现代大学英语精读4 Unit2 Spring Sowing原文
更新时间:2023-12-08 20:00:01 阅读量: 教育文库 文档下载
- 现代大学英语精读4电子版推荐度:
- 相关推荐
Spring Sowing
It was still dark when Martin Delaney and his wife Mary got up. Martin stood in his shirt by the window, rubbing his eyes and yawning, while Mary raked out the live coals that had lain hidden in the ashes on the hearth all night. Outside, cocks were crowing and a white streak was rising form the ground, as it were, and beginning to scatter the darkness. It was a February morning, dry, cold and starry.
The couple sat down to their breakfast of tea, bread and butter, in silence. They had only been married the previous autumn and it was hateful leaving a warm bed at such and early hour. Martin, with his brown hair and eyes, his freckled face and his little fair moustache, looked too young to be married, and his wife looked hardly more than a girl, red-cheeked and blue-eyed, her black hair piled at the rear of her head with a large comb gleaming in the middle of the pile, Spanish fashion. They were both dressed in rough homespuns, and both wore the loose white shirt that Inverara peasants use for work in the fields.
They ate in silence, sleepy and yet on fire with excitement, for it was the first day of their first spring sowing as man and wife. And each felt the glamour of that day on which they were to open up the earth together and plant seeds in it. But somehow the imminence of an event that had been long expected loved, feared and prepared for made them dejected. Mary, with her shrewd woman's mind, thought of as many things as there are in life as a woman would in the first joy and anxiety of her mating. But Martin's mind was fixed on one thought. Would he be able to prove himself a man
worthy of being the head of a family by dong his spring sowing well?
In the barn after breakfast, when they were getting the potato seeds and the line for measuring the ground and the spade, Martin fell over a basket in the half-darkness of the barn, he swore and said that a man would be better off dead than.. But before he could finish whatever he was going to say, Mary had her arms around his waist and her face to his. \And there was a tremor in her voice. And somehow, as they embraced, all their irritation and sleepiness left them. And they stood there embracing until at last Martin pushed her from him with pretended roughness and said: \sunset before we begin at this rate.\
Still, as they walked silently in their rawhide shoes through the little hamlet, there was not a soul about. Lights were glimmering in the windows of a few cabins. The sky had a big grey crack in it in the east, as if it were going to burst in order to give birth to the sun. Birds were singing somewhere at a distance. Martin and Mary rested their baskets of seeds on a fence outside the village and Martin whispered to Mary proudly: \the centre of their world, with throbbing hearts. For the joy of spring had now taken complete hold of them.
They reached the little field where they were to sow. It was a little triangular patch of ground under an ivy-covered limestone hill. The little field had been manured with seaweed some weeks before, and the weeds had rotted and whitened on the grass. And there was a big red heap of fresh seaweed lying in a corner by the fence to be spread
under the seeds as they were laid. Martin, in spite of the cold, threw off everything above his waist except his striped woolen shirt. Then he spat on his hands, seized his spade and cried: \\
\what kind of a man I have got.\
The work began. Martin measured the ground by the southern fence for the first ridge, a strip of ground four feet wide, and he placed the line along the edge and pegged it at each end. Then he spread fresh seaweed over the strip. Mary filled her apron with seeds and began to lay them in rows. When she was a little distance down the ridge, Martin advanced with his spade to the head, eager to commence.
\\running up to him .Her fingers outside her woolen mittens were numb with the cold, and she couldn't wipe them in her apron. Her cheeks seemed to be on fire. She put an arm round Martin's waist and stood looking at the green sod his spade was going to cut, with the excitement of a little child.
\like this in the field of our spring sowing, what would they take us for but a pair of useless, soft, empty-headed people that would be sure to die of hunger? Huh!\He spoke very rapidly, and his eyes were fixed on the ground before hm. His eyes had a wild, eager light in them as if some primeval impulse were burning within his brain
and driving out every other desire but that of asserting his manhood and of subjugating the earth.
\and gazed distantly at the ground. Then Martin cut the sod, and pressing the spade deep into the earth with his foot, he turned up the first sod with a crunching sound as the grass roots were dragged out of the earth. Mary sighed and walked back hurriedly to her seeds with furrowed brows. She picked up her seeds and began to spread them rapidly to drive out the sudden terror that had seized her at that moment when she saw the fierce, hard look in her husband's eyes that were unconscious of her presence. She became suddenly afraid of that pitiless, cruel earth, the peasant's slave master that would keep her chained to hard work and poverty all her life until she would sink again into its bosom. Her short-lived love was gone. Henceforth she was only her husband's helper to till the earth. And Martin, absolutely without thought, worked furiously, covering the ridge with block earth, his sharp spade gleaming white as he whirled it sideways to beat the sods.
Then, as the sun rose,the little valley beneath the ivy-covered hills became dotted with white shirts, and everywhere men worked madly, without speaking, and women spread seeds. There was no heat in the light of the sun, and there was a sharpness in the still thin air that made the men jump on their spade halts ferociously and beat the sods as if they were living enemies. Birds hopped silently before the spades, with their heads cocked sideways, watching for worms. Made brave by hunger, they often dashed under the spades to secure their food.
Then, when the sun reached a certain point, all the women went back to the village to get dinner for their men, and the men worked on without stopping.Then the women returned,almost running, each carrying a tin can with a flannel tied around it and a little bundle tied with a white cloth, Martin threw down his spade when Mary arrived back in the field. Smiling at one another they sat under the hill for their meal .It was the same as their breakfast, tea and bread and butter.
\anything in this world as fine as eating dinner out in the open like this after doing a good morning's work? There, I have done two ridges and a half. That's more than any man in the village could do. Ha!\
\it lovely,\said Mary, looking at the back ridges wistfully. She was just munching her bread and butter .The hurried trip to the village and the trouble of getting the tea ready had robbed her of her appetite. She had to keep blowing at the turf fire with the rim of her skirt, and the smoke nearly blinded her. But now, sitting on that grassy knoll, with the valley all round glistening with fresh seaweed and a light smoke rising from the freshly turned earth, a strange joy swept over her. It overpowered that other felling of dread that had been with her during the morning. Martin ate heartily, reveling in his great thirst and his great hunger, with every pore of his body open to the pure air. And he looked around at his neighbors' fields boastfully, comparing them with his own. Then he looked at his wife's little round black head and felt very proud of having her as his own. He leaned back on his elbow and took her hand in his. Shyly and in silence, not knowing what to say and ashamed of their gentle
feelings, they finished eating and still sat hand in hand looking away intothe distance. Everywhere the sowers were resting on little knolls, men,women and children sitting in silence. And the great calm of nature in spring filled the atmosphere around them. Everything seemed to sit still and wait until midday had passed. Only the gleaming sun chased westwards at a mighty pace, in and out through white clouds.
Then in a distant field an old man got up, took his spade and began to clean the earth from it with a piece of stone. Therasping noise carried a long way in the silence. That was the signal for a general rising all along the little valley. Young men stretched themselves and yawned. They walked slowly back to their ridges.
Martin's back and his wrists were getting sore, and Mary felt that if she stooped again over her seeds her neck would break, but neither said anything and soon they had forgotten their tiredness in the mechanical movement of their bodies. The strong smell of the upturned earth acted like a drug on their nerves.
In the afternoon, when the sun was strongest, the old men of the village came out to look attheir people sowing. Martin's grandfather, almost bent double over his thick stick stoppedin the land outside the field and groaning loudly, he leaned over the fence.
“God bless the work,\
\'Ha!\They are beginning well.\
It was fifty years since he had begun with his Mary, full of hope and pride, and the
merciless soil had hugged them to its bosom ever since, each spring without rest. Today, theold man, with his huge red nose and the spotted handkerchief tied around his skull underhis black soft felt hat, watched his grandson work and gave him advice. \cut your sods so long,\would wheeze,\are putting too much soil on your ridge.\
''Ah woman! Don't plant a seed so near the edge. The stalk will come out sideways.\And they paid no heed to him.
\the old man,\my young days, when men worked from morning tillnight without tasting food, better work was done. But of course it can't be expected to bethe same now. The breed is getting weaker. So it is.\
Then he began to cough in his chest and hobbled away to another field where his son Michael was working.
By sundown Martin had five ridges finished. He threw down his spade and stretched himself. All his bones ached and he wanted to lie down and rest. \home, Mary,\
Mary straightened herself, but she was too tired to reply. She looked at Martin wearily and it seemed to her that it was a great many years since they had set out that morning. Then she thought of the journey home and the trouble of feeding the pigs, putting the fowls into their coops and getting the supper ready, and a momentary flash of rebellion against the slavery of being a peasant's wife crossed her mind. It passed in a moment. Martin was saying,as he dressed himself:
\as a steel rod. By God Mary, it's no boasting to say that you might well be proud of being the wife of Martin Delaney. And that's not sayingthe whole of it ,my girl. You did your share better than any woman in Inverara could do it this blessed day.\They stood for a few moments in silence, looking at the work they had done. All her dissatisfaction and weariness vanished form Mary's mind with the delicious feeling of comfort that overcame her at having done this work with her husband. They had done it together. They had planted seeds in the earth. The next day and the next and all their lives, when spring came they would have to bend their backs and do it until their hands and bones got twisted with rheumatism. But night would always bring sleep and forgetfulness.
As they walked home slowly, Martin walked in front with another peasant talking about the sowing, and Mary walked behind, with her eyes on the ground, thinking. Cows were lowing at a distance.
正在阅读:
现代大学英语精读4 Unit2 Spring Sowing原文12-08
基于eda的课程设计 自动售货机控制设计05-11
叙述国标系列活塞式制冷压缩机产生湿冲程故障与排除方法04-11
互联网+包装设计行业研究报告04-14
2020年工信局“七五”普法工作总结08-31
八年级物理上册第一章第1节长度和时间的测量导学案新版新人教版03-22
- exercise2
- 铅锌矿详查地质设计 - 图文
- 厨余垃圾、餐厨垃圾堆肥系统设计方案
- 陈明珠开题报告
- 化工原理精选例题
- 政府形象宣传册营销案例
- 小学一至三年级语文阅读专项练习题
- 2014.民诉 期末考试 复习题
- 巅峰智业 - 做好顶层设计对建设城市的重要意义
- (三起)冀教版三年级英语上册Unit4 Lesson24练习题及答案
- 2017年实心轮胎现状及发展趋势分析(目录)
- 基于GIS的农用地定级技术研究定稿
- 2017-2022年中国医疗保健市场调查与市场前景预测报告(目录) - 图文
- 作业
- OFDM技术仿真(MATLAB代码) - 图文
- Android工程师笔试题及答案
- 生命密码联合密码
- 空间地上权若干法律问题探究
- 江苏学业水平测试《机械基础》模拟试题
- 选课走班实施方案
- 精读
- 大学英语
- 原文
- Spring
- Sowing
- 现代
- Unit2
- 土地一级开发协议(新1)
- 中国企业与国外LED封装技术的差异概述LED产业链总体分为上
- 用友ERP-U8案例分析
- 守德崇新 逐利思义
- Linux实验5答案
- 11-教师与留守儿童家长的联系制度
- 第七章热力学基础2007 - 图文
- 常见能愿动词的用法总结
- 北师大八年级下册第六章《平行四边形》检测题(B)含答案
- 金融工程 相关习题及答案
- 金蝶K3总账、报表用户手册
- 热处理原理与工艺课程试题
- C语言二级考试附加程序设计题答案
- 新民主主义论 毛概读书笔记 - 图文
- 网络操作系统(课后练习题)
- 陕西省西安市长安区第一中学高一英语下学期寒假学情检测试题65
- 区域协调发展
- 核酸习题
- 2002级植保本科专业植物病理学试卷
- 年产13万吨焦油加工厂蒸馏工段的初步设计