The Return of the Native   
                                                        Thomas Hardy
sort of的意思A SATURDAY afternoon in November was approaching the time of twilight, and the vast tract of unenclosed wild known as Egdon Heath embrowned itself moment by moment. Overhead the hollow stretch of whitish cloud shutting out the sky was as a tent which had the whole heath for its floor.
  The heaven being spread with this pallid screen, the earth with the dark vegetation, their meeting-line at the horizon was clearly marked. In such contrast the heath wore the appearance of an installment of night which had taken up its place before its astronomical hour was come: darkness had to a great extent arrived hereon while day stood distinct in the sky. Looking upwards, a furze-cutter would have inclined to continue work; looking down, he would have decided to finish his faggot and go home. The distant rims of the world and of the firmament seemed to be a division in time no less than a division in matter. The face of the heath by its mere complexion added half-an-hour to eve: it could in like manner retard the da
wn, sadden moon, anticipate the frowning of storms scarcely generated, and intensify the opacity of a moonless midnight to a cause of shaking and dread.
  In fact, precisely at this transitional point of its nightly roll into darkness the great and particular glory of the Egdon waste began, and nobody could be said to understand the heath who had not been there at such a time. It could be best felt when it could not clearly be seen. Its complete effect and explanation lay in this and the succeeding hours before the next dawn: then and only then did it tell its true tale. The spot was, indeed, a near relation of night; and when night showed itself an apparent tendency to gravitate together could be perceived in its shades and the scene. The somber stretch of rounds and hollows seemed to rise and meet the evening gloom in pure sympathy, the heath exhaling darkness as rapidly as the heavens precipitated it. The obscurity in the air and the obscurity in the land closed together in a black fraternization towards which each advanced half way.
  The place became full of a watchful intentness now. When other things sank brooding to sleep the heath appeared slowly to awake and listen. Every night its Titanic form seemed t
o await something; but it had waited thus, unmoved, during so many centuries, through the crises of so many things, that it could only be the imagined to await one last crisis---the final Overthrow.
  It was a spot which returned upon the memory of those who loved it with an aspect of peculiar and kindly congruity. Smiling champaigns of flowers and fruit hardly do this, for they are permanently harmonious only with an existence of better reputation as to its issues than the present. Twilight combined with the scenery of Egdon Heath to evolve a thing majestic without severity, impressive without showiness, emphatic in its admonitions, grand in its simplicity. The qualifications which frequently invest the façade of a prison with far more dignity than is found in the façade of a palace double its size lent to this heath a sublimity in which spots renowned for mere prettiness are utterly wanting. Gay prospects wed happily with gay times; but alas if times be not gay. Men have oftener suffered from the mockery of a place too smiling for their reason than from the oppression of surroundings over-sadly tinged. Haggard Egdon appealed to a subtler and scarcer instinct, to a more recently learnt emotion, than that which responds to the sort of beauty called cha
rming.
  To recline on a stump of thorn in the central valley of Egdon, between afternoon and night as now, where the eye could reach nothing of the world outside the summits and shoulders of heath-land which filled the whole circumference of its glance, and to know that everything around and underneath had been from prehistoric times as unaltered as the stars overhead, gave ballast to the mind adrift on change, and harassed by the irrepressible New. The great inviolate place had an ancient permanence which the sea cannot claim. Who can say of a particular sea that it is old? Distilled by the sun, kneaded by the moon, it is renewed in a year, in a day, or in a hour. The sea changed, the fields changed, the rivers, the villages, and the people changed, yet Egdon remained. Those surfaces were neither so steep as to be destructible by weather, nor so flat as to be the victims of floods and deposits. With the exception of an aged highway, and a still more aged barrow presently to be referred to---themselves almost crystallized to natural products by long continuance---even the trifling irregularities were not caused by pickaxe, plough, or spade, but remains as the very finger-touches of the last geological change.
还乡 
托马斯·哈代
十一月里的一个星期六的后半天， 越来越靠近暮昏黄的时候了；那一片没有垣篱界断的广大旷野， 提起来都管它叫爱敦荒原的，也一阵比一阵地凄迷苍茫。抬头看来， 弥漫长空的灰白浮云，遮断了青天，好像一座帐篷，把整个荒原当作了它的地席。
  天上悬的既是这样灰白的帐幕，地上铺的又是那种最苍郁的灌莽，所以天边远处天地交接的界线，显得清清楚楚。在这样的对衬下，那片荒原看起来就好像是夜的前驱，还没有正式入夜的时候就走上夜的岗位了；因为地上夜已经很浓，天上却分明还是白昼。一个斫常青棘的樵夫，如果往天上看去， 就还想继续工作，如果往地下一看， 他却又要决定束好柴捆回家去了。那时候，天边远处，大地的轮廓和长空的轮廓，不但是物质的分界，而且是时间的分界。荒原的表面，仅仅由于颜这一端，就给暮夜增加了半点钟。它能在同样的情形下，使曙来得迟缓，使正午变得凄冷；狂风暴雨几乎还没踪影，它就预先显出风暴的阴沉面目；三更半夜，没有月光，它更加深那咫尺难辨的昏暗，以致使人害怕发抖。
  事实上，爱敦荒原伟大而奇特的壮观，恰恰在它每晚由明入暗的那个过渡点上开始，凡是没有在那种时节到过那儿的人，就不能说他领会这片旷野。正由于它在人的眼里看着朦胧迷离，它才让人在心里觉得恰到好处，因为它的力量和意义，完全表现在这个时候以及这个时候以后，第二天曙以前的那几点钟里面，在这段时间里，也只有在这段时间里，它才露初它的真面目。这块地方实在和夜是近亲属；只有夜一露面，就显然能看出在夜的苍冥里和荒原的景物上有一种互相凑合的趋势：那一大片郁苍连绵的圆阜和空谷， 好像以十二分的同情，起身迎接昏沉的暮似的；因为荒原一把黑暗吐出，天空也就把黑暗倾下，两种动作都同样迅速。这样一来，大气里的暝昧和大地上的冥昧，就各走一半路凑到了一起，仿佛同枝连理，结成一气氤氲。
  现在这个地方全部都显出专心一志、聚精会神的样子来了，因为别的东西都两眼曚昽、昏昏入睡的时候，这片荒原才好像慢慢醒来，悄悄静听。它那泰坦一般的形体，每天夜里老仿佛在那儿等候一样东西似的。不过它那样一动不动地等候，过了那么些世纪了，经历了那么些事物的危机了，而它仍旧在那儿等候，所以我们只能设想，它是在等候最末一次的危机，等候天翻地覆的末日。

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