The Way of All Flesh. Samuel Butler

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ shamble in one after another, with steaming breath, for it is winter, and loud clattering of hob-nailed boots; they beat the snow from off them as they enter, and through the opened door I catch a momentary glimpse of a dreary leaden sky and snow-clad tombstones. Somehow or other I find the strain which Handel has wedded to the words “There the ploughman near at hand,” has got into my head and there is no getting it out again. How marvellously old Handel understood these people!

      They bob to Theobald as they passed the reading desk (“The people hereabouts are truly respectful,” whispered Christina to me, “they know their betters.”), and take their seats in a long row against the wall. The choir clamber up into the gallery with their instruments—a violoncello, a clarinet and a trombone. I see them and soon I hear them, for there is a hymn before the service, a wild strain, a remnant, if I mistake not, of some pre-Reformation litany. I have heard what I believe was its remote musical progenitor in the church of SS. Giovanni e Paolo at Venice not five years since; and again I have heard it far away in mid-Atlantic upon a grey sea-Sabbath in June, when neither winds nor waves are stirring, so that the emigrants gather on deck, and their plaintive psalm goes forth upon the silver haze of the sky, and on the wilderness of a sea that has sighed till it can sigh no longer. Or it may be heard at some Methodist Camp Meeting upon a Welsh hillside, but in the churches it is gone for ever. If I were a musician I would take it as the subject for the adagio in a Wesleyan symphony.

      Gone now are the clarinet, the violoncello and the trombone, wild minstrelsy as of the doleful creatures in Ezekiel, discordant, but infinitely pathetic. Gone is that scarebabe stentor, that bellowing bull of Bashan the village blacksmith, gone is the melodious carpenter, gone the brawny shepherd with the red hair, who roared more lustily than all, until they came to the words, “Shepherds with your flocks abiding,” when modesty covered him with confusion, and compelled him to be silent, as though his own health were being drunk. They were doomed and had a presentiment of evil, even when first I saw them, but they had still a little lease of choir life remaining, and they roared out

      [wick-ed hands have pierced and nailed him, pierced and nailed him to a tree.]

      but no description can give a proper idea of the effect. When I was last in Battersby church there was a harmonium played by a sweet-looking girl with a choir of school children around her, and they chanted the canticles to the most correct of chants, and they sang Hymns Ancient and Modern; the high pews were gone, nay, the very gallery in which the old choir had sung was removed as an accursed thing which might remind the people of the high places, and Theobald was old, and Christina was lying under the yew trees in the churchyard.

      But in the evening later on I saw three very old men come chuckling out of a dissenting chapel, and surely enough they were my old friends the blacksmith, the carpenter and the shepherd. There was a look of content upon their faces which made me feel certain they had been singing; not doubtless with the old glory of the violoncello, the clarinet and the trombone, but still songs of Sion and no new fangled papistry.

      Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

      Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

      Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

      Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.

/9j/4AAQSkZJRgABAQAAAQABAAD/2wBDAAMCAgMCAgMDAwMEAwMEBQgFBQQEBQoHBwYIDAoMDAsK CwsNDhIQDQ4RDgsLEBYQERMUFRUVDA8XGBYUGBIUFRT/2wBDAQMEBAUEBQkFBQkUDQsNFBQUFBQU FBQUFBQUFBQUFBQUFBQUFBQUFBQUFBQUFBQUFBQUFBQUFBQUFBQUFBQUFBT/wAARCAWgA4QDASIA AhEBAxEB/8QAHgAAAAYDAQEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAQIDBAUGAAcICQr/xABmEAABAwMDAgQEAgcDBgkG AR0BAgMEAAURBhIhMUEHEyJRCBQyYXGBCRUjQlKRoRaxwRckM2LR4UNygpKUotLw8RglU1Vzk7M0 NTd0dYOywiY2RWOjwxknOERWZYSVtNNGV1Rk4v/EABwBAAIDAQEBAQAAAAAAAAAAAAECAAMEBQYH CP/EAD0RAAIBAwMCBQIEBQQCAQQDAQABAhEhMQMSQVFhBBMiMnGh8EKBkbEFFCNS4TNiwdFD8QYV U3KSFiQ0ov/aAAwDAQACEQMRAD8A4t0ncbnOkSUzUqLSRkKWjbhWegpxrCZMhWxK4m5JK8LWkcpG KX1D8y/Z30wlFT3H0HnGeQPvUTo5MuFHlKnb2Y3G3zzjB79a6916PqcOz/qfQeaSmS5tsK5e5RC8 IWrqoYqP1fc7lCnMtxlOMslIIU2PqV7f7qNrJEuY1FXC3vRud3kHPPbpUtYXXYlojIuDgbeJO0Oq AVjPHXvQbb9H1JZf1KZ4JK3LecgMLkJ2vKQCsY6HHNU79c3b+04ZJcCPO2+Tt9OzPX+XOaLqKJd3 b8VspfUgkeSpsnaBx/LmrgHwf2Xmt/NbPp3DOce341KuVsUBRQvmv0DXF15qBIXHTvfSglCcdTVX 0fdLjPnvIkrceZCSSpY+lWen9/FNtOQ7w3fkqeS+lAJ85TmdpGP69qsl98+VaJKbesLfHBDShuxn kcd6FXL1YoGij6LOvPQb6uly4NsC4m5JK8LWkZKR/wB+9ZpGVMnWsuS9yiF4QtQwVCmmi2JsWPJV N3tRuNgfOMHueeg6Vms2J0tiKYW92PzuDBzk9unbrRq/f9A7V/p2+RvrC6XGDOZRGW40yUggoT9S s8j/AHVZYKnnoTC5CdjykArAHQ45prYy9DtEVNxcCHzwA6oA4zwOe+Kreood3c1AVMpeUkqHkqRn akf4d80auPqzXgCSn6LKnPUR/XF3OpPJCnP9Nt8jHp25/wBnerddXHmLfJcjp3PJQS

СКАЧАТЬ