3.综合练习(2)英汉翻译对照阅读 2014-06-0820:43 英汉翻译对照阅读 Translation Exercises (from English into Chinese) Skiing There is, perhaps, no other sport in the world quite so exciting as skiing. For viewers, it is a spectacle of unsurpassed beauty. For skiers, it is a vivid personal experience, a thrilling test of mind, muscle and nerves More and more Americans are discovering this thrill for themselves. not too long ago, sk virtually no part in the American sport scene. If it were thought of at all, it was purely as a European sport. Then came the 1932 winter Olympics atlake Placid, New York. Americans got their first good look at skiing and made for the hills. Today ski trains make regular runs from our cities to the great, white outdoors. In addition to joy and exhilaration, skiing offers other attractions It is a comparativel expensive sport, and, for the young, the art of skiing is often mastered in a very short time. The special thrill of skiing is well described by Suddy Werner .It's all up to you, he says No teammates can help You re alone. It's you against the snow, the mountains yourself. You're a warrior. An Act in Modern Diplomatic History That afternoon, the greatest disappearing act in modern diplomatic history was to unfold. It had all been worked out meticulously in advance between the White House andPakistan s President Yahya Khan The plan worked smoothly. First, Kissinger paid a ninety minute courtesy call on the President. Next, the word went out, as previously arranged, that the visiting american, exhausted by the long journey, would have to cancel a formal dinner in his honor and would be driven to the eighty- five- hundred-foot-high hill station of Nathia Gali for a brief rest. The next day july 9, thePakistan government announced that Kissinger would be forced to extend his stay in Nathia Gali because of a slight indisposition-De lhibelly: some reporters called it, a common enough problem for fast moving travelers. As part of the cover, the trip to Nathia gali was to be as conspicuous as possible. So a decoy caravan of limousines, flying the flags of theUnited StatesandPakistanand accompanied by a motorcycle escort, rolled through the streets ofIslamabadand up into the mountains. To preserve the fiction, the government kept a steady stream of visitors driving fromIslamabadto Nathin Gali to pay their respects to the indisposed traveler. The Chief of Staff of thePakistanar he Minister of Defense, and a score of other officials dropped in to inquire about Kissinger s my health. All were intercepted by khan. He d serve them a cup of coffee and tell them that kissinger was resting and could not be disturbed Actually, Kissinger had never gone to Nathia Gali ow Should one read a book?
3.综合练习(2)英汉翻译对照阅读 2014-06-08 20:43 英汉翻译对照阅读 Translation Exercises (from English into Chinese) Skiing There is, perhaps, no other sport in the world quite so exciting as skiing. For viewers, it is a spectacle of unsurpassed beauty. For skiers, it is a vivid personal experience, a thrilling test of mind, muscle and nerves. More and more Americans are discovering this thrill for themselves. Not too long ago, skiing had virtually no part in the American sport scene. If it were thought of at all, it was purely as a European sport. Then came the 1932 winter Olympics atLake Placid,New York. Americans got their first good look at skiing and made for the hills. Today ski trains make regular runs from our cities to the great, white outdoors. In addition to joy and exhilaration, skiing offers other attractions. It is a comparatively inexpensive sport, and, for the young, the art of skiing is often mastered in a very short time. The special thrill of skiing is well described by Suddy Werner. "It's all up to you," he says, "No teammates can help. You're alone. It's you against the snow, the mountains, yourself. You're a warrior." An Act in Modern Diplomatic History That afternoon, the greatest disappearing act in modern diplomatic history was to unfold. It had all been worked out meticulously in advance between the White House andPakistan's President Yahya Khan. The plan worked smoothly. First, Kissinger paid a ninety minute courtesy call on the President. Next, the word went out, as previously arranged, that the visiting American, exhausted by the long journey, would have to cancel a formal dinner in his honor and would be driven to the eighty- fivehundred-foot-high hill station of Nathia Gali for a brief rest. The next day, July 9, thePakistan government announced that Kissinger would be forced to extend his stay in Nathia Gali because of a "slight indisposition"—"Delhibelly"; some reporters called it, a common enough problem for fastmoving travelers. As part of the cover, the trip to Nathia Gali was to be as conspicuous as possible. So a decoy caravan of limousines, flying the flags of theUnited StatesandPakistanand accompanied by a motorcycle escort, rolled through the streets ofIslamabadand up into the mountains. To preserve the fiction, the government kept a steady stream of visitors driving fromIslamabadto Nathin Gali to pay their respects to the indisposed traveler. The Chief of Staff of thePakistanarmy, the Minister of Defense, and a score of other officials dropped in to inquire about Kissinger's health. All were intercepted by Khan. He'd serve them a cup of coffee and tell them that Kissinger was resting and could not be disturbed. Actually, Kissinger had never gone to Nathia Gali. How Should One Read a Book?
by Virginia Woolf It is simple enough to say that since books have classes-fiction, biography, poetry-we should separate them and take from each what it is right that each should give us. Yet few people ask from books what books can give us. Most commonly we come to books with blurred and divided minds, asking of fiction that it shall be true, of poetry that it shall be false, of biography that it shall be flattering, of history that it shall enforce our own pre judices. If we could banish all such preconceptions when we read, that would be an admirable beginning. Do not dictate to your author try to become him. Be his fellow-worker and accomplice. If you hang back, and reserve and criticise at first, you are preventing yourself from getting the fullest possible value from what you read But if you open your mind as widely as possible, then signs and hints of almost imperceptible fineness, from the twist and turn of the first sentences, will bring you into the presence of a human being unlike any other. Steep yourself in this, acquaint yourself with this, and soon you will find that your author is giving you, or attempting to give you, something far more definite. The thirty-two chapters of a novel-if we consider how to read a novel first -are an attempt to make something as formed and controlled as a building: but words are more impalpable than bricks reading is a longer and more complicated process than seeing. Perhaps the quickest way to understand the elements of what a novelist is doing is not to read but to write; to make your own experiment with the dangers and difficulties of words. Recall, then, some event that has left a distinct impression on you-how at the corner of the street, perhaps, you passed two people talking. a tree shook an electric light danced the tone of the talk was comic, but also tragic; a whole vision, an entire conception, seemed contained in that moment. But when you at tempt to reconstruct it in words, you will find that it breaks into a thousand confliction impressions. Some must be subdued others emphasised; in the process you will lose, probably, all grasp upon the emotion itself. Then turn from your blurred and littered pages to the opening pages of some great novelist -Defoe, Jane Austen, Hardy. Now you will be better able to appreciate their mastery The Delights of Books Books are to mankind what memory is to the individual. They contain the history of our race, the discoveries we have made the accumulated knowledge and experience of ages; they picture for us the marvels and beauties of nature: help us in our difficulties, comfort us in sorrow and in suffering store our minds with ideas, fill them with good and happy thoughts, and lift us out of and above ourselves When we read we may transport ourselves to the mountains or the seashore, and visit the most beautiful parts of the earth, without fatigue, inconvenience, or expense. Many of those who have had I that this world can give, have told us they owed much of their purest happiness to books. Macaulay, aBritainhistorian, writer and statesman, had wealth and fame, rank and power, and yet he his biography that he owed the happiest hours of his life to books. He says :If any one would make me the greatest king that ever lived, with palaces, gardens, fine dinners, wines and coaches, and beautiful clothes, and hundreds of servants, on condition that i should not read books I would not be a king. I would rather be a poor man in a garret with plenty of books than a king who did not love reading. Books, indeed, endow us with a whole enchanted palace of thoughts. In one way they give us even more vivid idea than the actual reality, just as reflections are often more beautiful than real nature Without stirring from our firesides we may roam to the most remote regions of the earth. Science, art, literature, philosophy, all that man has thought, all that man has done, the
by Virginia Woolf It is simple enough to say that since books have classes—fiction, biography, poetry—we should separate them and take from each what it is right that each should give us. Yet few people ask from books what books can give us. Most commonly we come to books with blurred and divided minds, asking of fiction that it shall be true, of poetry that it shall be false, of biography that it shall be flattering, of history that it shall enforce our own prejudices. If we could banish all such preconceptions when we read, that would be an admirable beginning. Do not dictate to your author; try to become him. Be his fellow-worker and accomplice. If you hang back, and reserve and criticise at first, you are preventing yourself from getting the fullest possible value from what you read. But if you open your mind as widely as possible, then signs and hints of almost imperceptible fineness, from the twist and turn of the first sentences, will bring you into the presence of a human being unlike any other. Steep yourself in this, acquaint yourself with this, and soon you will find that your author is giving you, or attempting to give you, something far more definite. The thirty-two chapters of a novel—if we consider how to read a novel first —are an attempt to make something as formed and controlled as a building; but words are more impalpable than bricks; reading is a longer and more complicated process than seeing. Perhaps the quickest way to understand the elements of what a novelist is doing is not to read, but to write; to make your own experiment with the dangers and difficulties of words. Recall, then, some event that has left a distinct impression on you—how at the corner of the street, perhaps, you passed two people talking. A tree shook; an electric light danced; the tone of the talk was comic, but also tragic; a whole vision, an entire conception, seemed contained in that moment. But when you attempt to reconstruct it in words, you will find that it breaks into a thousand confliction impressions. Some must be subdued; others emphasised; in the process you will lose, probably, all grasp upon the emotion itself. Then turn from your blurred and littered pages to the opening pages of some great novelist —Defoe, Jane Austen, Hardy. Now you will be better able to appreciate their mastery... The Delights of Books Books are to mankind what memory is to the individual. They contain the history of our race, the discoveries we have made, the accumulated knowledge and experience of ages; they picture for us the marvels and beauties of nature; help us in our difficulties, comfort us in sorrow and in suffering, store our minds with ideas, fill them with good and happy thoughts, and lift us out of and above ourselves. When we read we may transport ourselves to the mountains or the seashore, and visit the most beautiful parts of the earth, without fatigue, inconvenience, or expense. Many of those who have had all that this world can give, have told us they owed much of their purest happiness to books. Macaulay, aBritainhistorian,writer and statesman, had wealth and fame, rank and power, and yet he tells us in his biography that he owed the happiest hours of his life to books. He says: "If any one would make me the greatest king that ever lived, with palaces, gardens, fine dinners, wines and coaches, and beautiful clothes, and hundreds of servants, on condition that I should not read books, I would not be a king. I would rather be a poor man in a garret with plenty of books than a king who did not love reading." Books, indeed, endow us with a whole enchanted palace of thoughts. In one way they give us an even more vivid idea than the actual reality, just as reflections are often more beautiful than real nature. Without stirring from our firesides we may roam to the most remote regions of the earth. Science, art, literature, philosophy, all that man has thought, all that man has done, the
experience that has been bought with the sufferings of a hundred generations, all are garnered up for us in the world of books Calgary: Canadas Not-So-Wild Wes by David S. boyer THE WEST, for a century dirt-farm poor and ignored by the more industrialized eastern provinces of Ontario and Quebec that control Canada, has lately begun to sway the nations entire economic structure. And that has drawn the earnest attention of lots of eastern Canadians, who voice pride and concern Calgarys new high-rise banks and oil-company skyscrapers sandwiching the towers of investment and insurance compaines, are home base for a flamboyant collection of Canadian millionaires and big consortia and astronomical contracts, all representing incalculable consequences for s political future. The West has recently been hard hit by recession, but its continuing sense of power, centered inCalgary, stands in ongoing confrontation with the federal government atottawa over taxes and prices and freight rates and socialistic policies. For a century there has been alienation, and even talk of secession, though separatist sent iment has now receded. Zo The western dynamo shoots out sparks fromCalgary, by plane and phone and computer and satellite, every corner of the nation and, indeed, the world. And now Brian Sawyer was telling me how he perceives this hustling delirium of 620, 000 people and more than half as many cars, and their new houses and condos grazing out in all directions like the undisciplined herds of buffalo that once roamed these hills and prairies. Out the window over Brian's shoulder, as a stage back drop for this whole improbable scene, rose the serrated wall of theRockies, etched in snow and ice, jagged as a giant bread knife along the western horizon Nobody can claim credit or take the blame,the chief was saying." This city just exploded. We didnt know what hit us Yes, crime did go up faster even than the population -crime and drinking and divorce and de. For ten years we averaged 58 new Calgarians a day-an inundation of money-hungry people from everywhere. What can you expect when strangers pile in on each other like that? You can see for ourself what we had here. Uncontrolled growth. It has all cooled down now-including, I m happy to say, the crime. Our timetable has been stretched out, but we could still be the protot ype 2lst-century city of the planet. The slowdown meanwhile, is making the place more manageable and more livable. Words! Words! Words It Works. These words may be the final judgment on a missile project or a plan to inerease the efficiency of a labor group or could be the happy answer to the pro ject that proved too complicated for father to assemble. They also may describe what goes on when the right mixture is put away in sealed bottles or jugs. Some earn their living at a boiler works and it is the works that make a watch Most people work for a living, but what teenager hasn worked on his dad for the use of the And a boat will work its way through an ice field or an army through a swamp or heavy
experience that has been bought with the sufferings of a hundred generations, all are garnered up for us in the world of books. Calgary:Canada's Not-So-Wild West by David S. Boyer THE WEST, for a century dirt-farm poor and ignored by the more industrialized eastern provinces of Ontario and Quebec that control Canada, has lately begun to sway the nation's entire economic structure. And that has drawn the earnest attention of lots of eastern Canadians, who voice pride and concern. Calgary's new high-rise banks and oil-company skyscrapers, sandwiching the towers of investment and insurance compaines, are home base for a flamboyant collection of Canadian millionaires and big consortia and astronomical contracts, all representing incalculable consequences forCanada's political future. The West has recently been hard hit by recession, but its continuing sense of power, centered inCalgary, stands in ongoing confrontation with the federal government atOttawa, over taxes and prices and freight rates and socialistic policies. For a century there has been alienation, and even talk of secession, though separatist sentiment has now receded. The western dynamo shoots out sparks fromCalgary, by plane and phone and computer and satellite, to every corner of the nation and, indeed, the world. And now Brian Sawyer was telling me how he perceives this hustling delirium of 620,000 people and more than half as many cars, and their new houses and condos grazing out in all directions like the undisciplined herds of buffalo that once roamed these hills and prairies. Out the window over Brian's shoulder, as a stage back drop for this whole improbable scene, rose the serrated wall of theRockies, etched in snow and ice, jagged as a giant bread knife along the western horizon. "Nobody can claim credit or take the blame, "the chief was saying." This city just exploded. We didn't know what hit us." "Yes, crime did go up faster even than the population —crime and drinking and divorce and suicide. For ten years we averaged 58 new Calgarians a day—an inundation of money-hungry people from everywhere. What can you expect when strangers pile in on each other like that? You can see for yourself what we had here. Uncontrolled growth." "It has all cooled down now—including, I'm happy to say, the crime. Our timetable has been stretched out, but we could still be the prototype 21st-century city of the planet. The slowdown, meanwhile, is making the place more manageable and more livable." Words! Words! Words! "It Works." These words may be the final judgment on a missile project or a plan to inerease the efficiency of a labor group or could be the happy answer to the project that proved too complicated for father to assemble. They also may describe what goes on when the right mixture is put away in sealed bottles or jugs. Some earn their living at a boiler "works" and it is the "works" that make a watch tick. Most people work for a living, but what teenager hasn't "worked" on his dad for the use of the car. And a boat will work its way through an ice field or an army through a swamp or heavy going
The physicist has a precise meaning for the word work", but the metallurgist uses the word in relation to a wide variety of processes. Cogging of ingots, rolling of bars or sheets, forging o bars, blocks, or semi-finished parts, piercing of bars to form tubing drawing of wire through dies or the drawing of sheet into cups, swaging, hammering, extruding, all are operations involving th working of metals and produce parts that are classed as worked metals."Work to the metallurgist is any operation that changes the shape of a metal part without changing its volume a nail bent by a hammer is worked and the straightening that follows is further working. The making of an automobile fender of a tube for toothpaste, or of an aluminum safety hat are common examples which involve severe working of metals. Of all parts made of metals, castings and sintered products are the only classes of final product which do not, at some stage or other in their manufacture, go through one or more operations which are classed as" working First snow The first fall of snow is not only an event but it is a magical event. You go to bed in one kind of world and wake up to find yourself in another quite different, and if this is not enchantment then where is it to be found? The very stealth, the eerie quie tness, of the thing makes it more magical. If all the snow fell at once in one shattering crash, awakening us in the middle of the night the event would be robbed of its wonder. But it flutters down, soundless, hour after hour while we are asleep Outside the closed curtains of the bedroom a vast transformation scene is taking place, just as if a myriad elves and brownies were at work, and we turn and yawn and stretch and know nothing about it. And then, what an extraordinary change it is! It is as if the house you are in had been dropped down in another continent. Even the inside, which has not been touched seems different, every room appearing smaller and cosier, just as if some power were trying to turn it into a woodcutters hut or a snug log-cabin. Outside, where the garden was yesterda now a white and glistening level, and the village beyond is no longer your own familiar cluster of roofs but a village in an old German fairy-tale. You would not be surprised to learn that all the people there, the spectacled postmistress, the cobbler, the retired school master and the rest, had suffered a change too and had become queer elvish beings, purveyors of invisible caps and magic shoes. You yourselves do not feel quite the same people you were yesterday. How could you when so much has been changed? There is a curious stir, a little shiver of excitement, troubling the house not unlike the feeling there is abroad when a journey has to be made. The children, of course, are all excitement but even the adults hang about and talk to one another longer than usual before settling to the day's work. Nobody can resist the windows It is like being on board a ship When I got up this morning the world was a chilled hollow of dead white and faint blues. The light that came through the windows was very queer, and it contrived to make the familiar business of splashing and shaving and brushing and dressing very queer too. Then the sun came out, and by the time I had sat down to breakfast it was shining bravely and flushing the snow with delicate pinks The diningroom window had been transformed into a lovely japanese print. The little plumtree outside, with the faintly flushed snow lining its boughs and artfully disposed along its trunk stood in full sunlight. An hour or two later everything was a cold glitter of white and blue. The world had completely changed again. The little japanese prints had all vanished AT THE EDGE OF THE SEA The shore is an ancient world, for as long as there has been an earth and sea there has been this place of the meeting of land and water. Yet it is a world that keeps alive the sense of continuing creation and of the relentless drive of life. each time that I enter it, i gain some new awareness of its beauty and its deeper meanings, sensing that intricate fabric of life by which one creature is linked with another, and each with its surroundings
The physicist has a precise meaning for the word "work", but the metallurgist uses the word in relation to a wide variety of processes. Cogging of ingots, rolling of bars or sheets, forging of bars, blocks, or semi-finished parts, piercing of bars to form tubing, drawing of wire through dies or the drawing of sheet into cups, swaging, hammering, extruding, all are operations involving the "working" of metals and produce parts that are classed as "worked" metals. "Work" to the metallurgist is any operation that changes the shape of a metal part without changing its volume. A nail bent by a hammer is "worked" and the straightening that follows is further working. The making of an automobile fender, of a tube for toothpaste, or of an aluminum safety hat are common examples which involve severe working of metals. Of all parts made of metals, castings and sintered products are the only classes of final product which do not, at some stage or other in their manufacture, go through one or more operations which are classed as "working." First Snow The first fall of snow is not only an event but it is a magical event. You go to bed in one kind of world and wake up to find yourself in another quite different, and if this is not enchantment, then where is it to be found? The very stealth, the eerie quie tness, of the thing makes it more magical. If all the snow fell at once in one shattering crash, awakening us in the middle of the night the event would be robbed of its wonder. But it flutters down, soundless, hour after hour while we are asleep. Outside the closed curtains of the bedroom a vast transformation scene is taking place, just as if a myriad elves and brownies were at work, and we turn and yawn and stretch and know nothing about it. And then, what an extraordinary change it is! It is as if the house you are in had been dropped down in another continent. Even the inside, which has not been touched, seems different, every room appearing smaller and cosier, just as if some power were trying to turn it into a woodcutter's hut or a snug log-cabin. Outside, where the garden was yesterday, there is now a white and glistening level, and the village beyond is no longer your own familiar cluster of roofs but a village in an old German fairy-tale. You would not be surprised to learn that all the people there, the spectacled postmistress, the cobbler, the retired school master, and the rest, had suffered a change too and had become queer elvish beings, purveyors of invisible caps and magic shoes. You yourselves do not feel quite the same people you were yesterday. How could you when so much has been changed? There is a curious stir, a little shiver of excitement, troubling the house, not unlike the feeling there is abroad when a journey has to be made. The children, of course, are all excitement but even the adults hang about and talk to one another longer than usual before settling down to the day's work. Nobody can resist the windows. It is like being on board a ship. When I got up this morning the world was a chilled hollow of dead white and faint blues. The light that came through the windows was very queer, and it contrived to make the familiar business of splashing and shaving and brushing and dressing very queer too. Then the sun came out, and by the time I had sat down to breakfast it was shining bravely and flushing the snow with delicate pinks. The dinningroom window had been transformed into a lovely Japanese print. The little plum-tree outside, with the faintly flushed snow lining its boughs and artfully disposed along its trunk, stood in full sunlight. An hour or two later everything was a cold glitter of white and blue. The world had completely changed again. The little Japanese prints had all vanished. AT THE EDGE OF THE SEA The shore is an ancient world, for as long as there has been an earth and sea there has been this place of the meeting of land and water. Yet it is a world that keeps alive the sense of continuing creation and of the relentless drive of life. Each time that I enter it, I gain some new awareness of its beauty and its deeper meanings, sensing that intricate fabric of life by which one creature is linked with another, and each with its surroundings
In my thoughts of the shore, one place stands apart for its revelation of exquisite beauty. It is a pool hidden within a cave that one can visit only rarely and briefly when the lowest of the year' s low tides fall below it, and perhaps from that very fact it acquires some of its special beauty. Choosing such a tide, I hoped for a glimpse of the pool. The ebb was to fall early in the morning. I knew that if the wind held from the northwest and no interfering swell ran in from a distant storm the level of the sea should drop below the entrance to the pool. There had been sudden ominous showers in the night, with rain like handfuls of gravel flung on the roof. When I looked out and air were pallid. Across the the dim line of distant shore-the full august moon, drawing the tide to the low, low levels of the threshold of the alien sea world. As I watched, a gull flew by, above the spruces. Its breast was rosy with the light of the unrisen sun the day was, after all, to be fail Later, as I stood above the tide near the entrance to the pool, the promise of that rosy light was sustained. From the base of the steep wall of rock on which I stood, a moss-covered ledge jutted seaward into deep water. In the surge at the rim of the ledge the dark fronds of oarweeds swayed, smooth and gleaming as leather. The projecting ledge was the path to the small hidden cave and its pool. Occasionally a swell, stronger than the rest, rolled smoothly over the rim and broke in foam against the cliff. But the intervals between such swells were long enough to admit me to the ledge and long enough for a glimpse of that airypool, so seldom and so briefly exposed And so I knelt on the wet carpet of sea moss and looked back into the dark cavern that held the pool in a shallow basin. The floor of the cave was only a few inches below the roof, and a mirror had been created in which all that grew on the ceiling was reflected in the still water below. Under water that was clear as glass the pool was carpeted with green sponge gray patches of sea squirts glistened on the ceiling and colonies of soft coral were a pale apricot color. In the moment when I looked into the cave a little elfin starfish hung down, suspended by the merest thread perhaps by only a single tube foot. It reached down to touch its own reflection, so perfectly and of the limpid pool itself was the poignant beauty of things that are ephemeral, existing onle ses delineated that there might have been, not one starfish, but two. The beauty of the reflected images until the sea should return to fill the little cave Yearning for Her Lips As he gazed at her and listened, his thoughts grew daring. He reviewed all the wild delight of the pressure of her hand in his at the door, and longed for it again. His gaze wandered often towards her lips, and he yearned for them hungrily. but there was nothing gross or earthly about this yearning. It gave him exquisite delight to watch every movement and play of those lips as they enunciated the words she spoke; yet they were not ordinary lips such as all men and women had. Their substance was not mere human clay. They were lips of pure spirit, and his desire for them seemed absolutely different from the desire that had led him to other women's lips. He could kiss her ips, rest his own physical lips upon them, but it would be with the lofty and awful fervor with which one would kiss the robe of god. He was not conscious of this transvaluation of values that had taken place in him, and was unaware that the light that shone in his eyes when he looked at her was quite the same light that shines in all mens eyes when the desire of love is upon them. Confusion of Mind And now, because my mind was not confused enough before, I complicated its confusion fift thousand-fold by having states and season when I was clear that biddy was immeasurably better than Estella, and that the plain honest working life to which I was born had nothing in it to be ashamed
In my thoughts of the shore, one place stands apart for its revelation of exquisite beauty. It is a pool hidden within a cave that one can visit only rarely and briefly when the lowest of the year's low tides fall below it, and perhaps from that very fact it acquires some of its special beauty. Choosing such a tide, I hoped for a glimpse of the pool. The ebb was to fall early in the morning. I knew that if the wind held from the northwest and no interfering swell ran in from a distant storm the level of the sea should drop below the entrance to the pool. There had been sudden ominous showers in the night, with rain like handfuls of gravel flung on the roof. When I looked out into the early morning the sky was full of a gray dawn light but the sun had not yet risen. Water and air were pallid. Across the bay the moon was a luminous disc in the western sky, suspended above the dim line of distant shore─the full August moon, drawing the tide to the low, low levels of the threshold of the alien sea world. As I watched, a gull flew by, above the spruces. Its breast was rosy with the light of the unrisen sun. The day was, after all, to be fair. Later, as I stood above the tide near the entrance to the pool, the promise of that rosy light was sustained. From the base of the steep wall of rock on which I stood, a moss-covered ledge jutted seaward into deep water. In the surge at the rim of the ledge the dark fronds of oarweeds swayed, smooth and gleaming as leather. The projecting ledge was the path to the small hidden cave and its pool. Occasionally a swell, stronger than the rest, rolled smoothly over the rim and broke in foam against the cliff. But the intervals between such swells were long enough to admit me to the ledge and long enough for a glimpse of that airypool, so seldom and so briefly exposed. And so I knelt on the wet carpet of sea moss and looked back into the dark cavern that held the pool in a shallow basin. The floor of the cave was only a few inches below the roof, and a mirror had been created in which all that grew on the ceiling was reflected in the still water below. Under water that was clear as glass the pool was carpeted with green sponge. Gray patches of sea squirts glistened on the ceiling and colonies of soft coral were a pale apricot color. In the moment when I looked into the cave a little elfin starfish hung down, suspended by the merest thread, perhaps by only a single tube foot. It reached down to touch its own reflection, so perfectly delineated that there might have been, not one starfish, but two. The beauty of the reflected images and of the limpid pool itself was the poignant beauty of things that are ephemeral, existing only until the sea should return to fill the little cave. Yearning for Her Lips As he gazed at her and listened, his thoughts grew daring. He reviewed all the wild delight of the pressure of her hand in his at the door, and longed for it again. His gaze wandered often towards her lips, and he yearned for them hungrily. But there was nothing gross or earthly about this yearning. It gave him exquisite delight to watch every movement and play of those lips as they enunciated the words she spoke; yet they were not ordinary lips such as all men and women had. Their substance was not mere human clay. They were lips of pure spirit, and his desire for them seemed absolutely different from the desire that had led him to other women’s lips. He could kiss her lips, rest his own physical lips upon them, but it would be with the lofty and awful fervor with which one would kiss the robe of God. He was not conscious of this transvalutation of values that had taken place in him, and was unaware that the light that shone in his eyes when he looked at her was quite the same light that shines in all men’s eyes when the desire of love is upon them. Confusion of Mind And now, because my mind was not confused enough before, I complicated its confusion fifty thousand-fold by having states and season when I was clear that Biddy was immeasurably better than Estella, and that the plain honest working life to which I was born had nothing in it to be ashamed