英语作文范文辞典1.doc

（1）Natural Environment

New York As I See it
纽约之我见
My first impressions of the skyscrapers in New York were a definite anticlimax. Like the pyramids and the Sphinx in Egypt they are over publicized and take fantastic proportion in the minds of people who have seen them. My first impressions of both are identical: “Not bigger than that!” But soon I was caught by the special fascination of New York, that strange city with its Mediterranean faces and its cold, efficient, Nordic soul. In no other city do the human types more remind one of Naples, Tel Aviv or Cairo. But these Mediterranean faces are without the warm, sensitive and passionate Mediterranean soul. The predominantly dark faces are, as it were, a disguise, for the soul behind them remind one of London and Berlin. The soul of New York is cold and indifferent, and brutally efficient, like the soul of Northern Europe. Cities like Rome or Paris or Vienna somehow seem to return one’s love but New York does not. And yet it seems to me, paradoxically, eminently lovable and sometimes painfully beautiful, like a dazzling but aloof woman.

There is no other city in the world where one can feel more delightfully and absolutely alone in New York, for in no other city are people more indifferent toward each other. In other great cities in the world there are people who are at least interested in other people’s wallets, or curious about each other for various reasons. Not so in New York, where the inhabitants not only ignore each other, but seem to look through each other, which is still a step father in the gradations of indifference. If somebody ignores you, he is still somehow ware of you, and you have at least a negative importance. But if he looks straight through you, as though you were invisible, you eventually begin to wonder if you really still cast a shadow.

（from Selected Readings in English by Gunnar D. Kumlien）

anticlimax 令人扫兴，兴趣骤降，虎头蛇尾
over publicize 过度宣传
proportion 比例，部分
identical 同一的，不变的，相似的
Mediterranean 地中海式的
Nordic 北欧日耳曼民族的
sensitive 敏感的
passionate 热情奔放的
predominantly 绝大多数地，普遍地
disguise 伪装，假装
indifferent 冷漠的，无动于衷的
brutally 残忍地，蛮横地
paradoxically 自相矛盾地，似是而非地
eminently 出众地，超凡的
dazzling 漂亮迷人的，令人眩惑的
aloof 冷淡的，清高的
absolutely 绝对地
inhabitant 居住者
gradation 等级，程序

Sphinx 狮身人面像
Naples 那不勒斯
Tel Aviv 特拉维夫
Cairo 开罗
Which is still a step farther in the gradations of indifference. 就冷漠程度而论是更进了一步。

Kirkwall
柯克沃尔

Kirkwall was a town of ineffable delight. By comparison with the isolation of the Island it was all bustle and excitement.

The narrow paved streets on which pedestrians, horse drawn vehicles and cars all made their way together were lined with brightly lit shop windows. In the harbor great ships lay at anchor bearing the names of faraway places like Aberdeen and even Leith; and, most exciting of all, up at the far end of the main street, sheltered by the buildings, there grew a tree! A tree was something so exotic in our experience that whenever we visited Kirkwall we could hardly wait to rush up the street to see if it was still there. It would not have surprised us if a panther had lurked among its branches waiting to pounce down on an unwary passer-by or if brightly plumaged parrots had hopped from twig to twig.

(From Against the Wind by Douglas Sutherland)

ineffable 无法表达的，不可言喻的
bustle 忙碌，熙熙攘攘
at anchor 抛锚泊定船只
exotic 奇异的，异乎寻常的
panther 豹
lurk 潜伏，埋伏
pounce 猛扑，突然袭击
unwary 不注意的，不警惕的
plumage 长有…羽毛
hop 齐足跳
Piccadilly before Dawn
黎明前的皮卡迪利大街

Piccadilly before dawn. After the stir and ceaseless traffic of the day, the silence of Piccadilly early in the morning, in the small hours, seems barely credible. It is unnatural and rather ghostly. The great street in its emptiness has a sort of solemn broadness, descending in a majestic sweep with the assured and stately ease of a placid river. The are is pure and limpid, but resonant, so that a solitary cab suddenly sends the whole street ringing, and the heavy pace of the horse resounds with long reverberations. Impressive because of their regularity, the electric lights, self-assertive and brazen, flood the surroundings with a strong and snowy brightness; with a kind of indifferent violence they cast their light upon the huge silent houses, and lower down throw into distinctness the long evenness of the park railings and the nearer trees. And between, outshone, like an uneven string of discolored gems, twinkles the yellow flicker of the gas jets.

There is silence everywhere, but the houses are quiet and still with a different silence form the rest, standing very white but for the black gaping of the many windows. In their sleep, closed and bolted, they line the pavement, helplessly as it were, disordered and undignified, having lost all significance without the busy hum of human voices and the hurrying noise of persons passing in and out.

(Adapted for Piccadilly Before Dawn by W. Somerset Maugham)

ceaseless 不停的，无休止的
ghostly 如同幽灵般的
majestic 雄伟的，壮丽的
sweep 范围，区域
stately 庄严的，雄伟的
placid 平静温和的
limpid 清澈透明的
resonant 回响的，共鸣的
resound 回响，充满声音
reverberation 回声
self-assertive 自作主张的
brazen 黄铜色的
gem 宝石
twinkle 闪烁，闪耀
flicker 忽隐忽现
gaping 洞开
bolted 上了闩的
undignified 不威严的，不庄重的

Lisbon, Portugal
葡萄牙里斯本
The cleanness of Lisbon is dazzling. In January, the steep stone streets are washed several times daily by sudden tropical showers, and Nature is assisted by street-cleaners with brooms made of twigs. The Portuguese have a green thumb. Lisbon, in winter, is brilliant with orange calendulas, blooming everywhere, together with geraniums and succulents; oranges and lemons dangle form trees in the walled gardens like bright Christmas balls, the orange matching the orange sails of the little fishing boats on the blue Tagus. The seasons at this time of year are all awry. Autumn is present in the calendulas and oranges; spring in the first wicker baskets of camellias that come down form the nearby mountains to the florist shops; summer lingers in a few exhausted petunias; winter—last January, at least—came for a day in a fall of snow, which brought the population, marveling, out into the streets to touch it. As the new year gets under way, everything is growing, all at once; even the old tile roofs have windfall crops of grass and yellow mustard, which, if you look down from a window, over the rooftops to the Tagus, make the whole city seem fertile – a sort of semitropical paradise that combines the exuberance of the south, with the huge palms in the public squares, the oranges and the monumental statuary, and the neatness and precision of the north, seen in the absence of dirt and litter, the perfectly kept public gardens and belvederes, the black-and-white mosaic patterns (ships and ropes and anchors) of the sidewalks, and the bright tiles of so many house fronts, painted in green-and-white diamond or pink roses or solid Dutch blues and yellows.

Lisbon is a city built on hills, like San Francisco, and it is full of beautiful prospects, of which every advantage has been taken. It is designed, so to speak, for a strolling tourist, at sunset, to ensconce himself in a belvedere and gaze out over the Tagus, down to the pink-and-white dome of the Basilica of Estrela, or across a ravine of buff and pink and gold building to the old fortress of Sao Jorge.

(from On the Contrary by Mary McCarthy)

calendula 金盏花
geranium 天竺葵花
succulent 肉质植物
dangle 悬垂
awry 歪曲的，不对头的
wicker 柳条编制的
camellia 山茶花
florist 花商
petunia 矮牵牛花
windfall 被风吹落的
exuberance 繁茂，茂盛
statuary 雕像，塑像
belvedere 观景台，了望台
mosaic 马赛克的
ensconce 隐蔽，置身于
ravine 沟壑，深谷
buff 暗黄色的，米色的
fortress 堡垒，要塞

Oxford Street after Bombing
轰炸后的牛津街

Early September morning in Oxford Street. The smell of charred dust hangs on what should be crystal pure air. Sun, just up, floods the once more innocent sky, strikes silver balloons and the intact building-tops. The whole length of Oxford Street, west to east, is empty, looks polished like ballroom, glitters with smashed glass. Down the distances, natural mists of morning are brown with the last of smoke. Fumes still come from the shell of a shop. At this is now the enormous thing – it appears to amaze the street. Sections and blocks have been roped off; there is no traffic; the men in the helmets say not a person may pass (but some sneak through). Besides the high explosives that did the work, this quarter has been seeded with time bombs – so we are headed, waiting for those to go off. This is the top of Oxford Street, near where it joins the corner of Hyde Park at Marble Arch.

We people have come up out of the ground, or out from the bottom floors of the damaged houses: we now see what we heard happen throughout the night.

(from London, 1940 by Elizabeth Bowen)

charred 烧成炭的
crystal 如水晶般清澈的，透明的
intact 未受损的，完整的
polished 打磨过的，发光的
ballroom 舞厅
glitter 闪耀，发光
smashed 砸碎的
fume 烟雾
shell 骨架，建筑处壳
gas main 煤气总管道
rope off 用强围起
helmet 头盔
explosive 炸药，爆炸物
quarter 住宅区，地区
time bomb 定时炸弹
herd 聚集在一起，成群

Dusk
黄昏小景
Norman Cortsby sat on a bench in the Park, with his back to strip of bush-planted sward, fenced by the park carriage drive. Hyde Park Corner, with its rattle and hoot of traffic, lay immediately to his right. It was some thirty minutes past six on an early March evening, and dusk had fallen heavily over the scene, dusk mitigated by some faint moonlight and many street lamps. There was a wide emptiness over road and sidewalk, and yet there were many unconsidered figures moving silently through the half-light or dotted unobtrusively on bench and chair, scarcely to be distinguished from the shadowed gloom in which they sat.
The scene pleased Gortsby and harmonized with his present mood. Dusk, to his mind, was the hour of the defeated. Men and women, who had fought and lost, who hid their fallen fortunes and dead hopes as far as possible form the scrutiny of the curious, came forth in this hour of gloaming, when their shabby clothes and bowed shoulders and unhappy eyes might pass unnoticed, or, at any rate, unrecognized.
The wanderers in the dusk did not choose to have strange looks fasten on them, therefore they came out in this bat-fashion, taking their pleasure sadly in a pleasure-ground that had emptied of its rightful occupants. Beyond the sheltering screen of bushed and palings came a realm of brilliant light and noisy, rushing traffic. A blazing, many-tiered stretch of windows shone through the dusk and almost dispersed it, marking the haunts of those other people, who held their own in life’s struggle, or at any rate had not had to admit failure. So Gortsby’s imagination pictured things as he sat on his bench in the almost deserted walk.

（Adapted from Dusk by Saki）
sward 草地，草皮
rattle 吵闹，喧嚣声
hoot 汽车喇叭声
mitigate 缓和，减轻
unobtrusively 不显眼地，不引人注目地
harmonize with 与。。。。。。一致，和谐
scrutiny 仔细查看
gloaming 黄昏，薄暮
shabby 破旧的，褴褛的
bat-fashion 蝙蝠式昼伏夜出
occupant 占有者，享用者
palings 栅栏，篱笆
blazing 灯火辉煌的
many-tiered 多层的
disperse 驱散的，使分流

A Dry World
干旱之地
Pale, dry, baked earth, that blows into dust of fine sand. Low hills of baked pale earth, sinking heavily, and speckled sparsely with dark dots of cedar bushes. A river on the plain of drought, just a cleft of dark, reddish-brown water, almost a flood. And over all, the blue, uneasy, alkaline sky.

A pale, uneven, parched world, where a motor-car rocks and lurches and churns in sand. A world pallid with dryness, in human with a faint taste of alkali. Like driving in the bed of a great sea that dried up unthinkable ages ago, and now is drier than any other dryness, yet still reminiscent of the bottom of the sea, sand hills sinking, and straight, cracked mesas, like cracks in the dry-mud bottom of the sea.

So the mud church standing discreetly outside, just outside the pueblo, not to see too much. And on its façade of mud, under the timbered mud-eaves, two speckled horses rampant, painted by the Indians, a red piebald and black one.

Swish! Over the logs of the ditch-bridge, where brown water is flowing full. There below is the pueblo, dried mud like mud-pie houses, all squatting in a jumble, prepared to crumble into dust and be invisible, dust to dust returning, earth to earth.

That they don’t crumble is the mystery. That these little squarish mud-heaps endure for centuries after centuries, while Greek marble tumbles asunder, and cathedrals totter, is the wonder. But then, the naked human hand with a bit of new soft mud is quicker than time, and defies the centuries.

Roughly the low, square, mud-pie houses make a wide street where all is naked earth save a doorway or a window with a pale-blue sash. At the end of the street, turn again into a parallel wide, dry street. And there, in the dry, oblong aridity, there tosses a small forest that is alive: and thud—thud—thud goes the drum, and the deep sound of men singing is like the deep soughing of the wind, in the depths of a wood.

(form Dance of the Sprouting Corn by D. H. Lawrence)

speckle 点缀，装点
cedar 雪松
cleft 裂缝，裂口
alkaline 碱性的
parch 烘烤，烧焦
lurch 蹒跚，东倒西歪地向前
churn 剧烈抖晃，翻腾
pallid 苍白的，虚弱的
mesa 平顶山，方山
pueblo 印第安的村庄
façade 门面，正面
rampant （马等）用后腿立起的，跃立的
piebald 有花斑的马
squat 蹲伏
crumble 破碎，崩溃，倒塌
tumble 倒塌
asunder 分散，碎裂
totter 摇摇欲坠
sash 窗框格