Английская поэзия XIV–XX веков в современных русских переводах

Over faded heath-flowers spun, or thorny furze,

The filmy gossamer is lightly spread;

Waving in every sighing air that stirs,

As fairy fingers had entwined the thread:

A thousand trembling orbs of lucid dew

Spangle the texture of the fairy loom,

As if soft sylphs, lamenting as they flew,

Had wept departed summer’s transient bloom:

But the wind rises, and the turf receives

The glittering web: — So, evanescent, fade

Bright views that youth with sanguine heart believes:

So vanish schemes of bliss, by fancy made;

Which, fragile as the fleeting dews of morn,

Leave but the withered heath, and barren thorn!

Is there a solitary wretch who hies

To the tall cliff, with starting pace or slow,

And, measuring, views with wild and hollow eyes

Its distance from the waves that chide below;

Who, as the sea-born gale with frequent sighs

Chills his cold bed upon the mountain turf,

With hoarse, half-uttered lamentation, lies

Murmuring responses to the dashing surf?

In moody sadness, on the giddy brink,

I see him more with envy than with fear;

He has no nice felicities that shrink

From giant horrors; wildly wandering here,

He seems (uncursed with reason) not to know

The depth or the duration of his woe.