Английская поэзия XIV–XX веков в современных русских переводах (билингва)

The sunshine on the long white road

That ribboned down the hill,

The velvet clematis that clung

Around your window-sill

Are waiting for you still.

Again the shadowed pool shall break

In dimples at your feet,

And when the thrush sings in your wood,

Unknowing you may meet

Another stranger, Sweet.

And if he is not quite so old

As the boy you used to know,

And less proud, too, and worthier,

You may not let him go —

(And daisies are truer than passion-flowers)

It will be better so.

Violets from Plug Street Wood,

Sweet, I send you oversea.

(It is strange they should be blue,

Blue, when his soaked blood was red,

For they grew around his head;

It is strange they should be blue.)

Violets from Plug Street Wood —

Think what they have meant to me —

Life and Hope and Love and You

(And you did not see them grow

Where his mangled body lay

Hiding horror from the day;

Sweetest it was better so.)

Violets from oversea,

To your dear, far, forgetting land

These I send in memory,

Knowing You will understand.

Love have I known, and dawn and gold of day-time,

And winds and songs and all the joys that are

Known once, and as a child that tires with play-time,

Leaped from them to the elemental dust of War.

I have seen blood and death, but all has ending,

And even Horror is but made to cease;

I am sickened with Love that lives only for lending,

And all the loathsome pettiness of peace.

Give me, God of Battles, a field of death,

A Hell of Fire, a strong man’s agony…