Английская поэзия XIV–XX веков в современных русских переводах

I dreamt one night — it was a horrid dream—

That I was dead, and made was the division

Between the innocent flesh and guilty spirit,

And that the former, with a white sheet wrapt round

And nailed up in a box, was to the bottom

Sunk of a deep and narrow pit, which straight

Was filled to overheaping with a mixture

Of damp clay, rotting flesh and mouldering bones,

And lidded with a weighty stone whereon

Was writ my name and on what days precise

I first and last drew breath; while up the latter

Flew, without help of wings or fins or members,

By its mere lightness, through the air, to heaven;

And there being placed before the judgment-seat

Of its Maker, and most unsatisfactory

Answer returning to the question — ‘Wherefore

Wast thou as I made thee?’ was sent down

Tumbling by its own weight, down down to Hell,

To sink or swim or wade as best it might,

In sulphurous fires unquenchable for ever,

With Socrates and Plato, Aristides

Falsely surnamed the just, and Zoroaster,

Titus the good, and Cato and divine

Homer and Virgil, and so many millions

And millions more of wrongfully called good

And wise and virtuous, that for want of sulphur

And fire and snakes and instruments of torture

And room in Hell, the Universal Maker

Was by his own inherent justice forced,

That guilt might not go scot-free and unpunished,

To set apart so large a share of Heaven

For penal colonies and jails and treadmills,

That mutinies for want of flying-space

Began t’ arise among the cherubim

And blessed spirits, and a Proclamation

Of Martial Law in Heaven was just being read

When, in a sweat of agony and fear,

I woke, and found myself in Germany,

In the close prison of a German bed,

And at my bedside Mr Oberkellner

With printed list of questions in his hand:

My name and age and birthplace and religion,

Trade or profession, wherefore I had come,

How long to stay, whither next bound; and so forth;

All at my peril to be truly answered,

And upon each a sixpence to the State,

Which duly paid I should obtain permission

To stay where I was so long as the State pleased,

Without being prosecuted as a felon,

Spy, or disturber of the public peace.

“Pain, who made thee?” thus I said once

To the grim unpitying monster,

As, one sleepless night, I watched him

Heating in the fire his pincers.

“God Almighty; who dare doubt it?”

With a hideous grin he answered:

“I’m his eldest best-beloved son,

Cut from my dead mother’s bowels”.

“Wretch, thou liest;” shocked and shuddering

To the monster I replied then;

“God is good, and kind, and gracious;

Never made a thing so ugly”.

“Tell me then, since thou know’st better,

Whose I am, by whom begotten”.

“Hell’s thy birth-place, and the Devil

Both thy father and thy mother”.

“Be it so; to me the same ‘tis

Whether I’m God’s son or grandson,

And to thee not great the difference

Once thy flesh between my tongs is”.

“Spare me, spare me, Pain;” I shrieked out,

As the red-hot pincers caught me;

“Thou art God’s son; aye thou’rt God’s self;

Only take thy fingers off me”.