SOUNDSWord格式文档下载.docx

1、 I did not read books the first summer; I hoed beans. Nay, Ioften did better than this. There were times when I could notafford to sacrifice the bloom of the present moment to any work,whether of the head or hands. I love a broad margin to my life.Sometimes, in a summer morning, having taken my accu

2、stomed bath, Isat in my sunny doorway from sunrise till noon, rapt in a revery,amidst the pines and hickories and sumachs, in undisturbed solitudeand stillness, while the birds sing around or flitted noiselessthrough the house, until by the sun falling in at my west window, orthe noise of some trave

3、llers wagon on the distant highway, I wasreminded of the lapse of time. I grew in those seasons like corn inthe night, and they were far better than any work of the hands wouldhave been. They were not time subtracted from my life, but so muchover and above my usual allowance. I realized what the Ori

4、entalsmean by contemplation and the forsaking of works. For the mostpart, I minded not how the hours went. The day advanced as if tolight some work of mine; it was morning, and lo, now it is evening,and nothing memorable is accomplished. Instead of singing like thebirds, I silently smiled at my ince

5、ssant good fortune. As thesparrow had its trill, sitting on the hickory before my door, so hadI my chuckle or suppressed warble which he might hear out of mynest. My days were not days of the week, bearing the stamp of anyheathen deity, nor were they minced into hours and fretted by theticking of a

6、clock; for I lived like the Puri Indians, of whom it issaid that for yesterday, today, and tomorrow they have only oneword, and they express the variety of meaning by pointing backwardfor yesterday forward for tomorrow, and overhead for the passingday. This was sheer idleness to my fellow-townsmen,

7、no doubt; butif the birds and flowers had tried me by their standard, I shouldnot have been found wanting. A man must find his occasions inhimself, it is true. The natural day is very calm, and will hardlyreprove his indolence. I had this advantage, at least, in my mode of life, over thosewho were o

8、bliged to look abroad for amusement, to society and thetheatre, that my life itself was become my amusement and neverceased to be novel. It was a drama of many scenes and without anend. If we were always, indeed, getting our living, and regulatingour lives according to the last and best mode we had

9、learned, weshould never be troubled with ennui. Follow your genius closelyenough, and it will not fail to show you a fresh prospect everyhour. Housework was a pleasant pastime. When my floor was dirty, Irose early, and, setting all my furniture out of doors on the grass,bed and bedstead making but o

10、ne budget, dashed water on the floor,and sprinkled white sand from the pond on it, and then with a broomscrubbed it clean and white; and by the time the villagers hadbroken their fast the morning sun had dried my house sufficiently toallow me to move in again, and my meditations were almostuninterup

11、ted. It was pleasant to see my whole household effects outon the grass, making a little pile like a gypsys pack, and mythree-legged table, from which I did not remove the books and penand ink, standing amid the pines and hickories. They seemed glad toget out themselves, and as if unwilling to be bro

12、ught in. I wassometimes tempted to stretch an awning over them and take my seatthere. It was worth the while to see the sun shine on these things,and hear the free wind blow on them; so much more interesting mostfamiliar objects look out of doors than in the house. A bird sitson the next bough, life

13、-everlasting grows under the table, andblackberry vines run round its legs; pine cones, chestnut burs, andstrawberry leaves are strewn about. It looked as if this was theway these forms came to be transferred to our furniture, to tables,chairs, and bedsteads - because they once stood in their midst.

14、 My house was on the side of a hill, immediately on the edge ofthe larger wood, in the midst of a young forest of pitch pines andhickories, and half a dozen rods from the pond, to which a narrowfootpath led down the hill. In my front yard grew the strawberry,blackberry, and life-everlasting, johnswo

15、rt and goldenrod, shruboaks and sand cherry, blueberry and groundnut. Near the end of May,the sand cherry （Cerasus pumila） adorned the sides of the path withits delicate flowers arranged in umbels cylindrically about itsshort stems, which last, in the fall, weighed down with goodsizedand handsome ch

16、erries, fell over in wreaths like rays on every side.I tasted them out of compliment to Nature, though they were scarcelypalatable. The sumach （Rhus glabra） grew luxuriantly about thehouse, pushing up through the embankment which I had made, andgrowing five or six feet the first season. Its broad pi

17、nnatetropical leaf was pleasant though strange to look on. The largebuds, suddenly pushing out late in the spring from dry sticks whichhad seemed to be dead, developed themselves as by magic intograceful green and tender boughs, an inch in diameter; andsometimes, as I sat at my window, so heedlessly

18、 did they grow andtax their weak joints, I heard a fresh and tender bough suddenlyfall like a fan to the ground, when there was not a breath of airstirring, broken off by its own weight. In August, the large massesof berries, which, when in flower, had attracted many wild bees,gradually assumed thei

19、r bright velvety crimson hue, and by theirweight again bent down and broke the tender limbs. As I sit at my window this summer afternoon, hawks are circlingabout my clearing; the tantivy of wild pigeons, flying by two andthrees athwart my view, or perching restless on the white pineboughs behind my

20、house, gives a voice to the air; a fish hawkdimples the glassy surface of the pond and brings up a fish; a minksteals out of the marsh before my door and seizes a frog by theshore; the sedge is bending under the weight of the reed-birdsflitting hither and thither; and for the last half-hour I have h

21、eardthe rattle of railroad cars, now dying away and then reviving likethe beat of a partridge, conveying travellers from Boston to thecountry. For I did not live so out of the world as that boy who, asI hear, was put out to a farmer in the east part of the town, butere long ran away and came home ag

22、ain, quite down at the heel andhomesick. He had never seen such a dull and out-of-the-way place;the folks were all gone off; why, you couldnt even hear thewhistle! I doubt if there is such a place in Massachusetts now:- In truth, our village has become a butt For one of those fleet railroad shafts,

23、and oer Our peaceful plain its soothing sound is - Concord. The Fitchburg Railroad touches the pond about a hundred rodssouth of where I dwell. I usually go to the village along itscauseway, and am, as it were, related to society by this link. Themen on the freight trains, who go over the whole leng

24、th of the road,bow to me as to an old acquaintance, they pass me so often, andapparently they take me for an employee; and so I am. I too wouldfain be a track-repairer somewhere in the orbit of the earth. The whistle of the locomotive penetrates my woods summer andwinter, sounding like the scream of

25、 a hawk sailing over somefarmers yard, informing me that many restless city merchants arearriving within the circle of the town, or adventurous countrytraders from the other side. As they come under one horizon, theyshout their warning to get off the track to the other, heardsometimes through the ci

26、rcles of two towns. Here come yourgroceries, country; your rations, countrymen! Nor is there any manso independent on his farm that he can say them nay. And heresyour pay for them! screams the countrymans whistle; timber likelong battering-rams going twenty miles an hour against the citywalls, and c

27、hairs enough to seat all the weary and heavy-laden thatdwell within them. With such huge and lumbering civility thecountry hands a chair to the city. All the Indian huckleberry hillsare stripped, all the cranberry meadows are raked into the city. Upcomes the cotton, down goes the woven cloth; up com

28、es the silk, downgoes the woollen; up come the books, but down goes the wit thatwrites them. When I meet the engine with its train of cars moving off withplanetary motion - or, rather, like a comet, for the beholder knowsnot if with that velocity and with that direction it will everrevisit this syst

29、em, since its orbit does not look like a returningcurve - with its steam cloud like a banner streaming behind ingolden and silver wreaths, like many a downy cloud which I haveseen, high in the heavens, unfolding its masses to the light - asif this traveling demigod, this cloud-compeller, would ere long takethe sunset sky for the livery of his train; when I hear the ironhorse make the hills echo w