英语阅读
Unit 4 A Garden of Poems Speaking Example:
I'm interested to read some Romantic poetry about love and friendship.
Why are you interested in that kind of poetry?
Because I think Romantic poetry is about real passion.
I see.What kind of poetry would you not like to read?
I don't want to read English poetry about death and World War One,
becuase I think it is too sad.
Reading ENGLISH POETRY
Reading poetry brings people from different places and different times together.
More than any other form of literature,poetry plays with sounds,words and grammar.
That makes poetry difficult to write,but very interesting to read.
Poetry also calls up all the colours,feelings,
experiences and curious images of a dream world.
China has a long history
during which many of the world's greatest poets were active.
Poems by Du Fu,Li Bai and Wang Wei among others stand out in the halls of glory.
When you have read some Chinese poems,
you will have seen and heard some of the features that all good poetry shares.
The form is very important:
the number of lines and the number of characters in each line.
Poetry often follows special patterns of rhythm and rhyme.
Despite its short history,there is a lot of good English poetry around.
The earliest English poetry was written in a kind of English
that is now difficult to understand.
Modern English started around the time of William Shakespeare,
towards the end of the sixteenth century.
The seventeenth century was a great time for English poetry.
Shakespeare is most famous for his plays.
His sonnets, however,belong to the best English poetry.
In the next generation of great English poets we meet John Donne.
Chinese readers admire his works because of his use of surprising images
that reminds them of the works of poets such as Su Dongpo.
Before the end of the century,there was another famous writer,John Milton.
Once published,
his work became famous for the absence of rhyme at the end of each line.
In the eighteenth century it was Alexander Pope
who wrote the finest poetry in England.
The next period that produced a great number of fine poets
was the nineteenth century.
Greatly loved in China are the English Romantic poets.
Although they were all born in the eighteenth century,
they wrote their major works in the early years of the nineteenth century.
John Keats died at a very young age in 1821;
while William Wordsworth,who spent much of his time in the English Lake District,
lived to the age of 80 and died in 1850.
The nature poems by William Wordsworth,
George Gordon Byron's Isles of Greece
and the sonnets and long poems by John Keats have long been favourites.
The style and atmosphere in their poems
has often led to comparisons with poets such as Du Fu and Li Bai.
Finally, modern poets have their special attraction
because they stand closest to us both in the language and images they use.
Among them we find the American poet Robert Frost.
The introduction of English poetry to China came late.
Towards the end of the nineteenth century
Chinese writers started reading more foreign poetry.
The great moment for European literature to come to China
is between 1910 and the late 1930s
when famous writers such as Lu Xun and Guo Moruo
translated both poetry and novels into Chinese.
More and more people are interested to read modern poetry in English.
Translations can be good,
but being able to read in English gives you much more choice
Besides,no matter how well a poem is translated,
something of the spirit of the original work is lost.
Reading poetry in English also opens the door to finding new ways
of expressing yourself in Chinese.
Finally, poems and literature can be bridges between the East and the West.
They can help us to understand each other better,or as Mu Dan wrote:
Quietly,we embrace in a world lit up by words.
综合技能
Integrating skills Reading,listening and writing
SONGS AND POEMS
Why read,and sometimes even write poetry?
That question is not difficult to answer if we change the word poetry to songs.
I sing when I feel good.
When I sing my favourite songs, I feel even better.
Sometimes when I am listening to music and to the song words,
I feel that it was written for me.
A good song always makes me feel something.
There are songs that I sing in my head between classes
and songs that I want to sing when the school bell rings by the end of the day.
They help me get through the day.
They are like bright and warm colours in the middle of greys and shades.
I like songs about love and friendship.
The extraordinary thing is,
my feelings are more special when I sing my favourite songs in English.
I also like reading.
I used to avoid poetry until an e-pal told me.
I should recite poems and not look up the meaning of the words.
Poetry uses many difficult words and idioms,
but the best thing is to just forget about them.
In the beginning I felt quite strange.
Now I always lock the door.
Reading aloud gives you a strange feeling,
but when you have some practice and fall into the rhythm,
the rhyme and the sounds of the words,it is really a special experience.
I started with small poems,but now I think I most like long poems.
I have different feelings with different poems.
When I have had a bad day at school,I read Keats and forget everything.
When I am sad I read Wordsworth by the light of a candle.
When the poem is finished,I close the book and my sadness is gone.
1.Listen to the tape and read the following poems in class
discuss with your classmates what they mean to you.
Dust of snow.
The way a crow Shook down on me
The dust of snow From a hemlock tree
Has given my heart A change of mood And saved some part.
of a day I had rued.
By Robert Frost
Right here waiting Oceans apart,day after day,
And I slowly go insane I hear your voice on the line,
But it doesn't stop the pain.
If I see you next to never,How can I say forever.
Wherever you go,whatever you do.
I will be right here waiting for you.
Whatever it takes,or how my heart breaks I will be right here waiting for you.
By Richard Marx
课后练习
Work Book Unit 4 Integrating skills
Reading THE BIRTH OF MODERN POETRY
When asked about poetry,
most people will say that a poem is a text that has rhythm and rhyme.
Famous are the lines by William Blake,
which have clear rhythm and rhyme:
Tiger, tiger, burning bright,in the forest of the night.
Other people will add that poems must have a certain form,
with a fixed number of lines and a fixed rhyme pattern,such as a sonnet.
With rhyme,most people mean the rhyme of sound of words at the end of the lines.
It is also true that much of the classical poetry that we have looks like that.
Except for some short songs and poems included in his plays,
all of Shakespeare's greatest poems are sonnets.
John Milton was one of the first poets
who started writing poems without rhyme at the end of the lines
He wrote other poems too,but he is famous for his long poems without rhyme.
After Milton,
almost every poet had a hand at this kind of poetry that was free of rhyme
Wordsworth and Keats wrote some such poems,
but that is not what they are famous for.
This style of poetry became known as free verse.
It was not until the twentieth century that modern poetry was really developed.
Modern poets wanted to break with all the traditional forms of poetry.
One of the characteristics of modern poetry
is that it usually does not have rhyme at the end of a line,
and it is also often about common topics.
In China, free verse was known and used much earlier.
The following poem by Bai Juyi is an example of a poem written in free verse.
THE UNHAPPY OFFICIAL By Bai Juyi
Never tired of study,reading until he could not see;
holding his pen until his fingers became painful;
sitting for exams ten times until he passed;
success has come too late;
he is now an important official but his hair is already white;
there is little happiness for him;
when young,he spent his days being very poor;
now old and often sick money and fame are of no use to him.
Living behind the great red gates
is a youth with the taste of mother's milk still in his mouth;
not much to look at,with soft skin like a girl's and a gentle face;
he has never worn a soldier's uniform ;
at twenty he got his father's title and money;
with the coming of spring,he is always playing outside,
wearing soft furs and riding upon a fine horse;
spending mornings with gamblers and drinkers,
and in the evenings sleeping with the girls in a singsong house;
he spends his money paying wine bills,
using:what is left over on pretty girls;
besides drinking,singing,and hunting with dogs or horses,he knows little else.
On the hills,wild grasses grow under a great pine tree;
two living things,one reaching high and the other happy to stay low,
from old times it has been this way,
you are not alone in knowing this sadness.
Translation: Rewi Alley.
文本来源于在线英语听力室