晨读英语美文100篇 Passage 78 Human Thought Grows Like a Tree

[00:00.44]Passage 78 Human Thought Grows Like a Tree

[00:06.68]Human thought is not a firework, ever shooting off fresh forms and shapes as it burns;

[00:14.77]it is a tree, growing very slowly—you can watch it long and see no movement

[00:22.98]—very silently, unnoticed.

[00:26.59]It was planted in the world many thousand years ago, a tiny, sickly plant.

[00:33.37]And men guarded it and tended it, and gave up life and fame to aid its growth.

[00:40.81]In the hot days of their youth, they came to the gate of the garden and knocked,

[00:47.05]begging to be let in, and to be counted among the gardeners.

[00:52.19]And their young companions outside called to them to come back,

[00:57.33]and play the man with bow and spear, and win sweet smiles from rosy lips,

[01:03.46]and take their part amid the feast, and dance, not stoop with wrinkled brows, at weaklings' work.

[01:12.21]And the passers by mocked them and called shame, and others cried out to stone them.

[01:20.09]And still they stayed there laboring, that the tree might grow a little,

[01:26.66]and they died and were forgotten.

[01:29.72]And the tree grew fair and strong.

[01:33.22]The storms of ignorance passed over it, and harmed it not.

[01:37.70]The fierce fires of superstition soared around it;

[01:42.41]but men leaped into the flames and beat them back, perishing, and the tree grew.

[01:48.97]With the sweat of their brow men have nourished its green leaves.

[01:54.88]Their tears have moistened the earth about it.

[01:57.84]With their blood they have watered its roots.

[02:01.56]The seasons have come and passed, and the tree has grown and flourished.

[02:07.15]And its branches have spread far and high, and ever fresh shoots are bursting forth,

[02:14.59]and ever new leaves unfolding to the light.

[02:18.09]But they are all part of the one tree—the tree that was planted on the first birthday of the human race.

[02:27.06]The stem that bears them springs from the gnarled old trunk that was green and soft

[02:33.84]when white-haired Time was a little child;

[02:37.35]the sap that feeds them is drawn up through the roots

that twine and twist about the bones of the ages that are dead.