Английская поэзия XIV–XX веков в современных русских переводах

Brothers, spare awhile your liquor, lay your final tumbler down;

He has dropp’d — that star of honor — on the field of his renown!

Raise the wail, but raise it softly, lowly bending on your knees,

If you find it more convenient, you may hiccup if you please.

Sons of Pantagruel, gently let your hip-hurraing sink,

Be your manly accents clouded, half with sorrow, half with drink!

Lightly to the sofa pillow lift his head from off the floor;

See how calm he sleeps, unconscious as the deadest nail in door!

Widely o’er the earth I’ve wander’d; where the drink most freely flow’d,

I have ever reel’d the foremost, foremost to the beaker strode.

Deep in shady Cider Cellars I have dream’d o’er heavy wet,

By the fountains of Damascus I have quaff’d the rich Sherbet,

Regal Montepulciano drained beneath its native rock,

On Johannis’ sunny mountain frequent hiccup’d o’er my hock;

I have bathed in butts of Xeres deeper than did e’er Monsoon,

Sangaree’d with bearded Tartars in the Mountains of the Moon;

In beer-swilling Copenhagen I have drunk your Danesman blind,

I have kept my feet in Jena, when each bursch to earth declined;

Glass for glass, in fierce Jamaica, I have shared the planter’s rum,

Drank with Highland dhuinie-wassels till each gibbering Gael grew dumb;

But a stouter, bolder drinker — one that loved his liquor more —

Never yet did I encounter than our friend upon the floor!

Yet the best of us are mortal, we to weakness all are heir,

He has fallen, who rarely stagger’d — let the rest of us beware!

We shall leave him, as we found him — lying where his manhood fell,

’Mong the trophies of the revel, for he took his tipple well.

Better’t were we loosed his neckcloth, laid his throat and bosom bare,

Pulled his Hobi’s off, and turn’d his toes to taste the breezy air.

Throw the sofa cover o’er him, dim the flaring of the gas,

Calmly, calmly let him slumber, and, as by the bar we pass,

We shall bid that thoughtful waiter place beside him, near and handy,

Large supplies of soda water, tumblers bottomed well with brandy,

So when waking, he shall drain them, with that deathless thirst of his,

Clinging to the hand that smote him, like a good ’un as he is!