听播客学英语 255 多佛海滩

 　　I have something rather more difficult for you today.

　　Matthew Arnold was an English poet who lived from 1822 to 1888. One of his most famous poems is “Dover Beach”. Dover is a town on the south coast of England. It is the place where you take a ferry to Calais in France. Arnold visited Dover in 1851 with his wife shortly after their wedding. He probably wrote the poem then.

　　I shall read you only the last part of the poem. Matthew Arnold says that the world is not really full of dreams and beauty. It is a dark place where people fight meaningless battles. If we want there to be beauty and truth in the world, then we have to be true and loving to the people who are close to us. I have put some vocabulary notes on the podcast website.

　　Ah, love, let us be true

　　To one another! for the world, which seems

　　To lie before us like a land of dreams,

　　So various, so beautiful, so new,

　　Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,

　　Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;

　　And we are here as on a darkling plain

　　Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,

　　Where ignorant¹ armies clash² by night.

　　“before us” means “in front of us”

　　“Hath” is an old form of “has”

　　“Neither joy, nor love, nor…” means “no joy, and no love, etc…”

　　“Certitude” means “certainty”

　　“Darkling” just means “dark”

　　“Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight” means “all around us there are confused stories about fighting (struggle) and running away (flight)” – Arnold was probably thinking about a story from ancient Greek history of two armies fighting in confusion³ at night.

1 ignorant   

adj.无知的，没有学问的，愚昧的，不知道的

参考例句：

• They are unbelievably ignorant.他们无知到令人难以置信的地步。
• He's not stupid,merely ignorant.他并不愚蠢，只是无知。

2 clash   

vi.冲突，不协调，砰地相撞；n.冲突，不协调

参考例句：

• There is a clash between two classes at 2 p.m. on Thursday.星期四下午两点有两堂课是冲突的。
• The pot came down on the stone floor with a clash.锅“当”地一声掉到石地上。

3 confusion   

n.困惑，迷乱，混淆，混乱，骚乱

参考例句：

• His answers to my questions have only added to my confusion.他对我的问题的回答只是使我更加困惑不解。
• His unexpected arrival threw us into total confusion.他的突然来访使我们完全不知所措。