Английская поэзия XIV–XX веков в современных русских переводах - Антология

one,

But cruel is she!

She left lonely for ever

The kings of the sea”.

East London

’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.

West London

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.

Urania

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.

Dover Beach

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.

Palladium

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