Английская поэзия XIV–XX веков в современных русских переводах - Антология
Пятьдесят наросло свежих бурых холмов.
Пуста колыбель и постель не измята:
Младенец у груди родимой потух;
Ребенок, играя, пал на руки брата,
И лежит на лугу старый мертвый пастух.
О, страшно весенней желанной порою
Поджидать щебетанья в лесах и лугах, —
А дрозд с коноплянкой под мертвой листвою,
Ни песни, ни звука в зеленых ветвях.
Страшней, как земля благодарно готова
Смеяться за то, что ей небом дано —
И слушать; ни слова людского, родного…
И светлой порою на сердце темно.
Перевод Ю. Верховского
Bryan Waller Procter (Barry Cornwall) (1787–1874)
Song
Here’s a health to thee, Jessy
Burns
Here’s a health to thee, Mary,
Here’s a health to thee;
The drinkers are gone,
And I am alone,
To think of home and thee, Mary.
There are some who may shine o’er thee, Mary,
And many as frank and free,
And a few as fair,
But the summer air
Is not more sweet to me, Mary.
I have thought of thy last low sigh, Mary,
And thy dimm’d and gentle eye;
And I’ve called on thy name
When the night winds came,
And heard my heart reply, Mary.
Be thou but true to me, Mary,
And I’ll be true to thee;
And at set of sun,
When my task is done,
Вe sure that I’m ever with thee, Mary.
Serenade
Inesilla! I am here
Thy own cavalier
Is now beneath thy lattice playing:
Why art thou delaying?
He hath riden many a mile
But to see thy smile:
The young light on the flowers is shining,
Yet he is repining.
What to him is a summer star,
If his love’s afar?
What to him the flowers perfuming,
When his heart’s consuming?
Sweetest girl! I why dost thou hide?
Beauty may abide
Even before the eye of morning,
And want no adorning.
Now, upon their paths of lights,
Starry spirits bright
To catch thy brighter glance are staying:
Why art thou delaying?
An Invocation
If, at this dim and silent hour,
Spirits have a power
To wander from their homes of light,
And on the winds of night
To come, and to a human eye
Stand visible, like mortality —
Come thou, the lost Marcelia, thou —
And on thy sunny brow
Bear all thy beauty as of old,
For I dare behold
Whatever sights sublime there be,
So I may once more look on thee.
Or be thou like a daemon thing,
Or shadow hovering,
Or like the bloody shapes that come
With torch and sound of drum,
Scaring the warrior’s slumbers, I
Will welcome thee, and wish thee nigh.
And I would talk of the famous brave,
Of the dead, and their house the grave,
And feel its wondrous silentness,
And pity those whom none may bless,
And see how far the gaping tomb
Stretches its spectral arms — and hear my doom.
And I would know how long they lie
On their dark beds who die,
And if they feel, or joy, or weep,
Or ever dare to sleep
In that strange land of shadows. Thou
Whom I do call, come hither — now.
But there thou art, a radiant spirit,
And dost inherit
Earlier than others thy blue home,
And art free to roam
Like a visiting beam, from star to star,
And shed thy smiles from skies afar.
Then, soft and gentle beauty, be
Still like a star to me;
And I will ever turn at night
Unto thy soothing light,
And fancy, while before thine eyes,
I am full in the smile of Paradise.
Il Penseroso and L’ Allegro
(Night.)
Old Thames! thy merry waters run
Gloomily now, without star or sun!
The wind blows o’er thee, wild and loud,
And heaven is in its death-black shroud;
And the rain comes down with all its might,
Darkening the face of the sullen Night.
Midnight dies! There booms a sound,
From all the church-towers thundering round;
Their echoes into each other run,
And sing out the grand night’s awful “One!”
Saint Bride, Saint Sepulchre, great Saint Paul,
Unto each other, in chorus, call!
Who speaks? ’T was nothing: the patrol grim
Moves stealthily o’er the pavement dim;
The debtor dreams of the gripe of law;
The harlot goes staggering to her straw;
And the drunken robber, and beggar bold
Laugh loud, as they limp by the Bailey Old.
Hark, — I hear the blood in a felon’s heart!
I see him shiver — and heave — and start
(Does he cry?) from his last short bitter slumber,
To find that his days have reached their number, —
To feel that there comes, with the morning text,
Blind death, and the scaffold, and then — what next?
