【英文读物】The Piazza Tales.docx

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1、【英文读物】The Piazza TalesTHE PIAZZA With fairest flowers,Whilst summer lasts, and I live here, FideleWhen I removed into the country, it was to occupy an old-fashioned farm-house, which had no piazzaa deficiency the more regretted, because not only did I like piazzas, as somehow combining the coziness

2、of in-doors with the freedom of out-doors, and it is so pleasant to inspect your thermometer there, but the country round about was such a picture, that in berry time no boy climbs hill or crosses vale without coming upon easels planted in every nook, and sun-burnt painters painting there. A very pa

3、radise of painters. The circle of the stars cut by the circle of the mountains. At least, so looks it from the house; though, once upon the mountains, no circle of them can you see. Had the site been pg 002 chosen five rods off, this charmed ring would not have been. The house is old. Seventy years

4、since, from the heart of the Hearth Stone Hills, they quarried the Kaaba, or Holy Stone, to which, each Thanksgiving, the social pilgrims used to come. So long ago, that, in digging for the foundation, the workmen used both spade and axe, fighting the Troglodytes of those subterranean partssturdy ro

5、ots of a sturdy wood, encamped upon what is now a long land-slide of sleeping meadow, sloping away off from my poppy-bed. Of that knit wood, but one survivor standsan elm, lonely through steadfastness. Whoever built the house, he builded better than he knew; or else Orion in the zenith flashed down

6、his Damocles sword to him some starry night, and said, Build there. For how, otherwise, could it have entered the builders mind, that, upon the clearing being made, such a purple prospect would be his?nothing less than Greylock, with all his hills about him, like Charlemagne among his peers. Now, fo

7、r a house, so situated in such a country, to have no piazza for the convenience of pg 003 those who might desire to feast upon the view, and take their time and ease about it, seemed as much of an omission as if a picture-gallery should have no bench; for what but picture-galleries are the marble ha

8、lls of these same limestone hills?galleries hung, month after month anew, with pictures ever fading into pictures ever fresh. And beauty is like pietyyou cannot run and read it; tranquillity and constancy, with, now-a-days, an easy chair, are needed. For though, of old, when reverence was in vogue,

9、and indolence was not, the devotees of Nature, doubtless, used to stand and adorejust as, in the cathedrals of those ages, the worshipers of a higher Power didyet, in these times of failing faith and feeble knees, we have the piazza and the pew. During the first year of my residence, the more leisur

10、ely to witness the coronation of Charlemagne (weather permitting, they crown him every sunrise and sunset), I chose me, on the hill-side bank near by, a royal lounge of turfa green velvet lounge, with long, moss-padded back; while at the head, strangely enough, there grew (but, I suppose, for herald

11、ry) pg 004 three tufts of blue violets in a field-argent of wild strawberries; and a trellis, with honeysuckle, I set for canopy. Very majestical lounge, indeed. So much so, that here, as with the reclining majesty of Denmark in his orchard, a sly ear-ache invaded me. But, if damps abound at times i

12、n Westminster Abbey, because it is so old, why not within this monastery of mountains, which is older? A piazza must be had. The house was widemy fortune narrow; so that, to build a panoramic piazza, one round and round, it could not bealthough, indeed, considering the matter by rule and square, the

13、 carpenters, in the kindest way, were anxious to gratify my furthest wishes, at Ive forgotten how much a foot. Upon but one of the four sides would prudence grant me what I wanted. Now, which side? To the east, that long camp of the Hearth Stone Hills, fading far away towards Quito; and every fall,

14、a small white flake of something peering suddenly, of a coolish morning, from the topmost cliffthe seasons new-dropped pg 005 lamb, its earliest fleece; and then the Christmas dawn, draping those dim highlands with red-barred plaids and tartansgoodly sight from your piazza, that. Goodly sight; but,

15、to the north is Charlemagnecant have the Hearth Stone Hills with Charlemagne. Well, the south side. Apple-trees are there. Pleasant, of a balmy morning, in the month of May, to sit and see that orchard, white-budded, as for a bridal; and, in October, one green arsenal yard; such piles of ruddy shot.

16、 Very fine, I grant; but, to the north is Charlemagne. The west side, look. An upland pasture, alleying away into a maple wood at top. Sweet, in opening spring, to trace upon the hill-side, otherwise gray and bareto trace, I say, the oldest paths by their streaks of earliest green. Sweet, indeed, I

17、cant deny; but, to the north is Charlemagne. So Charlemagne, he carried it. It was not long after 1848; and, somehow, about that time, all round the world, these kings, they had the casting vote, and voted for themselves. No sooner was ground broken, than all the neighborhood, neighbor Dives, in par

18、ticular, pg 006 broke, toointo a laugh. Piazza to the north! Winter piazza! Wants, of winter midnights, to watch the Aurora Borealis, I suppose; hope hes laid in good store of Polar muffs and mittens. That was in the lion month of March. Not forgotten are the blue noses of the carpenters, and how th

19、ey scouted at the greenness of the cit, who would build his sole piazza to the north. But March dont last forever; patience, and August comes. And then, in the cool elysium of my northern bower, I, Lazarus in Abrahams bosom, cast down the hill a pitying glance on poor old Dives, tormented in the pur

20、gatory of his piazza to the south. But, even in December, this northern piazza does not repelnipping cold and gusty though it be, and the north wind, like any miller, bolting by the snow, in finest flourfor then, once more, with frosted beard, I pace the sleety deck, weathering Cape Horn. In summer,

21、 too, Canute-like, sitting here, one is often reminded of the sea. For not only do long ground-swells roll the slanting grain, and little wavelets of the grass ripple over upon the pg 007 low piazza, as their beach, and the blown down of dandelions is wafted like the spray, and the purple of the mou

22、ntains is just the purple of the billows, and a still August noon broods upon the deep meadows, as a calm upon the Line; but the vastness and the lonesomeness are so oceanic, and the silence and the sameness, too, that the first peep of a strange house, rising beyond the trees, is for all the world

23、like spying, on the Barbary coast, an unknown sail. And this recalls my inland voyage to fairy-land. A true voyage; but, take it all in all, interesting as if invented. From the piazza, some uncertain object I had caught, mysteriously snugged away, to all appearance, in a sort of purpled breast-pock

24、et, high up in a hopper-like hollow, or sunken angle, among the northwestern mountainsyet, whether, really, it was on a mountain-side, or a mountain-top, could not be determined; because, though, viewed from favorable points, a blue summit, peering up away behind the rest, will, as it were, talk to

25、you over their heads, and plainly tell you, that, though he (the blue summit) seems among them, he is not pg 008 of them (God forbid!), and, indeed, would have you know that he considers himselfas, to say truth, he has good rightby several cubits their superior, nevertheless, certain ranges, here an

26、d there double-filed, as in platoons, so shoulder and follow up upon one another, with their irregular shapes and heights, that, from the piazza, a nigher and lower mountain will, in most states of the atmosphere, effacingly shade itself away into a higher and further one; that an object, bleak on t

27、he formers crest, will, for all that, appear nested in the latters flank. These mountains, somehow, they play at hide-and-seek, and all before ones eyes. But, be that as it may, the spot in question was, at all events, so situated as to be only visible, and then but vaguely, under certain witching c

28、onditions of light and shadow. Indeed, for a year or more, I knew not there was such a spot, and might, perhaps, have never known, had it not been for a wizard afternoon in autumnlate in autumna mad poets afternoon; when the turned maple woods in the broad basin below me, having lost their first ver

29、milion tint, dully smoked, like smouldering pg 009 towns, when flames expire upon their prey; and rumor had it, that this smokiness in the general air was not all Indian summerwhich was not used to be so sick a thing, however mildbut, in great part, was blown from far-off forests, for weeks on fire,

30、 in Vermont; so that no wonder the sky was ominous as Hecates cauldronand two sportsmen, crossing a red stubble buck-wheat field, seemed guilty Macbeth and foreboding Banquo; and the hermit-sun, hutted in an Adullum cave, well towards the south, according to his season, did little else but, by indir

31、ect reflection of narrow rays shot down a Simplon pass among the clouds, just steadily paint one small, round, strawberry mole upon the wan cheek of northwestern hills. Signal as a candle. One spot of radiance, where all else was shade. Fairies there, thought I; some haunted ring where fairies dance

32、. Time passed; and the following May, after a gentle shower upon the mountainsa little shower islanded in misty seas of sunshine; such a distant showerand sometimes two, and three, and four of them, all visible together in pg 010 different partsas I love to watch from the piazza, instead of thunder

33、storms, as I used to, which wrap old Greylock, like a Sinai, till one thinks swart Moses must be climbing among scathed hemlocks there; after, I say, that, gentle shower, I saw a rainbow, resting its further end just where, in autumn, I had marked the mole. Fairies there, thought I; remembering that

34、 rainbows bring out the blooms, and that, if one can but get to the rainbows end, his fortune is made in a bag of gold. Yon rainbows end, would I were there, thought I. And none the less I wished it, for now first noticing what seemed some sort of glen, or grotto, in the mountain side; at least, wha

35、tever it was, viewed through the rainbows medium, it glowed like the Potosi mine. But a work-a-day neighbor said, no doubt it was but some old barnan abandoned one, its broadside beaten in, the acclivity its background. But I, though I had never been there, I knew better. A few days after, a cheery

36、sunrise kindled a golden sparkle in the same spot as before. The sparkle was of that vividness, it seemed as pg 011 if it could only come from glass. The building, thenif building, after all, it wascould, at least, not be a barn, much less an abandoned one; stale hay ten years musting in it. No; if

37、aught built by mortal, it must be a cottage; perhaps long vacant and dismantled, but this very spring magically fitted up and glazed. Again, one noon, in the same direction, I marked, over dimmed tops of terraced foliage, a broader gleam, as of a silver buckler, held sunwards over some crouchers hea

38、d; which gleam, experience in like cases taught, must come from a roof newly shingled. This, to me, made pretty sure the recent occupancy of that far cot in fairy land. Day after day, now, full of interest in my discovery, what time I could spare from reading the Midsummers Night Dream, and all abou

39、t Titania, wishfully I gazed off towards the hills; but in vain. Either troops of shadows, an imperial guard, with slow pace and solemn, defiled along the steeps; or, routed by pursuing light, fled broadcast from east to westold wars of Lucifer and Michael; or the mountains, though unvexed by these

40、mirrored sham fights pg 012 in the sky, had an atmosphere otherwise unfavorable for fairy views. I was sorry; the more so, because I had to keep my chamber for some time afterwhich chamber did not face those hills. At length, when pretty well again, and sitting out, in the September morning, upon th

41、e piazza, and thinking to myself, when, just after a little flock of sheep, the farmers banded children passed, a-nutting, and said, How sweet a dayit was, after all, but what their fathers call a weather-breederand, indeed, was become so sensitive through my illness, as that I could not bear to loo

42、k upon a Chinese creeper of my adoption, and which, to my delight, climbing a post of the piazza, had burst out in starry bloom, but now, if you removed the leaves a little, showed millions of strange, cankerous worms, which, feeding upon those blossoms, so shared their blessed hue, as to make it un

43、blessed evermoreworms, whose germs had doubtless lurked in the very bulb which, so hopefully, I had planted: in this ingrate peevishness of my weary convalescence, was I sitting there; when, suddenly looking pg 013 off, I saw the golden mountain-window, dazzling like a deep-sea dolphin. Fairies ther

44、e, thought I, once more; the queen of fairies at her fairy-window; at any rate, some glad mountain-girl; it will do me good, it will cure this weariness, to look on her. No more; Ill launch my yawlho, cheerly, heart! and push away for fairy-landfor rainbows end, in fairy-land. How to get to fairy-la

45、nd, by what road, I did not know; nor could any one inform me; not even one Edmund Spenser, who had been thereso he wrote mefurther than that to reach fairy-land, it must be voyaged to, and with faith. I took the fairy-mountains bearings, and the first fine day, when strength permitted, got into my

46、yawlhigh-pommeled, leather onecast off the fast, and away I sailed, free voyager as an autumn leaf. Early dawn; and, sallying westward, I sowed the morning before me. Some miles brought me nigh the hills; but out of present sight of them. I was not lost; for road-side golden-rods, as guide-posts, po

47、inted, I doubted not, the way to the golden window. pg 014 Following them, I came to a lone and languid region, where the grass-grown ways were traveled but by drowsy cattle, that, less waked than stirred by day, seemed to walk in sleep. Browse, they did notthe enchanted never eat. At least, so says

48、 Don Quixote, that sagest sage that ever lived. On I went, and gained at last the fairy mountains base, but saw yet no fairy ring. A pasture rose before me. Letting down five mouldering barsso moistly green, they seemed fished up from some sunken wrecka wigged old Aries, long-visaged, and with crump

49、led horn, came snuffing up; and then, retreating, decorously led on along a milky-way of white-weed, past dim-clustering Pleiades and Hyades, of small forget-me-nots; and would have led me further still his astral path, but for golden flights of yellow-birdspilots, surely, to the golden window, to one side flying before me, from bush to bush, towards deep woodswhich