纯英文诗词The Essence of Charm作者Laurie Lee

The Essence of Charm

By Laurie Lee

Laurie Lee, born in Gloucestershire, England, in 1914, says of his early years: “At the age of nineteen, I left home and walked to London, taking little else with me but my violin and the determination to never again have an employer. If writing should fail me, I was resolved to survive by playing my violin.” Lee was not obliged to earn his living as a traveling minstrel, since his books have been well received over the years. These include Cider with Rosie(1959), a memoir of his boyhood in England, and I Can’t Stay Long(1975), a collection of prose pieces. The New Yorker said of Lee’s writing: “It has a tone and intensity that are entirely his own, and is inimitably pleasing.”

Charm is the ultimate weapon, the supreme seduction, against which there are few defenses. If you‘ve got it, you need neither money, looks, nor pedigree. It‘s a gift, given only to give away, and the more used, the more there is. It is also a climate of behavior set for perpetual summer and thermostatically controlled by taste and tact.

True charm is an aura, an invisible musk in the air; if you see it working, the spell is broken. Charm is dynamic, and cannot be turned on and off at will. As to its ingredients, there is no fixed formula. A whole range of mysteries goes into the caldron, but the magic it offers must be absolute—one cannot be