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. 叮叮當當的響聲 v. 叮當作響
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
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. 內心最深處的