Английская поэзия XIV–XX веков в современных русских переводах

God! What a mockery is this life of ours!

Cast forth in blood and pain from our mother’s womb,

Most like an excrement, and weeping showers

Of senseless tears: unreasoning, naked, dumb,

The symbol of all weakness and the sum:

Our very life a sufferance. — Presently,

Grown stronger, we must fight for standing-room

Upon the earth, and the bare liberty

To breathe and move. We crave the right to toil.

We push, we strive, we jostle with the rest.

We learn new courage, stifle our old fears,

Stand with stiff backs, take part in every broil.

It may be that we love, that we are blest.

It may be, for a little space of years,

We conquer fate and half forget our tears.

And then fate strikes us. First our joys decay.

Youth, with its pleasures, is a tale soon told.

We grow a little poorer day by day.

Old friendships falter. Loves grow strangely cold.

In vain we shift our hearts to a new hold

And barter joy for joy, the less for less.

We doubt our strength, our wisdom, and our gold.

We stand alone, as in a wilderness

Of doubts and terrors. Then, if we be wise,

We make our terms with fate and, while we may,

Sell our life’s last sad remnant for a hope.

And it is wisdom thus to close our eyes.

But for the foolish, those who cannot pray,

What else remains of their dark horoscope

But a tall tree and courage and a rope?

And who shall tell what ignominy death

Has yet in store for us; what abject fears

Even for the best of us; what fights for breath;

What sobs, what supplications, what wild tears;

What impotence of soul against despairs

Which blot out reason? — The last trembling thought

Of each poor brain, as dissolution nears,

Is not of fair life lost, of Heaven bought

And glory won. ’Tis not the thought of grief;

Of friends deserted; loving hearts which bleed;

Wives, sisters, children who around us weep.

But only a mad clutching for relief

From physical pain, importunate Nature’s need;

The search as for a womb where we may creep

Back from the world, to hide, — perhaps to sleep.

My prison has its pleasures. Every day

At breakfast-time, spare meal of milk and bread,

Sparrows come trooping in familiar way

With head aside beseeching to be fed.

A spider too for me has spun her thread

Across the prison rules, and a brave mouse

Watches in sympathy the warders’ tread,

These two my fellow-prisoners in the house.

But about dusk in the rooms opposite

I see lamps lighted, and upon the blind

A shadow passes all the evening through.

It is the gaoler’s daughter fair and kind

And full of pity (so I image it)

Till the stars rise, and night begins anew.

To do some little good before I die;

To wake some echoes to a loftier theme;

To spend my life’s last store of industry

On thoughts less vain than Youth’s discordant dream;

To endow the world’s grief with some counter-scheme

Of logical hope which through all time should lighten

The burden of men’s sorrow and redeem

Their faces’ paleness from the tears that whiten;

To take my place in the world’s brotherhood

As one prepared to suffer all its fate;

To do and be undone for sake of good,

And conquer rage by giving love for hate;

That were a noble dream, and so to cease,

Scorned by the proud but with the poor at peace.

Seven weeks of sea, and twice seven days of storm

Upon the huge Atlantic, and once more

We ride into still water and the calm

Of a sweet evening, screen’d by either shore

Of Spain and Barbary. Our toils are o’er,

Our exile is accomplish’d. Once again

We look on Europe, mistress as of yore

Of the fair earth and of the hearts of men.

Ay, this is the famed rock which Hercules

And Goth and Moor bequeath’d us. At this door

England stands sentry. God! to hear the shrill

Sweet treble of her fifes upon the breeze,

And at the summons of the rock gun’s roar

To see her red coats marching from the hill!

To-day, all day, I rode upon the down,

With hounds and horsemen, a brave company

On this side in its glory lay the sea,

On that the Sussex weald, a sea of brown.

The wind was light, and brightly the sun shone,

And still we gallop’d on from gorse to gorse:

And once, when check’d, a thrush sang, and my horse

Prick’d his quick ears as to a sound unknown.

I knew the Spring was come. I knew it even

Better than all by this, that through my chase

In bush and stone and hill and sea and heaven

I seem’d to see and follow still your face.

Your face my quarry was. For it I rode,

My horse a thing of wings, myself a god.