书城外语英文爱藏:天使吻过那片海
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第43章 流年故事 (8)

我作为一个盲人,给你们视力正常的人们一个暗示,给那些充分利用眼睛的人提一个忠告:好好使用你的眼睛,就好像明天你就会突然变瞎。这样的办法也可使用于别的官能。认真地去聆听各种声响、鸟儿的鸣唱、管弦乐队铿锵的旋律,就好像你明天有可能变成聋子。去抚摸你想触及的那一切吧,就像明天你的触觉神经就要失灵一样;去嗅闻所有鲜花的芬芳,品尝每一口食物的滋味吧,如同明天你就再也不能闻也不能尝一样。充分发挥每一种官能的最大作用,为这个世界向你展示的多种多样的欢乐和美而高兴吧,这些美是通过大自然提供的各种接触的途径所获得的。不过在所有的官能中,我敢保证视力是最令人兴奋和高兴的。

心灵小语

只有3天的光明,却悟出了生命的哲理。

记忆填空

1. What__ , what experiences, what associations should we crowd into those last__ as mortal beings? What happiness should we find in reviewing the__ , what regrets?

2. On the__ day, I should want to see the people whose kindness and gentleness and companionship have made my life__ living.

3. Perhaps this short outline of how I should__ three days of sight does not agree__ the program you would set for yourself if you knew that you were about to be stricken__ .

佳句翻译

1. 正如人们不知道珍惜自己拥有的,直到失去了才明白它的价值一样。人们只有在病的时候,才意识到健康的好处。

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2. 黑暗将使他更加感激光明,寂静将告诉他声音的美妙。

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3. 我想利用这一天对整个世界的历程作一瞥。

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短语应用

1. Most of us, however, take life for granted.

take for granted:认为……理所当然

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2. The days stretch out in an endless vista.

stretch out:延伸;绵延

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梦中儿女

Dream Children

查尔斯·兰姆 / Charles Lamb

查尔斯·兰姆(1775—1834),英国最杰出的小品文作家、散文家。因家境贫寒,15岁便辍学谋生,供职于东印度公司长达32年之久。兰姆十分赞赏浪漫主义思潮中人性主义的主张,并把这些用于自己温情款款的个性化散文创作。同时,他也热爱城市生活,善于用敏锐独特的眼光捕捉市井生活中变幻的都市风情。他对英国文学的真正贡献来自于他后期的《伊里亚随笔》,其丰富的情趣和精妙的表述为兰姆赢得了英国散文创作中首屈一指的地位。

Children love to listen to stories about their elders, when they were children; to stretch their imagination to the conception of a traditionary great-uncle or great-aunt, whom they never saw. It was in this spirit that my little ones crept about me the other evening to hear about their great-grandmother Field, who lived in a great house in Norfolk (a hundred times bigger than that in which they and papa lived) which had been the scene — so at least it was generally believed in that part of the country — of the tragic incidents which they had lately become familiar with from the ballad of the Children in the Wood. Certain it is that the whole story of the children and their cruel uncle was to be seen fairly carved out in wood upon the chimney-piece of the great hall, the whole story down to the Robin Redbreasts; till a foolish rich person pulled it down to set up a marble one of modern invention in its stead, with no story upon it. Here Alice put out one of her dear mother’ s looks, too tender to be called upbraiding.

Then I went on to say, how religious and how good their great-grandmother Field was, how beloved and respected by everybody, though she was not indeed the mistress of this greenhouse, but had only the charge of it (and yet in some respects she might be said to be the mistress of it too) committed to her by the owner, who preferred living in a newer and more fashionable mansion which he had purchased somewhere in the adjoining county; but still she lived in it in a manner as if it had been her own, and kept up the dignity of the great house in a sort while she lived, which afterwards came to decay, and was nearly pulled down, and all its old ornaments stripped and carried away to the owner’ s other house, where they were set up, and looked as awkward as if some one were to carry away the old tombs they had seen lately at the Abbey, and stick them up in Lady C.’ s tawdry gilt drawing-room. Here John smiled, as much as to say, “that would be foolish indeed.” And then I told how, when she came to die, her funeral was attended by a concourse of all the poor, and some of the gentry too, of the neighborhood for many miles round, to show their respect for her memory, because she had been such a good and religious woman’ s good indeed that she knew all the Psaltery by heart, aye, and a great part of the Testament besides. Here little Alice spread her hands.

Then I told what a tall, upright, graceful person their great-grandmother Field once was; and how in her youth she was esteemed the best dancer — here Alice’ s little right foot played an involuntary movement, till upon my looking grave, it desisted — the best dancer, I was saying, in the county, till a cruel disease, called a cancer, came, and bowed her down with pain; but it could never bend her good spirits, or make them stoop, but they were still upright, because she was so good and religious. Then I told how she was used to sleep by herself in a lone chamber of the great lone house; and how she believed that an apparition of two infants was to be seen at midnight gliding up and down the great staircase near where she slept, but she said “hose innocents would do her no harm;” and how frightened used to be, though in those days I had my maid to sleep with me, because I was never half so good or religious as she — and yet I never saw the infants. Here John expanded all his eyebrows and tried to look courageous.