October Days1十月天

Just below me on the hillside is a forty-acre field that slopes gently down to the valley. Last year it was ploughed by a motor-tractor： this year I rejoice to say it is being ploughed in the old way， as it has been ploughed for a thousand years. I suppose we ought to be grateful for the motor-tractor and the steam-digger that in cheapening production cheapen our food， but I am glad that the farmer below me has returned to the ancient way. When the machine comes in， the poetry goes out， and though poetry has no place in the farmer’s ledger2 it is pleasant to find that he has sound reasons for reverting to the primitive plough. All the operations of the fields are beautiful to see. They are beautiful in themselves and beautiful in their suggestions of the permanence of things in the midst of which we come and go like the guests of a day. Who can see the gleaners in the field， or the haymakers piling the hay on the hay-wain， or the mower bending over the scythe without the stirring of the feelings which the mere beauty of the scene or of the motion does not explain？3 Indeed the sense of beauty itself is probably only the emanation of the thoughts subtly awakened by the action. It is so with pictures4. I do not know any painting that lives in my mind with a more abiding beauty than one of Millet’s. It is just a solitary upland field， with a flight of birds and an untended plough lying in the foreground. The barrenness and austerity of the scene5 are almost forbidding at the first glance， but as the mind dwells on it， it becomes instinct with6 meaning and emotion. Evening has come and darkness is falling over the land. The labourer has left the field and the rooks are going home. In the midst of the ancient solitude and silence that have taken possession of the earth， the old plough has the passion of personality. It embodies the epic of man’s labour with the intensity that direct statement could not convey but only the power of suggestion can give.

就在我下方的山坡上，有一片四十英畝的田地，坡度徐緩地往下延伸到山谷。（剩余6363字）