英語口語大師 The Sounds of English-英格蘭之聲

The sounds of England, the tinkle of the hammer on the anvil in the country smithy, the corncrake on a dewy morning, the sound of the scythe against the whetstone, and the sight of a plough team coming over the brow of a hill, for centuries the one eternal sight of England. The wild anemones in the woods in April, the last load at night of hay being drawn down a lane as the twilight comes on, when you can scarcely distinguish the figures of the horses as they take it home to the farm, and above all, most subtle, most penetrating and most moving, the smell of wood smoke coming up in an autumn evening, the wood smoke that our ancestors, tens of thousands of years ago, must have caught on the air when they were coming home with the results of the day’s forage, when they were still nomads, and they were still roaming the forests and the plains of the continent of Europe. These things strike down into the very depths of our nature, and touch chords that with every year of our life sound a deeper note in our innermost being.
    tinkle  n. 叮叮當(dāng)當(dāng)?shù)捻懧?v. 叮當(dāng)作響
    anvil  n. 鐵砧
    smithy  n. 鐵鋪
    corncrake  n. 秧雞
    dewy  adj. 帶露水的
    scythe  n. 鐮刀
    whetstone  n. 磨刀石
    eternal  adj. 永恒的
    anemone  n. 野蓮花
    twilight n. 黎明
    scarcely  adv. 幾乎不
    distinguish  v. 辨認(rèn)
    subtle  adj. 微妙的
    penetrating  adj. （指聲音、喊聲等）尖銳的
    ancestor  n. 祖先
    forage  n. 草料
    nomad  n. 游牧民
    roam v. 徜徉
    chord  n. 弦
    innermost  adj. 內(nèi)心最深處的
    英格蘭之聲，是鄉(xiāng)村鐵匠鋪里鐵砧上錘子的叮當(dāng)聲，是露珠欲滴的清晨秧雞的鳴啼聲，是磨刀石上鐮刀的霍霍聲，山梁上走過一隊(duì)犁地的農(nóng)夫，這是許多世紀(jì)里英格蘭的永恒景象。四月里森林中野生的銀蓮花，黎明時(shí)分最后一趟滿載夜草的車行進(jìn)在小路上，那時(shí)你簡直辯認(rèn)不出馬的身影，農(nóng)夫們正趕著它駛向農(nóng)莊。然而最微妙莫測 、沁人肺腑，動(dòng)人心弦的還是秋日黃昏時(shí)分裊裊升起的柴煙的氣味。遠(yuǎn)在幾萬年前，當(dāng)我們的祖先作為游牧民還游歷在歐洲大陸的森林和原野的時(shí)候，當(dāng)他們帶著一天收獲來的草料回家的時(shí)候，他們肯定都看到過那木柴的清煙。這些東西深深地烙進(jìn)了我們的性格，撥動(dòng)著我 們的心弦，并伴隨著我們的生命年復(fù)一年地從我們心靈的最深處發(fā)出一個(gè)益發(fā)深沉的和聲。