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原帖由 jinhl 于 2010-10-1 16:44 发表
何老师,能不能提供一些精读的文章啊?
我收集了100多篇、各种写作风格的精读文章。我要求学生一个星期抄写一篇(或摘选其中一段),每天读两遍(一周读五天共10遍)。这里贴一篇供你参考。
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All things come of age
By Liam O'Flaherty
The baby rabbit was sitting in the sun just by the entrance to his burrow. He was half asleep. His big ears sloped along his back and his sides heaved gently with his breathing. Now and again a slight breeze came up from the stream, raised the brown fur on his side and made silver furrows in it. When the breeze touched him, he sniffed the air and wanted his mother to come and feed him.
He was now big enough to graze for his own food along the fertile bank of the stream, but all his brothers and sisters had been killed by a weasel and for that reason there was still enough milk in his mother’s drying udder to feed him. So he had not yet been forced to pluck the short blades of grass with his teeth and chew them. All he did was to come out of his burrow, hop about in the sun, smelling the ground, or sit attentively listening to sound, until something menacing came to his ears and he dived into his burrow for shelter.
At the moment, there was perfect peace by the bank of the stream. The sun was still at its height, although it was long past noon. It shone full on the waterfall, that poured with a wild, sad murmur from a narrow gorge, lined with a thick growth of flowering heather. Like a widespread horse’s mance, the water poured from the gorge, thick and brown at its base, where it was cloured by the earth and heather and then, falling, it widened out into a silver sheet. There was a long, deep pool below the fall. Flies skimmed its surface and trout leaped at their gaudy wings. At the near end of the pool, just beneath where the little rabbit dozed, there was a line of boulders thrown across the stream. A wild duck stood on one leg in a hollow between two of the boulders. The duck was asleep, with its bill tucked under one wing.
All was still, except for the drowsy music of the waterfall. Some time ago, when the duck swooped down, quacking, onto the boulders, the little rabbit had taken fright and darted into his burrow. But when he peered out again and watched the duck for a long time, as it fed in the stream, prodding with its beak, he became used to the bird and feared it no more. Now it was asleep and it had become part of the surroundings. There was nothing to be seen of it between the boulders, except its flashing wing feathers and a little of its yellow beak.
Suddenly the duck awoke and withdrew its bill from beneath its wing. It raised its neck and turned its head from side to side, listening. Then it began to bob its head and put both feet on the ground. It moved a little to one side, jerking its head and its tail. Then it quacked. It was a low quack, scarcely audible, but it startled the little rabbit. He became wide awake and moved. At first he laid his ears flat along his back and bent down low to the earth on his stomach. Then he raised himself gradually, thrust forward his ears and listened. He watched the duck.
Now the duck was very excited and began to quack continuously. Shaking its gullet, it paddled about on the boulder, taking tiny steps. The little rabbit became very curious, because he failed to discover the cause of the bird’s unrest. There was neither sound nor smell. He raised himself on his haunches, thrust his ears as far forward as he could and let his forelegs drop along his breast. He listened and watched intently. He began to get afraid.
Then the duck uttered a loud quack and swept from the boulders with a great swishing of its wings. It swung in a half circle and then shot upwards into the sky, gathering speed as it rose, until it disappeared over a clump of trees farther down the bank of the stream. The rabbit dropped his forelegs to the ground and gathered himself together to make a dive into his burrow. Yet he did not move. The swoop of the duck and the loud swishing of its wings had so startled him that he could not move. So he remained where he was, crouching.
And then, as he lay crouching, he began to feel afraid. It was the same feeling he experienced a few days previously, then his last remaining brother, having hopped into the clump of briars on the left, had suddenly begun to scream. There was a strange feeling in the air, the nearness of a sinister force, that prevented movement. At that time, however, he had been able to move after a little while and run into his burrow. Now it was different.
The sinister feeling increased. There was absolute silence and there was nothing strange to smell and yet he felt the approach of the sinister force, something unknown and monstrous. In spite of himself, although he wanted awfully to hide from it, he looked in the direction whence he sensed the approach of the enemy. His head shook violently as he glanced towards the boulders that lay across the stream. And then he began to scream. A weasel was crossing the line of boulders.
The baby rabbit had never before seen a weasel, but the long brown body, that moved with awful speed, making no sound, drove him crazy with horror. The weasel paused in the middle of the stream, raised his powerful head and stared at the rabbit, his wicked eyes fixed. And then, keeping his head raised and his eyes on his prey, he glided like a flash to the bank. He disappeared for a fraction of a second behind a stone in his patch and then appeared again, standing against the little stone, staring fixedly. Now his powerful head, raised above the long brown barrel of his body, was like the boss of a hammer, poised to strike. The rabbit’s screaming became wider. He was now completely in the brute’s power, mesmerized by the staring eyes and by the sinister presence.
The weasel, having mesmerized his prey, was on the point of gliding forward to his meal of blood, when the baby rabbit’s mother dashed from the clump of briars on the left, screaming as she ran. She moved in a strange fashion, leaping sideways like a dog trying to sight a hare in a field of corn. It was a grotesque dance, to the accompaniment of wild screams. She passed directly in front of the weasel and circled him twice, threatening him each time with her upraised paws. She drew his eyes from her little one towards herself. When they were fixed on her, she dropped to the ground and began to tremble. She crawled away slowly towards the clump of briars, continuing the while to scream. Then she lay down. The weasel slid from the stone and moved towards her swiftly.
As soon as the weasel’s eyes left him, the baby rabbit stopped screaming. Then he began to crawl away upstream. He moved as if his back were hurt. He was almost paralysed and it hurt him terribly to draw his hind legs up under his belly in order to hop forward. But the farther away he went from the weasel, the lesser grew the pain in his joints, until at last it seemed that a weight was lifted from his body and he was able to run, staggering a little, into a great hummock of grass that grew around a gorse bush. He bored a hole through the long, coarse grass with his snout and then lay still in the very middle of it, panting. There he fell asleep.
When he awoke it was late in the evening and the sun had set. He felt very hungry. By now, his paroxysm of fear and the weasel’s staring eyes were only a vague memory. He wanted to suck his mother and satisfy his hunger. He backed out of his lair in the grass to look for her. He would find her in the burrow where she always fed him in the evening.
He ran back to the burrow as fast as he could, the little white button of his tail hopping as he ran in the twilight like a ball of cotton carried on the wind. He dived eagerly into the burrow and searched for her. The burrow was empty. He came out again, sat on his haunches and raised his ears, smelling and listening. In the distance, frogs were croaking in a marsh. A curlew called on the wing. A multitude of other birds, about to perch for the night, were warbling. He dropped his forelegs and hopped about, smelling the ground, now and again thrusting forward one ear and then another, listening. All round the mouth of the burrow, among the thrown out earth, that was pebbled with round droppings, he could smell her, but the smell was old and faint. He went farther from the hole, nosing the ground, in search of a fresher scent.
At last he found one, the track on which she had danced before the weasel. He followed it carefully, round and round, until he came to her, over near the clump of briars. She was lying on her side, already stiff in death. Her udder was towards him and he was on the point of thrusting at the nearest teat with his snout, when he drew back slightly, astonished at the unusual odour which her body exuded. He crouched, with his head close into his neck. Then he thrust forward his head once more timidly, and gently smelt her, all along her body. Just beneath her ear the smell was very strange and terrifying. There was a little hole there and the rim of the hole was clotted with dried blood. As soon as he sniffed the blood, the paroxysm of fear returned. He leaped backwards, sat up on his hind legs, stared at the corpse, squealed and fled to his burrow. He lay in the innermost corner of it, panting.
For a long time he lay there, his head pressed hard against the cold earth. Then again, hunger began to gnaw at his bowels. His hunger gradually became stronger than his fear, driving out the memory of horrid, clotted blood, around the hole beneath his mother’s ear. He forgot this mother. His hunger grew fierce, drowning memory. He crawled out of the burrow.
Nigh had now fallen and the moon was out, gilding the grassy slope with a fairy light. Several rabbits from neighbouring burrows were grazing in the moonlight. Two little ones, about his own age, were chasing one another. He hopped over to them and began to nibble at the grass.
Dew was now falling on the grass, making it juicy and sweet, just like his mother’s milk. When he had eaten his fill, he joined in the dance of the other little rabbits. Now he was no longer afraid and he had completely forgotten his mother. He was one of the herd.
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