Английская поэзия XIV–XX веков в современных русских переводах

If you sit down at the set of sun

And count the act you have done,

And, counting, find

One self-denying deed, one word

That eased the heat of him who heard —

One glance most kind,

That fell like sunshine where it went —

Then you may count that well spent.

But, if, through all the livelong day,

You’ve cheered no heart, by yea or nay —

If, through it all

You’ve nothing done that you can trace

That drought the sunshine to one face —

No act most small

That helped some soul and nothing cost —

Then count that day as worse than lost.

Oft, when a child, while wand’ring far alone,

That none might rouse me from my waking dream,

And visions with which fancy still would teem

Scare by a disenchanting earthly tone;

If, haply, conscious of the present scene,

I’ve marked before me some untraversed spot

The setting sunbeams had forsaken not,

Whose turf appeared more velvet-like and green

Than that I walked and fitter for repose:

But ever, at the wished-for place arrived,

I’ve found it of those seeming charms deprived

Which from the mellowing power of distance rose:

To my poor thought, an apt though simple trope

Of life’s dull path and earth’s deceitful hope.