时间:2019-02-19 作者:英语课 分类:听播客学英语


英语课

   We stay in Scotland for today’s podcast. We are going to meet a man called William Topaz McGonagall. Most people agree that he was the worst poet ever in the English language.


  He was born in 1825. His father was a cotton weaver 1, who had to move from town to town in Scotland to find work. Young William spent only 18 months at school before he too had to go and work in the mills and factories. He became a jute weaver in Dundee, a town on the east coast of Scotland. (Jute is a fibre which is used to make sacks. In the 19th century, Dundee was the centre of the jute industry in Britain). It was in 1877, when William was 52 years old, that he suddenly discovered that he was a poet. Not just a poet – a great poet – possibly the finest poet since Shakespeare.
  Over the next 25 years, Willam McGonagall wrote a large number of poems. He wrote about the great public events of the day, like the attempt to assassinate 2 Queen Victoria, and the funeral of the Emperor of Germany. He was particularly fond of disasters, like shipwrecks 3 and railway accidents. He wrote about famous battles, and about people and places that he knew.
  And his poetry was bad. It was so bad that it almost became good, if you see what I mean. It was like someone playing a musical instrument, loudly and confidently, but completely out of tune 4 and without any sense of rhythm. It was like a newspaper report turned into poetry. Here are some examples.
  In 1878, a railway bridge was built over the river Tay near Dundee. At the time, it was the longest bridge in the world. It was a triumph of British engineering, and the nation felt proud. Naturally, William McGonagall wrote a poem about it. It began:
  Beautiful railway bridge over the silvery Tay!
  With your numerous arches and pillars in so grand array,
  And your central girders, which seem to the eye
  To be almost towering to the sky.
  Less than two years later, the Tay bridge collapsed 5 in a storm while a train was passing over it. Many people were killed. McGonagall wrote:
  Beautiful railway bridge over the silvery Tay!
  Alas 6! I am very sorry to say
  That ninety lives have been taken away
  On the last Sabbath day of 1879
  Which will be remembered for a very long time.
  A new Tay Bridge was completed in 1887, and of course William wrote a poem for the occasion. I think you can guess how it began.
  Beautiful new railway bridge over the silvery Tay!
  With your strong brick piers 7 and buttresses 8 in so grand array,
  And your thirteen central girders, which seem to my eye,
  Strong enough all windy storms to defy.
  Portrait of William McGonagall by W B Lamond
  William McGonagall organised public events where he would read his poetry. They were very popular. People came to laugh at his poems, and throw rotten fruit and vegetables at him. (Obviously, in those days, there was not much to do in Dundee in the evenings). But McGonagall continued to believe that he had a special gift as a poet. His fame as a bad poet spread throughout Scotland, and then in the rest of Britain and in the British empire. But his poetry did not make him rich, and he died penniless in Edinburgh in 1902. He has never been forgotten however. His books of poetry have been reprinted regularly. Last week, a manuscript of some of his poems was sold at auction 9 for thousands of pounds. People still read his poems today and smile.

n.织布工;编织者
  • She was a fast weaver and the cloth was very good.她织布织得很快,而且布的质量很好。
  • The eager weaver did not notice my confusion.热心的纺织工人没有注意到我的狼狈相。
vt.暗杀,行刺,中伤
  • The police exposed a criminal plot to assassinate the president.警方侦破了一个行刺总统的阴谋。
  • A plot to assassinate the banker has been uncovered by the police.暗杀银行家的密谋被警方侦破了。
海难,船只失事( shipwreck的名词复数 ); 沉船
  • Shipwrecks are apropos of nothing. 船只失事总是来得出人意料。
  • There are many shipwrecks in these waters. 在这些海域多海难事件。
n.调子;和谐,协调;v.调音,调节,调整
  • He'd written a tune,and played it to us on the piano.他写了一段曲子,并在钢琴上弹给我们听。
  • The boy beat out a tune on a tin can.那男孩在易拉罐上敲出一首曲子。
adj.倒塌的
  • Jack collapsed in agony on the floor. 杰克十分痛苦地瘫倒在地板上。
  • The roof collapsed under the weight of snow. 房顶在雪的重压下突然坍塌下来。
int.唉(表示悲伤、忧愁、恐惧等)
  • Alas!The window is broken!哎呀!窗子破了!
  • Alas,the truth is less romantic.然而,真理很少带有浪漫色彩。
n.水上平台( pier的名词复数 );(常设有娱乐场所的)突堤;柱子;墙墩
  • Most road bridges have piers rising out of the vally. 很多公路桥的桥墩是从河谷里建造起来的。 来自辞典例句
  • At these piers coasters and landing-craft would be able to discharge at all states of tide. 沿岸航行的海船和登陆艇,不论潮汐如何涨落,都能在这种码头上卸载。 来自辞典例句
n.扶壁,扶垛( buttress的名词复数 )v.用扶壁支撑,加固( buttress的第三人称单数 )
  • Flying buttresses were constructed of vertical masonry piers with arches curving out from them like fingers. 飞梁结构,灵感来自于带拱形的垂直石质桥墩,外形像弯曲的手指。 来自互联网
  • GOTHIC_BUTTRESSES_DESC;Gothic construction, particularly in its later phase, is characterized by lightness and soaring spaces. 哥特式建筑,尤其是其发展的后期,以轻灵和高耸的尖顶为标志。 来自互联网
n.拍卖;拍卖会;vt.拍卖
  • They've put the contents of their house up for auction.他们把房子里的东西全都拿去拍卖了。
  • They bought a new minibus with the proceeds from the auction.他们用拍卖得来的钱买了一辆新面包车。
学英语单词
antibacterials
arc trigonometric function
ario de resales
Bakata
balneo-rehabilitation
banquettes
batonoma
beating motion
Beauwelz
Beer-Lambert law
blackarmor
bli neder
Bonifati, C.
Brescello
carotenogenic
cartilago tubae auditivae
cephalopagus parasiticus
closing apparatus
coarse porosity
coimmunoprecipitations
condensation age of solar nebula
conventional airplane
CR (cathode ray)
cyclic activation
Dari language
Dividend Adjusted Return
dysphagia globosa
economic environment
ectopia cordis
effectively grounded transformer
elliptical wheel
enelone
escapement crank spring
faisant
farblondjet
flexible phenoplast
French equivalents
gate turn valve
gazed
graphico-analytic
guided missile exercise head
gyrose
Heat productivities
hold ... head high
homographic deconvolution
hypericum nakamurae
Ibizan
imitation champagne
impersonal asset
in of nature of
incrementing
isocorrelation
Japan current
karidopita
know ... inside out
leiognathus splendens
licualas
Little-Endians
magnetic attraction
majorizers
Melanosporae
methylthioninium
mirror-lined
missionary position
music dictation
Muňiz, Pta.
normal portland cement
nulla bona
opsthobranchial
out-swarm
overspends
paabo
Petrovsk-Zabaykal'skiy Rayon
pin-type clutch
pioneer
postretrieval
pre-coordinate
pseudomorphous quartz
puleyn
Quinson
Ramdev
re-railings
rectifier photocell
red cunt hair
Redcliffe
rubbing bar
scalar Lyapunov function
sceg
sectorial teeth (or carnassial teeth)
slime index
spray strip
St Andrew Co.
stahilin-V
Stamey procedure for stress urinary incontinence
step-by-step telephone switching system
stripped deuteron
threshing bucket
thrips taiwanus
time series decomposition
total suspended sediment
trimethyl-tryptophane
type of motion