Волшебница Шалотт и другие стихотворения - Альфред Теннисон

И. Бунин

THE EAGLE

He clasps the crag with crooked hands;Close to the sun in lonely lands,Ring’d with the azure world, he stands.

The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls;He watches from his mountain walls.And like a thunderbolt he falls.

ОРЕЛ

Вцепившись в голый горный склонКогтистыми руками, онСтоит, лазурью окружен.

Он видит, вдаль вперив свой взор,В морщинах волн морской простор,И громом падает он с гор.

С. Маршак

LINES

Here often when a child I lay reclined:I took delight in this fair strand and free;Here stood the infant Ilion of the mind,And here the Grecian ships all seem’d to be.And here again I come, and only findThe drain-cut level of the marshy lea,Gray sand-banks, and pale sunsets, dreary wind,Dim shores, dense rains, and heavy-clouded sea.

СТРОКИ

Я в детстве приходил на этот склон,Где колокольчики в траве цвели.Здесь высился мой древний ИлионИ греческие плыли корабли.Теперь тут сеть канав со всех сторонИ лоскуты болотистой земли,Лишь дюны серые — да ветра стон,Дождь над водой — и груды туч вдали!

Г. Кружков

POETS AND THEIR BIBLIOGRAPHIES

Old poets foster’d under friendlier skies,Old Virgil who would write ten lines, they say,At dawn, and lavish all the golden dayTo make them wealthier in his readers’ eyes;And you, old popular Horace, you the wiseAdviser of the nine-years-ponder’d lay,And you, that wear a wreath of sweeter bay,Catullus, whose dead songster never dies;

If, glancing downward on the kindly sphereThat once had roll’d you round and round the Sun,You see your Art still shrined in human shelves,You should be jubilant that you flourish’d hereBefore the Love of Letters, overdone,Had swampt the sacred poets with themselves.

СОНЕТ

(Певцы иных, несуетных веков)

Певцы иных, несуетных веков:Старик Вергилий, что с утра в тенечке,Придумав три или четыре строчки,Их до заката править был готов;И ты, Гораций Флакк, что для стиховДевятилетней требовал отсрочки,И ты, Катулл, что в крохотном комочкеОплакал участь всех земных певцов, —

О, если глядя вспять на дольний прах,Вы томики своих произведенийЕще узрите в бережных руках,Ликуйте, о возвышенные тени! —Пока искусства натиск и размахВас не завалит грудой дребедени.

Г. Кружков

TIRESIAS

I wish I were as in the years of old,While yet the blessed daylight made itselfRuddy thro’ both the roofs of sight, and wokeThese eyes, now dull, but then so keen to seekThe meanings ambush’d under all they saw,The flight of birds, the flame of sacrifice,What omens may foreshadow fate to manAnd woman, and the secret of the Gods.

My son, the Gods, despite of human prayer,Are slower to forgive than human kings.The great God, Ares, burns in anger stillAgainst the guiltless heirs of him from Tyre,Our Cadmus, out of whom thou art, who foundBeside the springs of Dirce, smote, and still’dThro’ all its folds the multitudinous beast,The dragon, which our trembling fathers call’dThe God’s own son.

A tale, that told to me,When but thine age, by age as winter-whiteAs mine is now, amazed, but made me yearnFor larger glimpses of that more than manWhich rolls the heavens, and lifts, and lays the deep,Yet loves and hates with mortal hates and loves,And moves unseen among the ways of men.Then, in my wanderings all the lands that lieSubjected to the Heliconian ridgeHave heard this footstep fall, altho’ my wontWas more to scale the highest of the heightsWith some strange hope to see the nearer God.

One naked peak — the sister of the sunWould climb from out the dark, and linger thereTo silver all the valleys with her shafts —There once, but long ago, five-fold thy termOf years, I lay; the winds were dead for heat;The noonday crag made the hand bum; and sickFor shadow - not one bush was near — I roseFollowing a torrent till its myriad fallsFound silence in the hollows underneath.There in a secret olive-glade I sawPallas Athene climbing from the bathIn anger; yet one glittering foot disturb’dThe lucid well; one snowy knee was prestAgainst the margin flowers; a dreadful lightCame from her golden hair, her golden helmAnd all her golden armour on the grass,And from her virgin breast, and virgin eyesRemaining fixt on mine, till mine grew darkFor ever, and I heard a voice that said‘Henceforth be blind, for thou hast seen too much,And speak the truth that no man may believe.’

Son, in the hidden world of sight, that livesBehind this darkness, I behold her still,Beyond all work of those who carve the stone,Beyond all dreams of Godlike womanhood,Ineffable beauty, out of whom, at a glance,And as it were, perforce, upon me flash’dThe power of prophesying - but to meNo power - so chain’d and coupled with the curseOf blindness and their unbelief, who heardAnd heard not, when I spake of famine, plague,Shrine-shattering earthquake, fire, flood, thunderbolt,And angers of the Gods for evil doneAnd expiation lack’d — no power on Fate,Theirs, or mine own! for when the crowd would roarFor blood, for war, whose issue was their doom,To cast wise words among the multitudeWas flinging fruit to lions; nor, in hoursOf civil outbreak, when I knew the twainWould each waste each, and bring on both the yokeOf stronger states, was mine the voice to curbThe madness of our cities and their kings.

Who ever turn’d upon his heel to hearMy warning that the tyranny of oneWas prelude to the tyranny of all?My counsel that the tyranny of allLed backward to the tyranny of one?

This power hath work’d no good to aught that lives,And these blind hands were useless in their wars.О therefore that the unfulfill’d desire,The grief for ever born from griefs to be,The boundless yearning of the Prophet’s heart —Could that stand forth, and like a statue, rear’dTo some great citizen, win all praise from allWho past it, saying, ‘That was he!’

In vain!Virtue must shape itself in deed, and thoseWhom weakness or necessity have cramp’dWithin themselves, immerging, each, his urnIn his own well, draw solace as he may.

Menoeceus, thou hast eyes, and I can hearToo plainly what full tides of onset sapOur seven high gates, and what a weight of warRides on those ringing axles! jingle of bits,Shouts, arrows, tramp of the hornfooted horseThat grind the glebe to powder! Stony showersOf that ear-stunning hail of Ares crashAlong the sounding walls. Above, below,Shock after shock, the song-built towers and gatesReel, bruised and butted with the shudderingWar-thunder of iron rams; and from withinThe city comes a murmur void of joy,Lest she be taken captive — maidens, wives,And mothers with their babblers of the dawn,And oldest age in shadow from the night,Falling about their shrines before their Gods,And wailing ‘Save us.’

And they wail to thee!These eyeless eyes, that cannot see thine own,See this, that only in thy virtue liesThe saving of our Thebes; for, yesternight,To me, the great God Ares, whose one blissIs war, and human sacrifice — himselfBlood-red from battle, spear and helmet tiptWith stormy light as on a mast at sea,Stood out before a darkness, crying ‘Thebes,Thy Thebes shall fall and perish, for I loatheThe seed of Cadmus — yet if one of theseBy his own hand - if one of these —’

My son,No sound is breathed so potent to coerce,And to conciliate, as their names who dareFor that sweet mother land which gave them birthNobly to do, nobly to die. Their names,Graven on memorial columns, are a songHeard in the future; few, but more than wallAnd rampart, their examples reach a handFar thro’ all years, and everywhere they meetAnd kindle generous purpose, and the strengthTo mould it into action pure as theirs.

Fairer thy fate than mine, if life’s best endBe to end well! and thou refusing this,Unvenerable will thy memory beWhile men shall move the lips: but if thou dare —Thou, one of these, the race of Cadmus — thenNo stone is fitted in yon marble girthWhose echo shall not tongue thy glorious doom,Nor in this pavement but shall ring thy nameTo every hoof that clangs it, and the springsOf Dirce laving yonder battle-plain,Heard from the roofs by night, will murmur theeTo thine own Thebes, while Thebes thro’ thee shall standFirm-based with all her Gods.

The Dragon’s caveHalf hid, they tell me, now in flowing vines —Where once he dwelt and whence he roll’d himselfAt dead of night - thou knowest, and that smooth rockBefore it, altar-fashion’d, where of lateThe woman-breasted Sphinx, with wings drawn back,Folded her lion paws, and look’d to Thebes.There blanch the bones of whom she slew, and theseMixt with her own, because the fierce beast foundA wiser than herself, and dash’d herselfDead in her rage: but thou art wise enough,Tho’ young, to love thy wiser, blunt the curseOf Pallas, hear, and tho’ I speak the truthBelieve I speak it, let thine own hand strikeThy youthful pulses into rest and quenchThe red God’s anger, fearing not to plungeThy torch of life in darkness, rather — thouRejoicing that the sun, the moon, the starsSend no such light upon the ways of menAs one great deed.

Thither, my son, and thereThou, that hast never known the embrace of love,Offer thy maiden life.

This useless hand!I felt one warm tear fall upon it. Gone!He will achieve his greatness. But for me,I would that I were gather’d to my rest,And mingled with the famous kings of old,On whom about their ocean-islets flashThe faces of the Gods — the wise man’s word,Here trampled by the populace underfoot,There crown’d with worship — and these eyes will findThe men I knew, and watch the chariot whirlAbout the goal again, and hunters raceThe shadowy lion, and the warrior-kings,In height and prowess more than human, striveAgain for glory, while the golden lyreIs ever sounding in heroic earsHeroic hymns, and every way the valesWind, clouded with the grateful incense-fumeOf those who mix all odour to the GodsOn one far height in one far-shining fire.

‘One height and one far-shining fire’And while I fancied that my friendFor this brief idyll would requireA less diffuse and opulent end,And would defend his judgment well,If I should deem it over nice —The tolling of his funeral bellBroke on my Pagan Paradise,And mixt the dream of classic times,And all the phantoms of the dream,With present grief, and made the rhymes,That miss’d his living welcome, seemLike would-be guests an hour too late,Who down the highway moving onWith easy laughter find the gateIs bolted, and the master gone.Gone into darkness, that full lightOf friendship! past, in sleep, awayBy night, into the deeper night!The deeper night? A clearer dayThan our poor twilight dawn on earth —If night, what barren toil to be!What life, so maim’d by night, were worthOur living out? Not mine to meRemembering all the golden hoursNow silent, and so many dead,And him the last; and laying flowers,This wreath, above his honour’d head,And praying that, when I from henceShall fade with him into the unknown,My close of earth’s experienceMay prove as peaceful as his own.

ТИРЕСИЙ