But it was neither these things nor cherished traditions that gave the room its finest charm. It was filled with the glory of the sea. There was no need of painted pictures. Living nature hung framed in wide high windows through which drifted in the distant boom of surf on the rocks, and salt breezes perfumed with cassia.
Outside, round about, there was far more. A broad door led by a flight of stone steps to the couchlike roots of a gigantic turpentine-tree whose deep shade harbored birds of every hue7. To me, sitting there, the island's old Carib name of Aye-Aye seemed the eternal consent of God to some seraph8 asking for this ocean pearl. All that poet or prophet had ever said of heaven became comprehensible in its daily transfigurations of light and color scintillated9 between wave, landscape, and cloud--its sea like unto crystal, and the trees bearing all manner of fruits. Grace and fragrance10 everywhere: fruits crimson, gold, and purple; fishes blue, orange, pink; shells of rose and pearl. Distant hills, clouds of sunset and dawn, sky and stream, leaf and flower, bird and butterfly, repeated the splendor11, while round all palpitated the wooing rhythm of the sea's mysterious tides.
The beach! Along its landward edge the plumed12 palms stood sentinel, rustling13 to the lipping waters and to the curious note of the Thibet-trees, sounding their long dry pods like castanets in the evening breeze. By the water's margin14, and in its shoals and depths, what treasures of the underworld! Here a sponge, with stem bearing five cups; there a sea-fan, large enough for a Titan's use yet delicate enough to be a mermaid's. Red-lipped shells; mystical eye-stones; shell petals15 heaped in rocky nooks like rose leaves; and, moving among these in grotesque16 leisure, crabs17 of a brilliance18 and variety to tax the painter. All the rector told of a fallen world seemed but idle words when the sunset glory was too much for human vision and the young heart trembled before its ineffable19 suggestions.
I often rode a pony20. If we turned inland our way was on a road double-lined with cocoa palms, or up some tangled21 dell where a silvery cascade22 leaped through the deep verdure. On one side the tall mahogany dropped its woody pears. On another, sand-box and calabash trees rattled23 their huge fruit like warring savages24. Here the banyan25 hung its ropes and yonder the tamarind waved its feathery streamers. Here was the rubber-tree, here the breadfruit. Now and then a clump26 of the manchineel weighted the air with the fragrance of its poisonous apples, the banana rustled27, or the bamboo tossed its graceful28 canes29. Beside some stream we might espy30 black washerwomen beetling31 their washing. Or, reaching the summit of Blue Mountain, we might look down, eleven hundred feet, on the vast Caribbean dotted with islands, and, nearer by, on breakers curling in noble bays or foaming32 under rocky cliffs. Northward33, the wilderness34; eastward35, green fields of sugar-cane paling and darkling in the breeze; southward, the wide harbor of Fredericksted, the town, and the black, red-shirted boatmen pushing about the harbor; westward36, the setting sun; and presently, everywhere, the swift fall of the tropical night, with lights beginning to twinkle in the town and the boats in the roadstead to leave long wakes of phosphorescent light.
Of course nature had also her bad habits. There were sharks in the sea, and venomous things ashore37, and there were the earthquake and the hurricane. Every window and door had heavy shutters38 armed with bars, rings, and ropes that came swiftly into use whenever between July and October the word ran through the town, "The barometer's falling." Then candles and lamps were lighted indoors, and there was happy excitement for a courageous39 child. I would beg hard to have a single pair of shutters held slightly open by two persons ready to shut them in a second, and so snatched glimpses of the tortured, flying clouds and writhing40 trees, while old Si' Myra, one of the freed slaves who never had left us, crouched41 in a corner and muttered:
"Lo'd sabe us! Lo'd sabe us!"
Once I saw a handsome brig which had failed to leave the harbor soon enough stagger in upon the rocks where it seemed her masts might fall into our own grounds, and grandmamma told me that thus my father, though born in the island, had first met my mother.
点击收听单词发音
1 sordid | |
adj.肮脏的,不干净的,卑鄙的,暗淡的 | |
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2 trickled | |
v.滴( trickle的过去式和过去分词 );淌;使)慢慢走;缓慢移动 | |
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3 crimson | |
n./adj.深(绯)红色(的);vi.脸变绯红色 | |
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4 oozing | |
v.(浓液等)慢慢地冒出,渗出( ooze的现在分词 );使(液体)缓缓流出;(浓液)渗出,慢慢流出 | |
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5 porous | |
adj.可渗透的,多孔的 | |
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6 ware | |
n.(常用复数)商品,货物 | |
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7 hue | |
n.色度;色调;样子 | |
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8 seraph | |
n.六翼天使 | |
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9 scintillated | |
v.(言谈举止中)焕发才智( scintillate的过去式和过去分词 );谈笑洒脱;闪耀;闪烁 | |
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10 fragrance | |
n.芬芳,香味,香气 | |
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11 splendor | |
n.光彩;壮丽,华丽;显赫,辉煌 | |
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12 plumed | |
饰有羽毛的 | |
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13 rustling | |
n. 瑟瑟声,沙沙声 adj. 发沙沙声的 | |
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14 margin | |
n.页边空白;差额;余地,余裕;边,边缘 | |
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15 petals | |
n.花瓣( petal的名词复数 ) | |
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16 grotesque | |
adj.怪诞的,丑陋的;n.怪诞的图案,怪人(物) | |
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17 crabs | |
n.蟹( crab的名词复数 );阴虱寄生病;蟹肉v.捕蟹( crab的第三人称单数 ) | |
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18 brilliance | |
n.光辉,辉煌,壮丽,(卓越的)才华,才智 | |
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19 ineffable | |
adj.无法表达的,不可言喻的 | |
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20 pony | |
adj.小型的;n.小马 | |
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21 tangled | |
adj. 纠缠的,紊乱的 动词tangle的过去式和过去分词 | |
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22 cascade | |
n.小瀑布,喷流;层叠;vi.成瀑布落下 | |
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23 rattled | |
慌乱的,恼火的 | |
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24 savages | |
未开化的人,野蛮人( savage的名词复数 ) | |
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25 banyan | |
n.菩提树,榕树 | |
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26 clump | |
n.树丛,草丛;vi.用沉重的脚步行走 | |
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27 rustled | |
v.发出沙沙的声音( rustle的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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28 graceful | |
adj.优美的,优雅的;得体的 | |
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29 canes | |
n.(某些植物,如竹或甘蔗的)茎( cane的名词复数 );(用于制作家具等的)竹竿;竹杖 | |
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30 espy | |
v.(从远处等)突然看到 | |
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31 beetling | |
adj.突出的,悬垂的v.快速移动( beetle的现在分词 ) | |
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32 foaming | |
adj.布满泡沫的;发泡 | |
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33 northward | |
adv.向北;n.北方的地区 | |
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34 wilderness | |
n.杳无人烟的一片陆地、水等,荒漠 | |
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35 eastward | |
adv.向东;adj.向东的;n.东方,东部 | |
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36 westward | |
n.西方,西部;adj.西方的,向西的;adv.向西 | |
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37 ashore | |
adv.在(向)岸上,上岸 | |
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38 shutters | |
百叶窗( shutter的名词复数 ); (照相机的)快门 | |
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39 courageous | |
adj.勇敢的,有胆量的 | |
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40 writhing | |
(因极度痛苦而)扭动或翻滚( writhe的现在分词 ) | |
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41 crouched | |
v.屈膝,蹲伏( crouch的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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