First Snow
John Boynton Priestley
When I got up this morning, the world was a chilled hollow of dead white and faint blues. The light that came through the windows was very queer, and it contrived to make the familiar business of splashing and shaving and brushing and dressing very queer 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 a lovely Japanese print. The little plum-tree outside, with the faintly flushed snow lining its boughs and artfully disposed along its trunk, stood in full sunlight. An hour or two later, everything was a cold glitter of white and blue. The world had completely changed again. The little Japanese prints had all vanished. I looked out of my study window, over the garden, the meadow, to the low hills beyond, and the ground was one long glare, the sky was steely, and all the trees so many black and sinister shapes. There was indeed something curiously sinister about the whole prospect. It was as if our kindly countryside, closed to the very heart of England, had been turned into a cruel steppe. At any moment, it seemed, a body of horsemen might be seen breaking out from the black copse, so many instruments of tyranny, and shots might be heard and some distant patch of snow be reddened. It was that kind of landscape.
Now it has changed again. The glare has gone and no touch of the sinister 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 nursery window, and there is running through my head a jangle of rhyme I used to repeat when I was a child and flattened my nose against the cold window to watch the falling snow:
Snow, snow faster:
White alabaster!
Killing geese in Scotland,
Sending feathers here!
口译：翻译资格考试三级口译模拟题 翻译资格考试二级口译模拟题 翻译资格考试一级口译模拟题
笔译：翻译资格考试三级笔译模拟题 翻译资格考试二级笔译模拟题 翻译资格考试一级笔译模拟题
资料来源考试网校胡仁老师主讲教材精讲班课程，完整讲义下载进入个人中心>>
下载焚题库APP——翻译资格考试——题库——做题，包括章节练习、每日一练、模拟试卷、历年真题、易错题等，可随时随地刷题。【在线做题>>】【下载APP掌上刷题】
翻译资格考试复习有问题？不知道怎么高效备考？加入考试群760421514
和考生一起交流信息。
