的现在分词 );向前冲,飞奔 | |
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33 fully | |
adv.完全地,全部地,彻底地;充分地 | |
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34 laden | |
adj.装满了的;充满了的;负了重担的;苦恼的 | |
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35 vociferous | |
adj.喧哗的,大叫大嚷的 | |
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36 monkish | |
adj.僧侣的,修道士的,禁欲的 | |
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37 trudging | |
vt.& vi.跋涉,吃力地走(trudge的现在分词形式) | |
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38 ornament | |
v.装饰,美化;n.装饰,装饰物 | |
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39 mien | |
n.风采;态度 | |
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40 wince | |
n.畏缩,退避,(因痛苦,苦恼等)面部肌肉抽动;v.畏缩,退缩,退避 | |
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41 abounding | |
adj.丰富的,大量的v.大量存在,充满,富于( abound的现在分词 ) | |
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42 cleft | |
n.裂缝;adj.裂开的 | |
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43 Founder | |
n.创始者,缔造者 | |
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44 monks | |
n.修道士,僧侣( monk的名词复数 ) | |
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45 glib | |
adj.圆滑的,油嘴滑舌的 | |
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46 tonsured | |
v.剃( tonsure的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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47 remains | |
n.剩余物,残留物;遗体,遗迹 | |
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48 thicket | |
n.灌木丛,树林 | |
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49 hoary | |
adj.古老的;鬓发斑白的 | |
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50 weird | |
adj.古怪的,离奇的;怪诞的,神秘而可怕的 | |
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51 tangled | |
adj. 纠缠的,紊乱的 动词tangle的过去式和过去分词 | |
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52 wilderness | |
n.杳无人烟的一片陆地、水等,荒漠 | |
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53 superannuated | |
adj.老朽的,退休的;v.因落后于时代而废除,勒令退学 | |
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54 medley | |
n.混合 | |
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55 apiary | |
n.养蜂场,蜂房 | |
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56 dexterously | |
adv.巧妙地,敏捷地 | |
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57 inevitably | |
adv.不可避免地;必然发生地 | |
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58 crucible | |
n.坩锅,严酷的考验 | |
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59 dross | |
n.渣滓;无用之物 | |
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60 smelted | |
v.熔炼,提炼(矿石)( smelt的过去式和过去分词 );合演( costar的过去式和过去分词 );闻到;嗅出 | |
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61 prospect | |
n.前景,前途;景色,视野 | |
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62 steadily | |
adv.稳定地;不变地;持续地 | |
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63 parched | |
adj.焦干的;极渴的;v.(使)焦干 | |
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64 forth | |
adv.向前;向外,往外 | |
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65 benighted | |
adj.蒙昧的 | |
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66 picturesqueness | |
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67 utilitarian | |
adj.实用的,功利的 | |
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68 iridescent | |
adj.彩虹色的,闪色的 | |
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