英语听书《白鲸记》第30期

搜索关注在线英语听力室公众号：tingroom，领取免费英语资料大礼包。

 Father Mapple rose,and in a mild voice of unassuming authority ordered the scattered¹ people to condense. 

 Starboard gangway,there!side away to larboard larboard gangway to starboard!Midships!midships! 

 There was a low rumbling² of heavy sea boots among the benches,and a still slighter shuffling³ of women's shoes, 

 and all was quiet again,and every eye on the preacher. 

 He paused a little;then kneeling in the pulpit's bows,folded his large brown hands across his chest,uplifted his closed eyes, 

 and offered a prayer so deeply devout⁴ that he seemed kneeling and praying at the bottom of the sea. 

 This ended,in prolonged solemn tones,like the continual tolling⁵ of a bell in a ship that is foundering⁶ at sea in a fog in such tones he commenced reading the following hymn; 

 but changing his manner towards the concluding stanzas,burst forth⁷ with a pealing⁸ exultation⁹ and joy 

 The ribs¹⁰ and terrors in the whale, 

 Arched over me a dismal¹¹ gloom, 

 While all God's sun lit waves rolled by, 

 And lift me deepening down to doom¹². 

 I saw the opening maw of hell, 

 With endless pains and sorrows there; 

 Which none but they that feel can tell 

 Oh,I was plunging¹³ to despair. 

 In black distress,I called my God, 

 When I could scarce believe him mine, 

 He bowed his ear to my complaints 

 No more the whale did me confine. 

 With speed he flew to my relief, 

 As on a radiant dolphin borne; 

 Awful,yet bright,as lightning shone 

 The face of my Deliverer God. 

 My song for ever shall record 

 That terrible,that joyful¹⁴ hour; 

 I give the glory to my God, 

 His all the mercy and the power. 

 Nearly all joined in singing this hymn,which swelled¹⁵ high above the howling of the storm.A brief pause ensued;the preacher slowly turned over the leaves of the Bible, 

 and at last,folding his hand down upon the proper page,said:Beloved shipmates,clinch the last verse of the first chapter of Jonah ' And God had prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah.' 

 Shipmates,this book,containing only four chapters four yarns¹⁶ is one of the smallest strands¹⁷ in the mighty¹⁸ cable of the Scriptures¹⁹. 

 Yet what depths of the soul does Jonah's deep sealine sound!what a pregnant lesson to us is this prophet!What a noble thing is that canticle in the fish's belly²⁰! 

 How billow like and boisterously²¹ grand!We feel the floods surging over us;we sound with him to the kelpy bottom of the waters; 

 sea weed and all the slime of the sea is about us!But WHAT is this lesson that the book of Jonah teaches?Shipmates,it is a two stranded²² lesson; 

 a lesson to us all as sinful men,and a lesson to me as a pilot of the living God. 

分享到：