Английская поэзия XIV–XX веков в современных русских переводах

A boy of eighteen years ‘mid myrtle boughs

Lying love-languid on a morn of May,

Watched half asleep his goats insatiate browse

Thin shoots of thyme and lentisk, by the spray

Of biting sea-winds bitter made and grey:

Therewith when shadows fell, his waking thought

Of love into a wondrous dream was wrought.

A woman lay beside him, — so it seemed;

For on her marble shoulders, like a mist

Irradiate with tawny moonrise, gleamed

Thick silken tresses; her white woman’s wrist,

Glittering with snaky gold and amethyst,

Upheld a dainty chin; and there beneath,

Her twin breasts shone like pinks that lilies wreathe.

What color were her eyes I cannot tell;

For as he gazed thereon, at times they darted

Dun rays like water in a dusky well;

Then turned to topaz: then like rubies smarted

With smouldering flames of passion tiger-hearted:

Then ’neath blue-veined lids swam soft and tender

With pleadings and shy timorous surrender.

Thus far a woman; but the breath that lifted

Her panting breast with long melodious sighs,

Stirred o’er her neck and hair broad wings that sifted

The perfumes of meridian Paradise;

Dusk were they, furred like velvet, gemmed with eyes

Of such dull lustre as in isles afar

Night-flying moths spread to the summer star.

Music these pinions made — a sound and surge

Of pines innumerous near lisping waves —

Rustlings of reeds and rushes on the verge

Of level lakes and and naiad-haunted caves —

Drowned whispers of a wandering stream that laves

Deep alder-boughs and tracts of ferney grass

Bordered with azure-belled campanulas.

Potent they were: for never since her birth

With feet of woman this fair siren pressed

Sleek meadow swards or stony ways of earth;

But ’neath the silken marvel of her breast

Displayed in sinuous length of coil and crest,

Glittered a serpent’s tail, fold over fold,

In massy labyrinths of languor rolled.

Ah me! what fascination! what faint stars

Of emerald and opal, with the shine

Of rubies intermingled, and dim bars

Of twisting turquoise and pale coraline!

What rings and rounds! What thin streaks sapphirine

Freckled that gleaming glory, like the bed

Of Eden streams with gems enamelled!

There lurked no loathing, no soul-freezing fear,

But luxury and love these coils between:

Faint grew the boy; the siren filled his ear

With singing sweet as when the village green

Re-echoes to the tinkling tambourine,

And feet of girls aglow with laughter glance

In myriad mazy errors of the dance.

How long he dallied with delusive joy

I know not: but thereafter nevermore

The peace of passionless slumber soothed the boy;

For he was stricken to the very core

With sickness of desire exceeding sore,

And through the radiance of his eyes there shone

Consuming fire too fierce to gaze upon.

He, ere he died — and they whom lips divine

Have touched, fade flower-like and cease to be —

Bade Charicles on agate carve a sign

Of his strange slumber: therefore can we see

Here in the ruddy gem’s transparency

The boy, the myrtle-boughs, the triple spell

Of moth and snake and white witch terrible.

Half-light of dawn in the hushed upper room,

Where all night long two comrades, side by side,

Have slumbered in the summer-scented gloom,

Fanned by faint breezes from a window wide.

He sleeps, and stirs not. He meanwhile awake,

Steadfastly gazing and with mind intent

To drink soul-deep of beauty, dares not break

By breath or sigh his own heart’s ravishment.

Bare arms light folded on the broad bare chest;

Dark curls crisp clustering round the athlete’s head;

Shoulder and throat heroic; all is rest,

Marble with loveliest hues of life o’erspread.

Life in the glowing cheeks, the hands sun-brown,

The warm blood tingling to each finger-tip;

Life in youth’s earliest bloom of tender down,

Tawny on chin and strong short upper lip:

Life in the cool white, flushed with faintest rose,

Of flank and heaving bosom, where each vein,

Half seen, a thread of softest violet, flows,

Like streaks that some full-throated lily stain.

Deep rest, and draught of slumber. Not one dream

Ruffles the mirror of that sentient sea,

Whereon the world and all its pride will gleam,

When the soul starts from sleep, so royally.

Hush! ’Tis a bell of morning. Far and near,

From sea-set tower and island chimes reply:

Thrills the still air with sound divinely clear;

And the stirred sleeper wakens with a sigh.

What might have been, what might have been!

Is there a sadder word than this?

Are any serpent’s teeth more keen

Than memories of what we miss?

The wreaths we might have worn, if but

Our feet had found the fields of May,

Instead of jolting down the rut

Of traffic on life’s hard high-way!

The love we might have known, if we

Had turned this way instead of that;

The lips we might have kissed, which he

For whom they parted, pouted at!

The joys we might, when blood was young,

Have garnered in a goodly sheaf;

The summer songs we might have sung,

While still our life was but in leaf!

What might have been, what might have been!

Sad thought, when age before us lowers,

And dark is the December scene,

And fallen even autumn’s flowers!