Английская поэзия XIV–XX веков в современных русских переводах

Others abide our question. Thou art free.

We ask and ask — Thou smilest and art still,

Out-topping knowledge. For the loftiest hill,

Who to the stars uncrowns his majesty,

Planting his steadfast footsteps in the sea,

Making the heaven of heavens his dwelling-place,

Spares but the cloudy border of his base

To the foil’d searching of mortality;

And thou, who didst the stars and sunbeams know,

Self-school’d, self-scann’d, self-honour’d, self-secure,

Didst tread on earth unguess’d at. — Better so!

All pains the immortal spirit must endure,

All weakness which impairs, all griefs which bow,

Find their sole speech in that victorious brow.

When I shall be divorced, some ten years hence,

From this poor present self which I am now;

When youth has done its tedious vain expense

Of passions that for ever ebb and flow;

Shall I not joy youth’s heats are left behind,

And breathe more happy in an even clime? —

Ah no, for then I shall begin to find

A thousand virtues in this hated time!

Then I shall wish its agitations back,

And all its thwarting currents of desire;

Then I shall praise the heat which then I lack,

And call this hurrying fever, generous fire;

And sigh that one thing only has been lent

To youth and age in common — discontent.

Come, dear children, let us away;

Down and away below!

Now my brothers call from the bay,

Now the great winds shoreward blow,

Now the salt tides seaward flow;

Now the wild white horses play,

Champ and chafe and toss in the spray.

Children dear, let us away!

This way, this way!

Call her once before you go —

Call once yet!

In a voice that she will know:

“Margaret! Margaret!”

Children’s voices should be dear

(Call once more) to a mother’s ear;

Children’s voices, wild with pain —

Surely she will come again!

Call her once and come away;

This way, this way!

“Mother dear, we cannot stay!

The wild white horses foam and fret”.

Margaret! Margaret!

Come, dear children, come away down;

Call no more!

One last look at the white-walled town,

And the little grey church on the windy shore;

Then come down!

She will not come though you call all day;

Come away, come away!

Children dear, was it yesterday

We heard the sweet bells over the bay?

In the caverns where we lay,

Through the surf and through the swell,

The far-off sound of a silver bell?

Sand-strewn caverns, cool and deep,

Where the winds are all asleep;

Where the spent lights quiver and gleam,

Where the salt weed sways in the stream,

Where the sea-beasts, ranged all round,

Feed in the ooze of their pasture-ground;

Where the sea-snakes coil and twine,

Dry their mail and bask in the brine;

Where great whales come sailing by,

Sail and sail, with unshut eye,

Round the world for ever and aye?

When did music come this way?

Children dear, was it yesterday?

Children dear, was it yesterday

(Call yet once) that she went away?

Once she sate with you and me,

On a red gold throne in the heart of the sea,

And the youngest sate on her knee.

She combed its bright hair, and she tended it well,

When down swung the sound of a far-off bell.

She sighed, she looked up through the clear green sea;

She said: “I must go, for my kinsfolk pray

In the little grey church on the shore today.

’T will be Easter-time in the world — ah me!

And I lose my poor soul, Merman! here with thee”.

I said: “Go up, dear heart, through the waves;

Say thy prayer, and come back to the kind sea-caves!”

She smiled, she went up through the surf in the bay.

Children dear, was it yesterday?

Children dear, were we long alone?

The sea grows stormy, the little ones moan;

“Long prayers”, I said, “in the world they say;

Come”, I said; and we rose through the surf in the bay.

We went up the beach, by the sandy down

Where the sea-stocks bloom, to the white-walled town;

Through the narrow paved streets, where all was still,

To the little grey church on the windy hill.

From the church came a murmur of folk at their prayers,

But we stood without in the cold blowing airs.

We climbed on the graves, on the stones worn with rains,

And we gazed up the aisle through the small leaded panes.

She sate by the pillar; we saw her clear:

“Margaret, hist! come quick, we are here!

Dear heart”, I said, “we are long alone;

The sea grows stormy, the little ones moan”.

But, ah, she gave me never a look,

For her eyes we sealed to the holy book!

Loud prays the priest; shut stands the door.

Come away, children, call no more!

Come away, come down, call no more!

Down, down, down!

Down to the depths of the sea!

She sits at her wheel in the humming town,

Singing most joyfully.

Hark, what she sings: “O joy, O joy,

For the humming street, and the child with its toy!

For the priest, and the bell, and the holy well;

For the wheel where I spun,

And the blessed light of the sun!”

And so she sings her fill,

Singing most joyfully,

Till the shuttle drops from her hand,

And the whizzing wheel stands still.

She steals to the window, and looks at the sand,

And over the sand at the sea;

And her eyes are set in a stare;

And anon there breaks a sigh,

And anon there drops a tear,

From a sorrow-clouded eye,

And a heart sorrow-laden,

A long, long sigh;

For the cold strange eyes of a little Mermaiden,

And the gleam of her golden hair.

Come away, away children;

Come children, come down!

The hoarse wind blows coldly;

Lights shine in the town.

She will start from her slumber

When gusts shake the door;

She will hear the winds howling,

Will hear the waves roar.

We shall see, while above us

The waves roar and whirl,

A ceiling of amber,

A pavement of pearl,

Singing: “Here came a mortal,

But faithless was she!

And alone dwell for ever

The kings of the sea”.

But, children, at midnight,

When soft the winds blow,

When clear fall the moonlight,

When spring-tides are low;

When sweet airs come seaward

From heaths starred with broom,

And high rocks throw mildly

On the blanched sands a gloom;

Up the still, glistening beaches,

Up the creeks we will hie,

Over banks of bright seaweed

The ebb-tide leaves dry.

We will gaze, from the sand-hills,

At the white sleeping town;

At the church on the hillside —

And then come back down.

Singing: “There dwells a loved one,

But cruel is she!

She left lonely for ever

The kings of the sea”.

’Twas August, and the fierce sun overhead

Smote on the squalid streets of Bethnal Green,

And the pale weaver, through his windows seen

In Spitalfields, looked thrice dispirited.

I met a preacher there I knew, and said:

“Ill and o’erworked, how fare you in this scene?” —

“Bravely!” said he; “for I of late have been

Much cheered with thoughts of Christ, the living bread”.

O human soul! as long as thou canst so

Set up a mark of everlasting light,

Above the howling senses’ ebb and flow,

To cheer thee, and to right thee if thou roam —

Not with lost toil thou labourest through the night!

Thou mak’st the heaven thou hop’st indeed thy home.

Crouch’d on the pavement close by Belgrave Square

A tramp I saw, ill, moody, and tongue-tied;

A babe was in her arms, and at her side

A girl; their clothes were rags, their feet were bare.

Some labouring men, whose work lay somewhere there,

Pass’d opposite; she touch’d her girl, who hied

Across, and begg’d and came back satisfied.

The rich she had let pass with frozen stare.

Thought I: Above her state this spirit towers;

She will not ask of aliens, but of friends,

Of sharers in a common human fate.

She turns from that cold succour, which attends

The unknown little from the unknowing great,

And points us to a better time than ours.

She smiles and smiles, and will not sigh,

While we for hopeless passion die;

Yet she could love, those eyes declare,

Were but men nobler than they are.

Eagerly once her gracious ken

Was turned upon the sons of men;

But light the serious visage grew—

She looked, and smiled, and saw them through.

Our petty souls, our strutting wits,

Our labored, puny passion-fits—

Ah, may she scorn them still, till we

Scorn them as bitterly as she!

Yet show her once, ye heavenly Powers,

One of some worthier race than ours!

One for whose sake she once might prove

How deeply she who scorns can love.

His eyes be like the starry lights;

His voice like sounds of summer nights;

In all his lovely mien let pierce

The magic of the universe!

And she to him will reach her hand,

And gazing in his eyes will stand,

And know her friend, and weep for glee,

And cry, Long, long I’ve looked for thee!

Then will she weep — with smiles, till then

Coldly she mocks the sons of men.

Till then her lovely eyes maintain

Their pure, unwavering, deep disdain.

The sea is calm tonight.

The tide is full, the moon lies fair

Upon the straits; on the French coast the light

Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand,

Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.

Come to the window, sweet is the night-air!

Only, from the long line of spray

Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land,

Listen! you hear the grating roar

Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,

At their return, up the high strand,

Begin, and cease, and then again begin,

With tremulous cadence slow, and bring

The eternal note of sadness in.

Sophocles long ago

Heard it on the Ægean, and it brought

Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow

Of human misery; we

Find also in the sound a thought,

Hearing it by this distant northern sea.

The Sea of Faith

Was once, too, at the full, and round earth’s shore

Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.

But now I only hear

Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,

Retreating, to the breath

Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear

And naked shingles of the world.

Ah, love, let us be true

To one another! for the world, which seems

To lie before us like a land of dreams,

So various, so beautiful, so new,

Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,

Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;

And we are here as on a darkling plain

Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,

Where ignorant armies clash by night.

Set where the upper streams of Simois flow

Was the Palladium, high ’mid rock and wood;

And Hector was in Ilium, far below,

And fought, and saw it not — but there it stood!

It stood, and sun and moonshine rain’d their light

On the pure columns of its glen-built hall.

Backward and forward roll’d the waves of fight

Round Troy — but while this stood, Troy could not fall.

So, in its lovely moonlight, lives the soul.

Mountains surround it, and sweet virgin air;

Cold plashing, past it, crystal waters roll;

We visit it by moments, ah, too rare!

We shall renew the battle in the plain

To-morrow; — red with blood will Xanthus be;

Hector and Ajax will be there again,

Helen will come upon the wall to see.

Then we shall rust in shade, or shine in strife,

And fluctuate ’twixt blind hopes and blind despairs,

And fancy that we put forth all our life,

And never know how with the soul it fares.

Still doth the soul, from its lone fastness high

Upon our life a ruling effluence send.

And when it fails, fight as we will, we die

And while it lasts, we cannot wholly end.