bowling现代大学英语精读4 Unit2 Spring Sowing原文

2021年1月20日发(作者：solon)
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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
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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
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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
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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.