Tower, as the deep-domed empyrean
Rings to the roar of an angel onset —
Me rather all that bowery loneliness,
The brooks of Eden mazily murmuring,
And bloom profuse and cedar arches
Charm, as a wanderer out in ocean,
Where some refulgent sunset of India
Streams o’er a rich ambrosial ocean isle,
And crimson-hued the stately palm-woods
Whisper in odorous heights of even.
МИЛЬТОН
О несравненный мастер гармонии,
О неподвластный смертному времени,
Органным рокотом гремящий
Англии голос могучий, Мильтон,
Воспевший битвы горнего воинства,
Златые латы ангелов-ратников,
Мечи из Божьей оружейной,
Грохот ударов и стоны неба! —
Но тем сильнее был очарован я
Ручьев Эдема лепетом ласковым,
Цветами, кедрами, ключами, —
Так очарован бывает странник
Заходом солнца где-нибудь в Индии,
Где берег моря тонет в сиянии
И пальмы дышат ароматом,
Шепотом нежным встречая вечер.
Р. Торпусман
HENDECASYLLABLES
О you chorus of indolent reviewers,
Irresponsible, indolent reviewers,
Look, I come to the test, a tiny poem
All composed in a metre of Catullus,
All in quantity, careful of my motion,
Like the skater on ice that hardly bears him,
Lest I fall unawares before the people,
Waking laughter in indolent reviewers.
Should I flounder awhile without a tumble
Thro’ this metrification of Catullus,
They should speak to me not without a welcome,
All that chorus of indolent reviewers.
Hard, hard, hard is it, only not to tumble,
So fantastical is the dainty metre.
Wherefore slight me not wholly, nor believe me
Too presumptuous, indolent reviewers.
О blatant Magazines, regard me rather —
Since I blush to belaud myself a moment —
As some rare little rose, a piece of inmost
Horticultural art, or half coquette-like
Maiden, not to be greeted unbenignly.
ОДИННАДЦАТИСЛОЖНИКИ
О насмешливый хор ленивых судей,
Нерадивых, самодовольных судей!
Я готов к испытанию, смотрите,
Я берусь написать стихотворенье
Тем же метром, что и стихи Катулла.
Продвигаться придется осторожно,
Как по льду на коньках — а лед-то слабый,
Не упасть бы при всем честном народе
Под безжалостный смех ленивых судей!
Только если смогу, не оступившись,
Удержаться в Катулловом размере —
Благосклонно заговорит со мною
Вся команда самодовольных судей.
Так, так, так… не споткнуться! Как изыскан,
Как тяжел этот ритм необычайный!
Почему-то ни полного презренья,
Ни доверия нет во взглядах судей.
Я краснею при мысли о бахвальстве…
Пусть бы критики на меня смотрели
Как на редкую розу, гордость сада
И садовника, или на девчонку,
Что смутится неласковою встречей.
Р. Торпусман
TO VIRGIL
Roman Virgil, thou that singest
Ilion’s lofty temples robed in fire,
Ilion falling, Rome arising,
Wars, and filial faith, and Dido’s pyre;
Landscape-lover, lord of language
More than he that sang the Works and Days,
All the chosen coin of fancy
Flashing out from many a golden phrase;
Thou that singest wheat and woodland,
Tilth and vineyard, hive and horse and herd;
All the charm of all the Muses
Often flowering in a lonely word;
Poet of the happy Tityrus
Piping underneath his beechen bowers;
Poet of the poet-satyr
Whom the laughing shepherd bound with flowers;
Chanter of the Pollio, glorying
In the blissful years again to be,
Summers of the snakeless meadow,
Unlaborious earth and oarless sea;
Thou that seёst Universal
Nature moved by Universal Mind;
Thou majestic in thy sadness
At the doubtful doom of human kind;
Light among the vanish’d ages;
Star that gildest yet this phantom shore;
Golden branch amid the shadows,
Kings and realms that pass to rise no more;
Now thy Forum roars no longer,
Fallen every purple Caesar’s dome —
Tho’ thine ocean-roll of rhythm
Sound for ever of Imperial Rome —
Now the Rome of slaves hath perish’d,
And the Rome of freemen holds her place,
I, from out the Northern Island
Sunder’d once from all the human race,
I salute thee, Mantovano,
I that loved thee since my day began,
Wielder of the stateliest measure
Ever moulded by the lips of man.
ВЕРГИЛИЮ
О Вергилий, певший битвы,
Кровь, пожар и бегство на заре,
Гибель Трои, славу Рима,
Храм в огне, Дидону на костре.
О блюститель красноречья,
Чьи слова, как золото и мед,
Возносивший гимн природе
Ярче и звучней, чем Гесиод;
Воспевавший нивы, пашни,
Ульи, виноградники, сады, —
У кого в едином слове
Все звучали струны и лады;
Свищет Титир на свирели,
И подпаски надорвут бока,
Потешаясь над Сатиром,
Певшим про царицу и быка.
Поллиону — век блаженный
Ты сулил: вол сбросит свой ярем;
Ни змеи в траве, ни плуга
На поле, ни на море трирем.
Ты познал Всемирный Разум
И людскую участь ты постиг,
С величавою печалью
Ты оплакал нашей жизни миг;
Светоч, озаривший сумрак
Позабытых накрепко времен,
Золотая ветвь в загробной
Сутолоке канувших племен.
Пусть лежит в руинах форум,
И с обломков статуй стерся грим,
Ты, воздвигший колоннады
Дактилей, нетленный создал Рим.
И теперь, когда свободны
Римляне, я — житель островной,
Из краев, где прежде варвар
Дни свои влачил в глуши лесной, —
Я, которого бессменно
Вдохновляет твой высокий слог,
Шлю тебе, о Мантуанец,
Свой привет, как верности залог.
Г. Стариковский
THE VOYAGE OF MAELDUNE
I was the chief of the race — he had stricken my father dead —
But I gather’d my fellows together, I swore I would strike off his head.
Each of them look’d like a king, and was noble in birth as in worth,
And each of them boasted he sprang from the oldest race upon earth.
Each was as brave in the fight as the bravest hero of song,
And each of them liefer had died than have done one another a wrong.
He lived on an isle in the ocean — we sail’d on a Friday morn —
He that had slain my father the day before I was born.
And we came to the isle in the ocean, and there on the shore was he.
But a sudden blast blew us out and away thro’ a boundless sea.
And we came to the Silent Isle that we never had touch’d at before,
Where a silent ocean always broke on a silent shore,
And the brooks glitter’d on in the light without sound, and the long waterfalls
Pour’d in a thunderless plunge to the base of the mountain walls,
And the poplar and cypress unshaken by storm flourish’d up beyond sight,
And the pine shot aloft from the crag to an unbelievable height,
And high in the heaven above it there flicker’d a songless lark,
And the cock couldn’t crow, and the bull couldn’t low, and the dog couldn’t bark.
And round it we went, and thro’ it, but never a murmur, a breath —
It was all of it fair as life, it was all of it quiet as death,
And we hated the beautiful Isle, for whenever we strove to speak
Our voices were thinner and fainter than any flittermouse-shriek;
And the men that were mighty of tongue and could raise such a battle-cry
That a hundred who heard it would rush on a thousand lances and die —
O they to be dumb’d by the charm! — so fluster’d with anger were they
They almost fell on each other; but after we sail’d away.
And we came to the Isle of Shouting, we landed, a score of wild birds
Cried from the topmost summit with human voices and words;
Once in an hour they cried, and whenever their voices peal’d
The steer fell down at the plow and the harvest died from the field,
And the men dropt dead in the valleys and half of the cattle went lame,
And the roof sank in on the hearth, and the dwelling broke into flame;
And the shouting of these wild birds ran into the hearts of my crew,
Till they shouted along with the shouting and seized one another and slew;
But I drew them the one from the other; I saw that we could not stay,
And we left the dead to the birds and we sail’d with our wounded away.