课文选自外研版选择性必修三，Unit6 nature in words 第一篇文章。

Mr Robert Lynd once said of Jane Austen's characters: "They are people in whose lives slight fall of is an event, even at the risk of appearing to this fair and witty reviewer as another Mr Woodhouse, I must insist that last night's fall of snow here was an event. I was nearly as excited about it this morning as the children, whom I found all looking through the window at the magic outside and talking away as excitedly as if Christmas had suddenly come round again. The fact is, however, that the snow was as strange and fascinating to me as it was to them. It is the first fall we have had here this winter, and last year was out of the country, sweating in a hot climate, during the snowy season, so that it really does seem an age since saw the ground so fantastically carpeted.

罗伯特·林德先生曾这样评论过简·奥斯汀笔下的人物:“在这些人的生命里，场场小雪皆是大事”在这位公正睿智的评论家面前，即便是冒着让自己看起来像伍德豪斯先生那样的风险，我也得坚持说:“昨晚这儿的那场雪是件大事。”对于这场雪，我今早近乎像孩子们那样兴奋。孩子们透过窗子看着外面奇妙的世界，兴奋地说个不停，就像圣诞节突然又要来了一般。事实上，这场雪于我而言，也是同样的奇异，同样的迷人。这是今年冬天我们在这里的第一场雪，而在去年的季，我身在异国，在酷热的天气理汗流不止，所以离我上次欣赏到这银装素裹的世界，着实过了些时日了。”

The first fall of snow is not only an event but it is a magical event. You go to bed in one kind of world and wake up to find yourself in another quite different, and if this is not magic, then where is it to be found? The very secrecy and quietness of the thing makes it more magical.

这场初雪不仅是一件大事，而且还是一件具有魔力的大事。入睡时，世界是一个模样，醒来则是完全不同的另一番模样，若非有魔力，如何才能这般?神秘，悄然，这给雪又添了几分魔力。

When I got up this morning the world was a cold place of dead white and pale blues. The light that came through the windows was very strange, and it made the familiar business of splashing and shaving and brushing and dressing very strange too. Then the sun came out, and by the time I had sat down to breakfast it was shining bravely and flushing the snow with delicate pinks. The dining-room window had been transformed into love Japanese print. The little plum tree outside, with the faintly flushed snow lining its branches and artfully disposed along its trunk, stood in full sunlight.

今早我起床时，世界是一片寂然的白色与浅淡的蓝色，到处清清冷冷。窗子透进来的光线很是怪异，使得洗脸、刮胡子、刷牙、穿衣服这些熟悉的日常行为也显得离奇古怪。接着太阳出来了，等到我坐下来吃早餐时，太阳的光彩已是绚烂夺目，给雪地添了一抹柔和的粉红色。餐厅的窗户成了一幅可爱的日本版画。在阳光的普照之下，屋外的李子树的树干和枝丫被淡粉的积雪精致巧妙地装点着。

An hour or two later everything was a cold sparkle of white and blue. The world had completely changed again. The little Japanese prints had all disappeared. looked out of my study window, over the garden, the field, to the low hills beyond, and the ground went on and on, the sky was thick grey, and all the trees so many black and threatening shapes There was indeed something curiously disturbing about the whole prospect. It was as if our kindly countryside, close to the very heart of England, had been turned into a cruel grassland. At any moment, it seemed, a body of horsemen might be seen breaking out from the black trees, so many weapons might be heard and some distant spot of snow be reddened. It was that kind of landscape.

一两个小时过后，一切都闪着或白或蓝的微光。世界又彻底改变了模样。小小的日本版画都消失不见了，我从书房看向窗外，越过花园、田野，再望向远处低矮的小山，沿着不断向前延伸的地面望去，天空成了厚重的灰色，所有的树木都显出一副黑黢黢和凶神恶煞的样子。整个景象确实会给人带来一种奇怪的、不安的感受。就好像我们这个靠近英格兰中心位置的亲切小乡村变成了暴躁的草原;仿佛随时可能看见一群骑兵从黑黝黝的树丛中冲出，可能听见武器的交错响声，最后好像看见远处的白雪一点点被血液染红。这幅景象就是给人这种感觉。

Now it has changed again. The glare has gone and no touch of the disturbing remains. But the snow is falling heavily, in great soft flakes, so that you can hardly see across the shallow valley, and the roofs are thick and the trees all bending, and the weathercock of the village church, still to be seen through the grey loaded air, has become some creature out of Hans Andersen. From my study, which is apart from the house and faces it, I can see the children flattening their noses against the window, and there is running through my head rhyme I used to repeat when I was a child and flattened my nose against the cold window to watch the falling snow:

现在，一切又变了。炫目的日光已然消失，也不再有那种紧张不安感。大片柔软的雪花铺天盖地地飘落，遮挡了你的视线，让你几乎看不到浅浅的山谷，屋顶上存了厚厚的雪，树木被压得弯下腰来，村庄教堂的风信鸡在灰蒙蒙的空气中依稀可见，像是从安徒生童话里走出来的活物。我的书房是和房子独立开来的，书房在房子的对面从书房看去，可以看到孩子们把鼻子抵在窗户上看雪的样子，我的脑海里出现了一首儿歌，那是我小时候将鼻子抵在冰凉的窗户上看雪时会一直重复哼着的歌:

Snow, snow faster:

White alabaster!

Killing geese in Scotland,

Sending feathers here!

下雪吧，下快一点吧:

石膏样的雪白!

在苏格兰宰些鹅，

把雪白的羽毛送到这儿来吧!

(Adaptation from First Snow by John Boynton Priestley)

(改编自约翰·博因顿普里斯特利的《初雪》)