87 Snow Season

名称：87 Snow Season
内容简介：
晨读英语美文 文化百科
[00:05.71]The early snows fall soft and white and seem to heal the landscape.
[00:12.93]There are as yet no tracks through the drifts, no muddied slush in the roads.
[00:19.05]The wind sweeps snow into the scars of our harvest-time haste,
[00:23.98]smoothing the brow of hill, hiding furrows and trash in the yard.
[00:29.33]Snow muffles the shriek of metal and the rasp of motion.
[00:33.71]It covers our flintier purposes and brings a redeeming silence,
[00:38.96]as if a curtain has fallen on the strivings of a year, and now we may stop,
[00:44.75]look inward, and rediscover the amber warmth of family and conversation.
[00:50.33]At such times,locked away inside walls and woolen,
[00:54.93]lulled by the sedatives of wood-smoke and candlelight,
[00:59.08]we recall the competing claims of nature.
[01:02.25]We see the branch and bark of trees,
[01:05.43]rather than the sugar-scented green of their leaves.
[01:09.36]We look out the window and admire the elegance of ice crystal,
[01:13.52]the bravely patient tree leaning leafless into the wind,
[01:18.00]the dramatic shadows of the stooping sun.
[01:20.96]We look at the structure of things,
[01:23.69]the geometry of branch and snowflake, family and deed.
[01:28.18]Even before the first snow, we view the world differently in winter.
[01:33.43]We watch the lawn settle into the sleep of frost and the last crumpled leaf quiver on the oak,
[01:40.32]and feel the change. At night the skies are cold and clear,
[01:45.35]and stars shine like the dreams of serpents.
[01:48.96]The hillsides turn brown and gray;
[01:52.02]the edges of stalk and blade stand out starkly.
[01:55.74]Dark clouds settle on the mountain ridges.
[01:58.91]Storms rumble in like freight trains.
[02:01.98]Rain rattles the roof and mutters at the window.
[02:05.80]Then comes the snow,
[02:07.77]and we once again wonder at how it transforms the familiar objects of our everyday world.
[02:14.00]When snowflake drifts the road we head indoors
[02:17.72]and resign ourselves to the quiet crackle of the wood fire.
[02:21.44]The example of the woodpile and the well-stocked larder tells us that
[02:26.36]we can achieve what we dream, and winter brings us long, silent nights to dream on.