时间:2018-11-30 作者:英语课 分类:英语励志美文精华


英语课

I Wish I Could believe


by C. Day Lewis


"The best lack all conviction,


While the worst are full of passionate 1 intesity."


Those two lines of Yeats for me sum up the matter as it stands today when the very currency of belief seems debased. I was brought up in the Christian 2 church. Later I believed for a while that communism offered the best hope for this world. I acknowledge the need for belief, but I cannot forget how through the ages great faiths have been vitiated by fanaticism 3 and dogmatism, by intolerance and cruelty, by the intellectual dishonesty, the folly 4, the crankiness or the opportunism of their adherents 5.


Have I no faith at all, then? Faith is the thing at the core of you, the sediment 6 that's left when hopes and illusions are drained away. The thing for which you make any sacrifice because without it you would be nothing - a mere 7 walking shadow. I know what my own core is. I would in the last resort sacrifice any human relationship, any way of living to the search for truth which produces my poem. I know there are heavy odds 8 against any poem I write surviving after my death. I realize that writing poetry may seem the most preposterously 9 useless thing a man can be doing today. Yet it is just at such times of crisis that each man discovers or rediscovers what he values most. My poet's instinct to make something comes out most strongly then, enabling me to use fear, doubt, even despair as creative stimuli 10. In doing so, I feel my kinship with humanity, with the common man who carries on doing his job till the bomb falls or the sea closes over him. Carries on because of his belief, however inarticulate, that this is the best thing he can do. But the poet is luckier than the layman 11, for his job is always a vacation. Indeed, it's so like a religious vacation that he may feel little need for a religious faith, but because it is always trying to get past the trivial and the transient or to reveal these as images of the essential and the permanent, poetry is at least a kind of spiritual activity.


Men need a religious belief to make sense out of life. I wish I had such a belief myself, but any creed 12 of mine would be honeycombed with confusions and reservations. Yet when I write a poem I am trying to make sense out of life. And just now and then my experience composes and transmutes 13 itself into a poem which tells me something I didn't know I knew. So for me the compulsion of poetry is the sign of a belief, not the less real for being unformulated ... a belief that men must enjoy life, explore life, enhance life. Each as best he can. And that I shall do these things best through the practice of poetry.



1 passionate
adj.热情的,热烈的,激昂的,易动情的,易怒的,性情暴躁的
  • He is said to be the most passionate man.据说他是最有激情的人。
  • He is very passionate about the project.他对那个项目非常热心。
2 Christian
adj.基督教徒的;n.基督教徒
  • They always addressed each other by their Christian name.他们总是以教名互相称呼。
  • His mother is a sincere Christian.他母亲是个虔诚的基督教徒。
3 fanaticism
n.狂热,盲信
  • Your fanaticism followed the girl is wrong. 你对那个女孩的狂热是错误的。
  • All of Goebbels's speeches sounded the note of stereotyped fanaticism. 戈培尔的演讲,千篇一律,无非狂热二字。
4 folly
n.愚笨,愚蠢,蠢事,蠢行,傻话
  • Learn wisdom by the folly of others.从别人的愚蠢行动中学到智慧。
  • Events proved the folly of such calculations.事情的进展证明了这种估计是愚蠢的。
5 adherents
n.支持者,拥护者( adherent的名词复数 );党羽;徒子徒孙
  • He is a leader with many adherents. 他是个有众多追随者的领袖。 来自《简明英汉词典》
  • The proposal is gaining more and more adherents. 该建议得到越来越多的支持者。 来自《简明英汉词典》
6 sediment
n.沉淀,沉渣,沉积(物)
  • The sediment settled and the water was clear.杂质沉淀后,水变清了。
  • Sediment begins to choke the channel's opening.沉积物开始淤塞河道口。
7 mere
adj.纯粹的;仅仅,只不过
  • That is a mere repetition of what you said before.那不过是重复了你以前讲的话。
  • It's a mere waste of time waiting any longer.再等下去纯粹是浪费时间。
8 odds
n.让步,机率,可能性,比率;胜败优劣之别
  • The odds are 5 to 1 that she will win.她获胜的机会是五比一。
  • Do you know the odds of winning the lottery once?你知道赢得一次彩票的几率多大吗?
9 preposterously
adv.反常地;荒谬地;荒谬可笑地;不合理地
  • That is a preposterously high price! 那价格高得出奇! 来自辞典例句
10 stimuli
n.刺激(物)
  • It is necessary to curtail or alter normally coexisting stimuli.必需消除或改变正常时并存的刺激。
  • My sweat glands also respond to emotional stimuli.我的汗腺对情绪刺激也能产生反应。
11 layman
n.俗人,门外汉,凡人
  • These technical terms are difficult for the layman to understand.这些专门术语是外行人难以理解的。
  • He is a layman in politics.他对政治是个门外汉。
12 creed
n.信条;信念,纲领
  • They offended against every article of his creed.他们触犯了他的每一条戒律。
  • Our creed has always been that business is business.我们的信条一直是公私分明。
13 transmutes
v.使变形,使变质,把…变成…( transmute的第三人称单数 )
  • Energy transmutes into matter. 能量变成物质。 来自《现代英汉综合大词典》
  • Your Light will be so powerful that it repels or transmutes the lower energies. 你们的光将会如此强大,以致于它驱逐或者转变较低的能量。 来自互联网
学英语单词
Agency Bond
alpecia
Ampazine
anglepedestal
around the world in eighty days
axioplasm
back-up facility
bend one's neck
bio-photorecorder
blindfish
blood-stone
bocasine
character constant editing
chromolithographer
Chunling
classic command
color mixing room
compiler directive statement
containersful
costimulator
cromalin
cytisines
depreciation method of uniformity varying amount
dicaryon mycelium
down current
draining tank
Drummoyne
dry sulphitation
ellingtons
flat hand
forenights
geared ladle-hoist
Hank Williams
heavy wine
helue
ideological justification
input output framework
ivnik
Kuibyshev
l'ee
law of average
lombardsijde (lombartzyde)
londinis
lower radial bearing
Lubelskie
malar polyester
Mamluk
mathematical law
metacrystallic rock
miskito coast
molly house
nanotechnologists
Nemocardium
Ngan Ha
nudish
nudiusculus
Oersdorf
osteotylus
outgain
output characteristic
over-assessment
overflow status table
pelvimetric
plastic resin core binder
positioning relay
predictors of technology
priest
procedure control system
procto
purs-purs
requisite documet
rps (reactor protection system)
rummage out/up
schaumburg-lippe
schererite (scheererite)
Seebohm
serving for
silver generals
simultaneous telegraph and telephone
sonic scattering layer
speed load characteristic
steepest ascent search
stochastic assumption of simple model
stripper shovel
tappet plunger
thumb-tack needle for subcutaneous embedding
to this
Trichosanthes anguina
trypan-red
ultramicrochemistry
uncarbonated
unfavoured transition
uniform pitch
upset rod
vaporeuse
vertical speed instantaneous indicator
Verticillium graphii
W.Germany
wave velocity (phase velocity)
weak isospin
weakly basic ion exchanger
wing-handed