William Wordsworth
Up! up! my Friend, and quit your books;
Or surely you’ll grow double:
Up! up! my Friend, and clear your looks;
Why all this toil and trouble?
The sun, above the mountain’s head,
A freshening lustre mellow
Through all the long green fields has spread,
His first sweet evening yellow.
Books! ’tis a dull and endless strife:
Come, hear the woodland linnet,
How sweet his music! on my life,
There’s more of wisdom in it.
And hark! How blithe the throstle sings!
He, too, is no mean preacher:
Come forth into the light of things,
Let Nature be your Teacher.
She has a world of ready wealth,
Our minds and hearts to bless —
Spontaneous wisdom breathed by health,
Truth breathed by cheerfulness.
One impulse from a vernal wood
May teach you more of man,
Of moral evil and of good,
Than all the sages can.
Sweet is the lore which Nature brings;
Our meddling intellect
Mis-shapes the beauteous forms of things: —
We murder to dissect.
Enough of Science and of Art;
Close up those barren leaves;
Come forth, and bring with you a heart
That watches and receives.
1.Decide whether the following statements are true (T) or false (F).
____ 1)The speaker begins by telling his friend to stop reading books because it is boring and tedious.
____ 2)Rather than reading, he should venture outside to where the linnet and the throstle are singing beautiful music containing more wisdom than any book.
____ 3)The speaker is telling his friend that nothing has more to teach than books, and that he should try to seek refuge in pages.
____ 4)A person can learn more about humanity and about good and evil from a sage than from a tree.
____ 5)Sometimes, we should reject traditional science and art and simply come into nature ready to learn more.
2.Fill in the blanks according to your understanding of the poem.
“The Tables Turned”consists of eight 1) -line stanzas in interlocking rhymes 2).It is in 3) form, written in iambs with 4) beats in the first and third lines of each stanza, and three beats in the second and fourth lines.
It certainly seems 5) to find a poet telling his friend to stop reading, and yet much of what Wordsworth is saying in “The Tables Turned”fits perfectly with the 6) Movement, which emphasizes the importance of being a part of 7).For Wordsworth there is much more to be learned by watching, 8) to, and simply taking in one’s surroundings than by studying 9).At the same time, there is a strong element of irony at play here.First of all, Wordsworth is making these statements in a poem, which will become a part of a book meant to be read.Even though he believes that nature is a great 10) , he is not ready to throw away books altogether.
Proper Names
Venus of Milo 断臂维纳斯
Rodin 罗丹
The Bible 圣经
Boyle’s Law 波义耳定律
Holy Spirit 圣灵
Methodist 卫理公会教徒
Magdalen Deer Park ( 牛津) 摩德林学院鹿苑
Pandit Nehru 潘迪特·尼赫鲁
Gandhi 甘地
Vulgate 拉丁文圣经
Notes
1. William Golding (1911-1993):Sir William Gerald Golding was a British novelist, poet, playwright and Nobel Prize for Literature laureate, best known for his novel Lord of the Flies .He was also awarded the Booker Prize for literature in 1980 for his novel Rites of Passage , the first book of the trilogy To the Ends of the Earth .In 2008, The Times ranked Golding third on their list of “The 50 greatest British writers since 1945”.
2. Venus of Milo :Better known as the Venus de Milo, it is an ancient Greek statue and one of the most famous works of ancient Greek sculpture.Created at some time between 130 and 100 BC, it is believed to depict Aphrodite (Venus to the Romans) the Greek goddess of love and beauty.It is a marble sculpture, slightly larger than life size at 203 cm (6 ft 8 in) high.Its arms and original plinth have been lost.
3. Rodin’s Thinker:The Thinker is a bronze and marble sculpture by Auguste Rodin, whose first cast, of 1902, is now in Paris.It depicts a man in sober meditation battling with a powerful internal struggle.
4. Boyle’s Law:It is one of many gas laws and a special case of the ideal gas law.Boyle’s law describes the inversely proportional relationship between the absolute pressure and volume of a gas, if the temperature is kept constant within a closed system.The law was named after chemist and physicist Robert Boyle.
5. Pandit Nehru (1889-1964):He was an Indian politician who became the first Prime Minister of independent India (1947-1964) and became noted for his “neutralist”policies in foreign affairs.He was also one of the principal leaders of India’s independence movement in the 1930s and 1940s.
6. Methodist:Methodism is a movement of Protestant Christianity represented by a number of denominations and organizations, claiming a total of approximately seventy million adherents worldwide.A Methodist is a member or follower of this religious group.
7. Professor Einstein:It refers to Albert Einstein (1879-1955), the world famous German-born theoretical physicist who developed the theory of general relativity, effecting a revolution in physics.For this achievement, Einstein is often regarded as the father of modern physics and one of the most prolific intellects in human history.
8. Gandhi (1869-1948):He was the pre-eminent political and ideological leader of India during the Indian independence movement.He was the pioneer to use non-violent resistance to tyranny through mass civil disobedience.
9. Saint Jerome:Saint Jerome was a Roman Christian priest, confessor, theologian and historian, and who became a Doctor of the Church.He is best known for his translation of the Bible into Latin (the Vulgate), and his list of writings is extensive.
10. Francis Bacon (1561-1626):He was an English philosopher, statesman, scientist, lawyer, jurist, author and pioneer of the scientific method.He remained extremely influential through his works, especially as philosophical advocate and practitioner of the scientific method during the scientific revolution.
11. William Wordsworth (1770-1850):He was a major English Romantic poet who, with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, helped to launch the Romantic Age in English literature with the 1798 joint publication Lyrical Ballads .Wordsworth’s magnum opus is generally considered to be The Prelude , a semiautobiographical poem of his early years which he revised and expanded a number of times.Wordsworth was Britain’s Poet Laureate from 1843 until his death in 1850.
For Fun
Works to Read
1. Of Human Bondage by W.Somerset Maugham:Generally agreed to be Maugham’s masterpiece and to be strongly autobiographical in nature, the novels tells a story of Philip Carey, a handicapped orphan, is brought up by a clergyman, but Philip sheds his religious faith and begins to study art in Paris.Philip’s childhood experience in the boarding school is vividly revealed as part of the critical influence on his later life.
2. A Liberal Education by Thomas H.Huxley:It is an excerpt from a longer essay, A Liberal Education; and Where to Find It which Huxley delivered in 1868 at the South London Working Men’s College.His opening analogy—comparing life to a chess game enlightens the students on the value and purpose of education.
Movies to See
1. Dead Poets Society (1989):It is a 1989 American drama film directed by Peter Weir and starring Robin Williams.Set at the conservative and aristocratic Welton Academy in Vermont in 1959, it tells the story of an English professor John Keating who inspires his students through his teaching of poetry to love poetry and to seize the day.The film was critically acclaimed and was nominated for many awards.
2. Homeless to Harvard: The Liz Murray Story (2003):Liz is a young girl who is taken care of by her loving, but drug-addicted father and mother, who is also an alcoholic.After her mother dies of HIV, which she got from sharing needles during her drug abuse, she got a “slap in the face”by her mother’s death and begins her work to finish high school, which she amazingly completed in two years, rather than the usual four.She becomes a star student and earns a scholarship to Harvard University through an essay contest sponsored by the New York Times.