class="text-author">Перевод М. Зенкевича

Francis William Bourdillon (1852–1921)

Night

The night has a thousand eyes,

And the day but one;

Yet the light of the bright world dies

With the dying sun.

The mind has a thousand eyes,

And the heart but one;

Yet the light of a whole life dies,

When love is done.

Port Meadow, Oxford

O wide wan waste of waters, where no breath

Ruffles the mirror surface, but the gray

Of clouds above is real as if the day

Were no less gloomy to a world beneath!

O dreary waste, the mind remembereth

Full many an hour of summer life and play,

Where now beneath is lifeless slime and clay,

And the vast level lies like ashen death.

Yet as at eve on the wild scene I pondered,

White thoughts of horror held my pulses hushed,

Sudden, amid the clouds beneath that rushed,

Shone out a star. Ah! would mine eyes have wandered,

Were there no waters, to that star above?

Were there no death, should we know all of love?

Фрэнсис Уильям Бурдийон (1852–1921)

* * *

Ночь смотрит тысячами глаз,

А день глядит одним;

Но солнца нет — и по земле

Тьма стелется, как дым.

Ум смотрит тысячами глаз,

Любовь глядит одним;

Но нет любви — и гаснет жизнь,

И дни плывут, как дым.

Перевод Я.П. Полонского

Луг Порт-Медоу близ Оксфорда

Пожухлый, тусклый луг! Дыханье ныне

Не возмутит твоих стоячих вод,

Но отраженье серых туч плывет,

И хмурый день разлит в твоей средине!

Я вспоминаю — в водяной пустыне

Я летом дни и ночи напролет

Где ныне лужа грязи предстает,

И мертвенность лежит на всей равнине.

Пока взирал я на печальный луг,

Сковавши чувства думою ужасной,

Сквозь облака на небосвод ненастный,

Звезда явилась! Но взглянул б я вдруг,

Не будь воды, на свет небесной тверди?

Любили б мы, когда б не знали смерти?

Перевод А. Серебренникова

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)

Sonnet to Liberty

Not that I loved thy children, whose dull eyes

See nothing save their own unlovely woe,

Whose minds known nothing, nothing care to know, —

But that the roar of thy Democracies,

Thy reigns of Terror, thy great Anarchies,

Mirror my wildest passions like the sea

And give my rage a brother — Liberty!

For this sake only do thy dissonant cries

Delight my discreet soul, else might all kings

By bloody knout or treacherous cannonades

Rob nations of their rights inviolate

And I remain unmoved — and yet, and yet,

These Christs that die upon the barricades,

God knows it I am with them, in some things.

Оскар Уайльд (1854–1900)

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Edward Cracroft Lefroy (1855–1891)

In the City

A stranger, from the country’s calm retreat

And heavenly boon of sweet tranquillity,

I tread with faltering steps the dusty street,

And seek in vain the God I long to see.

These traffickers who hold the world in fee —

They hurry past with such determined feet!

I seem to read in every face I meet,

“Am I not strong? What is thy God to me?”

He was so sweet to all the fields, so great

Among the hills, so fair in every glen,

So good to countless hungering eyes that wait

Upon His hand; I felt the Presence then —

Too distant now to cheer me desolate

In this grim weary wilderness of men.

A Football Player

If I could paint you, friend, as you stand there,

Guard of the goal, defensive, open-eyed,

Watching the tortured bladder slide and glide

Under the twinkling feet; arms bare, head bare,

The breeze a-tremble through crow-tufts of hair;

Red-brown in face, and ruddier having spied

A wily foeman breaking from the side;

Aware of him, — of all else unaware:

If I could limn you, as you leap and fling

Your weight against his passage, like a wall;

Clutch him, and collar him, and rudely cling

For one brief moment till he falls — you fall:

My sketch would have what Art can never give —

Sinew and breath and body; it would live.

Bill: A Portrait

I know a lad with sun-illumined eyes,

Whose constant heaven is fleckless of a cloud;

He treads the earth with heavy steps and proud,

As if the gods had given him for a prize

Its beauty and its strength. What money buys

Is his; and his the reverence unavowed

Of toiling men for men who never bowed

Their backs to any burden anywise.

And if you talk of pain, of doubt, of ill,

He smiles and shakes his head, as who should say,

“The thing is black, or white, or what you will:

Let Folly rule, or Wisdom: any way

I am the dog for whom this merry day

Was made, and I enjoy