Читать книгу The Collected Works of Charles Lamb and Mary Lamb - Charles Lamb - Страница 75

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(1813)

Time and place give every thing its propriety. Strolling one day in the Twickenham meadows, I was struck with the appearance of something dusky upon the grass, which my eye could not immediately reduce into a shape. Going nearer, I discovered the cause of the phenomenon. In the midst of the most rural scene in the world, the day glorious over head, the wave of Father Thames rippling deliciously by him, lay outstretched at his ease upon Nature's verdant carpet—a chimney-sweeper—

——a spot like which

Astronomer in the sun's lucent orb

Through his glaz'd optic tube yet never saw.

There is no reason in nature why a chimney-sweeper should not indulge a taste for rural objects, but somehow the ideas were discordant. It struck upon me like an inartificial discord in music. It was a combination of urbs in rure, which my experience had not prepared me to anticipate.