Волшебница Шалотт и другие стихотворения

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

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.

II

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.

III

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.

IV

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;