Английская поэзия XIV–XX веков в современных русских переводах

You meaner beauties of the night,

That poorly satisfy our eyes

More by your number than your light;

You common people of the skies;

What are you when the moon shall rise?

You curious chanters of the wood,

That warble forth Dame Nature’s lays,

Thinking your passions understood

By your weak accents; what ’s your praise,

When Philomel her voice shall raise?

You violets that first appear,

By your pure purple mantles known

Like the proud virgins of the year,

As if the spring were all your own;

What are you when the rose is blown?

So, when my mistress shall be seen

In form and beauty of her mind,

By virtue first, then choice, a Queen,

Tell me if she were not designed

The eclipse and glory of her kind?

Dazled thus with height of place,

Whilst our Hopes our wits Beguile,

No man marks the narrow space

‘Twixt a Prison and a Smile.

Then since Fortunes favours fade,

You that in her arms do sleep,

Learn to swim and not to wade;

For the Hearts of Kings are deep.

But if Greatness be so blind,

As to trust in Towers of Air,

Let it be with Goodness lin’d,

That at least the Fall be fair.

Then though darkned you shall say,

When Friends fail and Princes frown,

Vertue is the roughest way,

But proves at night a Bed of Down.

How happy is he born and taught

That serveth not another’s will;

Whose armour is his honest thought,

And simple truth his utmost skill;

Whose passions not his masters are;

Whose soul is still prepared for death,

Untied unto the world by care

Of public fame or private breath;

Who envies none that chance doth raise,

Nor vice; who never understood

How deepest wounds are given by praise;

Nor rules of state, but rules of good;

Who hath his life from rumours freed;

Whose conscience is his strong retreat;

Whose state can neither flatterers feed,

Nor ruin make oppressors great;

Who God doth late and early pray

More of his grace than gifts to lend;

And entertains the harmless day

With a religious book or friend.

This man is freed from servile bands

Of hope to rise or fear to fall:

Lord of himself, though not of lands,

And, having nothing, yet hath all.