Английская поэзия XIV–XX веков в современных русских переводах

The blessed damozel lean’d out

From the gold bar of Heaven;

Her eyes were deeper than the depth

Of waters still’d at even;

She had three lilies in her hand,

And the stars in her hair were seven.

Her robe, ungirt from clasp to hem,

No wrought flowers did adorn,

But a white rose of Mary’s gift,

For service meetly worn;

Her hair that lay along her back

Was yellow like ripe corn.

Her seem’d she scarce had been a day

One of God’s choristers;

The wonder was not yet quite gone

From that still look of hers;

Albeit, to them she left, her day

Had counted as ten years.

(To one, it is ten years of years.

Yet now, and in this place,

Surely she lean’d o’er me-her hair

Fell all about my face….

Nothing: the autumn-fall of leaves.

The whole year sets apace.)

It was the rampart of God’s house

That she was standing on;

By God built over the sheer depth

The which is Space begun;

So high, that looking downward thence

She scarce could see the sun.

It lies in Heaven, across the flood

Of ether, as a bridge.

Beneath, the tides of day and night

With flame and darkness ridge

The void, as low as where this earth

Spins like a fretful midge.

Around her, lovers, newly met

’Mid deathless love’s acclaims,

Spoke evermore among themselves

Their heart-remember’d names;

And the souls mounting up to God

Went by her like thin flames.

And still she bow’d herself and stoop’d

Out of the circling charm;

Until her bosom must have made

The bar she lean’d on warm,

And the lilies lay as if asleep

Along her bended arm.

From the fix’’d place of Heaven she saw

Time like a pulse shake fierce

Through all the worlds. Her gaze still strove

Within the gulf to pierce

Its path; and now she spoke as when

The stars sang in their spheres.

The sun was gone now; the curl’d moon

Was like a little feather

Fluttering far down the gulf; and now

She spoke through the still weather.

Her voice was like the voice the stars

Had when they sang together.

(Ah sweet! Even now, in that bird’s song,

Strove not her accents there,

Fain to be hearken’d? When those bells

Possess’d the mid-day air,

Strove not her steps to reach my side

Down all the echoing stair?)

“I wish that he were come to me,

For he will come”, she said.

“Have I not pray’d in Heaven? — on earth,

Lord, Lord, has he not pray’d?

Are not two prayers a perfect strength?

And shall I feel afraid?

When round his head the aureole clings,

And he is cloth’d in white,

I’ll take his hand and go with him

To the deep wells of light;

As unto a stream we will step down,

And bathe there in God’s sight.

We two will stand beside that shrine,

Occult, withheld, untrod,

Whose lamps are stirr’d continually

With prayer sent up to God;

And see our old prayers, granted, melt

Each like a little cloud.

We two will lie i’ the shadow of

That living mystic tree

Within whose secret growth the Dove

Is sometimes felt to be,

While every leaf that His plumes touch

Saith His Name audibly.

And I myself will teach to him,

I myself, lying so,

The songs I sing here; which his voice

Shall pause in, hush’d and slow,

And find some knowledge at each pause,

Or some new thing to know”.

(Alas! We two, we two, thou say’st!

Yea, one wast thou with me

That once of old. But shall God lift

To endless unity

The soul whose likeness with thy soul

Was but its love for thee?)

“We two”, she said, “will seek the groves

Where the lady Mary is,

With her five handmaidens, whose names

Are five sweet symphonies,

Cecily, Gertrude, Magdalen,

Margaret and Rosalys.

Circlewise sit they, with bound locks

And foreheads garlanded;

Into the fine cloth white like flame

Weaving the golden thread,

To fashion the birth-robes for them

Who are just born, being dead.

He shall fear, haply, and be dumb:

Then will I lay my cheek

To his, and tell about our love,

Not once abash’d or weak:

And the dear Mother will approve

My pride, and let me speak.

Herself shall bring us, hand in hand,

To Him round whom all souls

Kneel, the clear-rang’d unnumber’d heads

Bow’d with their aureoles:

And angels meeting us shall sing

To their citherns and citoles.

There will I ask of Christ the Lord

Thus much for him and me: —

Only to live as once on earth

With Love, — only to be,

As then awhile, for ever now

Together, I and he”.

She gaz’d and listen’d and then said,

Less sad of speech than mild, —

“All this is when he comes”. She ceas’d.

The light thrill’d towards her, fill’d

With angels in strong level flight.

Her eyes pray’d, and she smil’d.

(I saw her smile.) But soon their path

Was vague in distant spheres:

And then she cast her arms along

The golden barriers,

And laid her face between her hands,

And wept. (I heard her tears.)

In our Museum galleries

To-day I lingered o’er the prize

Dead Greece vouchsafes to living eyes,—

Her Art for ever in fresh wise

From hour to hour rejoicing me.

Sighing I turned at last to win

Once more the London dirt and din;

And as I made the swing-door spin

And issued, they were hoisting in

A wingèd beast from Nineveh.

A human face the creature wore,

And hoofs behind and hoofs before,

And flanks with dark runes fretted o’er.

’Twas bull, ’twas mitred Minotaur,

A dead disbowelled mystery:

The mummy of a buried faith

Stark from the charnel without scathe,

Its wings stood for the light to bathe,—

Such fossil cerements as might swathe

The very corpse of Nineveh.

The print of its first rush-wrapping,

Wound ere it dried, still ribbed the thing.

What song did the brown maidens sing,

From purple mouths alternating,

When that was woven languidly?

What vows, what rites, what prayers preferr’d,

What songs has the strange image heard?

In what blind vigil stood interr’d

For ages, till an English word

Broke silence first at Nineveh?

Oh when upon each sculptured court,

Where even the wind might not resort,—

O’er which Time passed, of like import

With the wild Arab boys at sport,—

A living face looked in to see —

Oh seemed it not — the spell once broke—

As though the carven warriors woke,

As though the shaft the string forsook,

The cymbals clashed, the chariots shook,

And there was life in Nineveh?

On London stones our sun anew

The beast’s recovered shadow threw.

(No shade that plague of darkness knew,

No light, no shade, while older grew

By ages the old earth and sea.)

Lo thou! could all thy priests have shown

Such proof to make thy godhead known?

From their dead Past thou liv’st alone;

And still thy shadow is thine own,

Even as of yore in Nineveh.

That day whereof we keep record,

When near thy city-gates the Lord

Sheltered His Jonah with a gourd,

This sun, (I said) here present, pour’d

Even thus this shadow that I see.

This shadow has been shed the same

From sun and moon, — from lamps which came

For prayer, — from fifteen days of flame,

The last, while smouldered to a name

Sardanapalus’ Nineveh.

Within thy shadow, haply, once

Sennacherib has knelt, whose sons

Smote him between the altar-stones:

Or pale Semiramis her zones

Of gold, her incense brought to thee,

In love for grace, in war for aid:.

Ay, and who else?. till ’neath thy shade

Within his trenches newly made

Last year the Christian knelt and pray’d —

Not to thy strength — in Nineveh.

Now, thou poor god, within this hall

Where the blank windows blind the wall

From pedestal to pedestal,

The kind of light shall on thee fall

Which London takes the day to be:

While school-foundations in the act

Of holiday, three files compact,

Shall learn to view thee as a fact

Connected with that zealous tract:

“ROME, — Babylon and Nineveh”.

Deemed they of this, those worshippers,

When, in some mythic chain of verse

Which man shall not again rehearse,

The faces of thy ministers

Yearned pale with bitter ecstasy?

Greece, Egypt, Rome, — did any god

Before whose feet men knelt unshod

Deem that in this unblest abode

Another scarce more unknown god

Should house with him, from Nineveh?

Ah! in what quarries lay the stone

From which this pillared pile has grown,

Unto man’s need how long unknown,

Since those thy temples, court and cone,

Rose far in desert history?

Ah! what is here that does not lie

All strange to thine awakened eye?

Ah! what is here can testify

(Save that dumb presence of the sky)

Unto thy day and Nineveh?

Why, of those mummies in the room

Above, there might indeed have come

One out of Egypt to thy home,

An alien. Nay, but were not some

Of these thine own “antiquity”?

And now, — they and their gods and thou

All relics here together, — now

Whose profit? whether bull or cow,

Isis or Ibis, who or how,

Whether of Thebes or Nineveh?

The consecrated metals found,

And ivory tablets, underground,

Winged teraphim and creatures crown’d.

When air and daylight filled the mound,

Fell into dust immediately.

And even as these, the images

Of awe and worship, — even as these, —

So, smitten with the sun’s increase,

Her glory mouldered and did cease

From immemorial Nineveh.

The day her builders made their halt,

Those cities of the lake of salt

Stood firmly ’stablished without fault,

Made proud with pillars of basalt,

With sardonyx and porphyry.

The day that Jonah bore abroad

To Nineveh the voice of God,

A brackish lake lay in his road,

Where erst Pride fixed her sure abode,

As then in royal Nineveh.

The day when he, Pride’s lord and Man’s,

Showed all the kingdoms at a glance

To Him before whose countenance

The years recede, the years advance,

And said, Fall down and worship me: —

’Mid all the pomp beneath that look,

Then stirred there, haply, some rebuke,

Where to the wind the Salt Pools shook,

And in those tracts, of life forsook,

That knew thee not, O Nineveh!

Delicate harlot! On thy throne

Thou with a world beneath thee prone

In state for ages sat’st alone;

And needs were years and lustres flown

Ere strength of man could vanquish thee:

Whom even thy victor foes must bring,

Still royal, among maids that sing

As with doves’ voices, taboring

Upon their breasts, unto the King,—

A kingly conquest, Nineveh!

Here woke my thought. The wind’s slow sway

Had waxed; and like the human play

Of scorn that smiling spreads away,

The sunshine shivered off the day:

The callous wind, it seemed to me,

Swept up the shadow from the ground:

And pale as whom the Fates astound,

The god forlorn stood winged and crown’d:

Within I knew the cry lay bound

Of the dumb soul of Nineveh.

And as I turned, my sense half shut

Still saw the crowds of kerb and rut

Go past as marshalled to the strut

Of ranks in gypsum quaintly cut.

It seemed in one same pageantry

They followed forms which had been erst;

To pass, till on my sight should burst

That future of the best or worst

When some may question which was first,

Of London or of Nineveh.

For as that Bull-god once did stand

And watched the burial-clouds of sand,

Till these at last without a hand

Rose o’er his eyes, another land,

And blinded him with destiny —

So may he stand again; till now,

In ships of unknown sail and prow,

Some tribe of the Australian plough

Bear him afar, — a relic now

Of London, not of Nineveh!

Or it may chance indeed that when

Man’s age is hoary among men,—

His centuries threescore and ten,—

His furthest childhood shall seem then

More clear than later times may be:

Who, finding in this desert place

This form, shall hold us for some race

That walked not in Christ’s lowly ways,

But bowed its pride and vowed its praise

Unto the God of Nineveh.

The smile rose first, — anon drew nigh

The thought:. Those heavy wings spread high,

So sure of flight, which do not fly;

That set gaze never on the sky;

Those scriptured flanks it cannot see;

Its crown, a brow-contracting load;

Its planted feet which trust the sod:.

(So grew the image as I trod

O Nineveh, was this thy God,—

Thine also, mighty Nineveh?

Heavenborn Helen, Sparta’s queen,

(O Troy Town!)

Had two breasts of heavenly sheen,

The sun and moon of the heart’s desire:

All Love’s lordship lay between.

(O Troy’s down,

Tall Troy’s on fire!)

Helen knelt at Venus’ shrine,

(O Troy Town!)

Saying, “A little gift is mine,

A little gift for a heart’s desire.

Hear me speak and make me a sign!

(O Troy’s down,

Tall Troy’s on fire!)

“Look, I bring thee a carven cup;

(O Troy Town!)

See it here as I hold it up,—

Shaped it is to the heart’s desire,

Fit to fill when the gods would sup.

(O Troy’s down,

Tall Troy’s on fire!)

“It was moulded like my breast;

(O Troy Town!)

He that sees it may not rest,

Rest at all for his heart’s desire.

O give ear to my heart’s behest!

(O Troy’s down,

Tall Troy’s on fire!)

“See my breast, how like it is;

(O Troy Town!)

See it bare for the air to kiss!

Is the cup to thy heart’s desire?

O for the breast, O make it his!

(O Troy’s down,

Tall Troy’s on fire!)

“Yea, for my bosom here I sue;

(O Troy Town!)

Thou must give it where ‘tis due,

Give it there to the heart’s desire.

Whom do I give my bosom to?

(O Troy’s down,

Tall Troy’s on fire!)

“Each twin breast is an apple sweet.

(O Troy Town!)

Once an apple stirred the beat

Of thy heart with the heart’s desire: —

Say, who brought it then to thy feet?

(O Troy’s down,

Tall Troy’s on fire!)

“They that claimed it then were three:

(O Troy Town!)

For thy sake two hearts did he

Make forlorn of the heart’s desire.

Do for him as he did for thee!

(O Troy’s down,

Tall Troy’s on fire!)

“Mine are apples grown to the south,

(O Troy Town!)

Grown to taste in the days of drouth,

Taste and waste to the heart’s desire:

Mine are apples meet for his mouth”.

(O Troy’s down,

Tall Troy’s on fire!)

Venus looked on Helen’s gift,

(O Troy Town!)

Looked and smiled with subtle drift,

Saw the work of her heart’s desire —

“There thou kneel’st for Love to lift!”

(O Troy’s down,

Tall Troy’s on fire!)

Venus looked in Helen’s face,

(O Troy Town!)

Knew far off an hour and place,

And fire lit from the heart’s desire;

Laughed and said, “Thy gift hath grace!”

(O Troy’s down,

Tall Troy’s on fire!)

Cupid looked on Helen’s breast,

(O Troy Town!)

Saw the heart within its nest,

Saw the flame of the heart’s desire,—

Marked his arrow’s burning crest.

(O Troy’s down,

Tall Troy’s on fire!)

Cupid took another dart,

(O Troy Town!)

Fledged it for another heart,

Winged the shaft with the heart’s desire,

Drew the string and said, “Depart!”

(O Troy’s down,

Tall Troy’s on fire!)

Paris turned upon his bed,

(O Troy Town!)

Turned upon his bed and said,

Dead at heart with the heart’s desire—

“Oh to clasp her golden head!”

(O Troy’s down,

Tall Troy’s on fire!)

Know’st thou not at the fall of the leaf

How the heart feels a languid grief

Laid on it for a covering,

And how sleep seems a goodly thing

In Autumn at the fall of the leaf?

And how the swift beat of the brain

Falters because it is in vain,

In Autumn at the fall of the leaf

Knowest thou not? and how the chief

Of joys seems — not to suffer pain?

Know’st thou not at the fall of the leaf

How the soul feels like a dried sheaf

Bound up at length for harvesting,

And how death seems a comely thing

In Autumn at the fall of the leaf?

Could you not drink her gaze like wine?

Yet though its splendor swoon

Into the silence languidly

As a tune into a tune,

Those eyes unravel the coiled night

And know the stars at noon.

The gold that’s heaped beside her hand,

In truth rich prize it were;

And rich the dreams that wreathe her brows

With magic stillness there;

And he were rich who should unwind

That woven golden hair.

Around her, where she sits, the dance

Now breathes its eager heat;

And not more lightly or more true

Fall there the dancers’ feet

Than fall her cards on the bright board

As ’twere an heart that beat.

Her fingers let them softly through,

Smooth polished silent things;

And each one as it falls reflects

In swift light-shadowings,

Blood-red and purple, green and blue,

The great eyes of her rings.

Whom plays she with? With thee, who lov’st

Those gems upon her hand;

With me, who search her secret brows;

With all men, blessed or banned.

We play together, she and we,

Within a vain strange land:

A land without any order,—

Day even as night (one saith),—

Where who lieth down ariseth not

Nor the sleeper awakeneth;

A land of darkness as darkness itself

And of the shadow of death.

What be her cards, you ask? Even these —

The heart, that doth but crave

More, having fed; the diamond,

Skilled to make base seem brave;

The club, for smiting in the dark;

The spade, to dig a grave.

And do you ask what game she plays?

With me ’tis lost or won;

With thee it is playing still; with him

It is not well begun;

But ’tis a game she plays with all

Beneath the sway o’ the sun.

Thou seest the card that falls, — she knows

The card that followeth:

Her game in thy tongue is called Life,

As ebbs thy daily breath:

When she shall speak, thou’lt learn her tongue

And know she calls it Death.

The wind flapped loose, the wind was still,

Shaken out dead from tree and hill:

I had walked on at the wind’s will,—

I sat now, for the wind was still.

Between my knees my forehead was,—

My lips, drawn in, said not Alas!

My hair was over in the grass,

My naked ears heard the day pass.

My eyes, wide open, had the run

10 Of some ten weeds to fix upon;

Among those few, out of the sun,

The woodspurge flowered, three cups in one.

From perfect grief there need not be

Wisdom or even memory:

One thing then learnt remains to me, —

The woodspurge has a cup of three.