[Lika_k]

A.E. Housman
A Shropshire Lad
XLI
In my own shire, if I was sad,
Homely comforters I had:
The earth, because my heart was sore,
Sorrowed for the son she bore;
And standing hills, long to remain,
Shared their short-lived comrade’s pain
And bound for the same bourn as I,
On every road I wandered by,
Trod beside me, close and dear,
The beautiful and death-struck year:
Whether in the woodland brown
I heard the beechnut rustle down,
And saw the purple crocus pale
Flower about the autumn dale;
Or littering far the fields of May
Lady-smocks a-bleaching lay,
And like a skylit water stood
The bluebells in the azured wood.

Yonder, lightening other loads,
The seasons range the country roads,
But here in London streets I ken
No such helpmates, only men;
And these are not in plight to bear,
If they would, another’s care.
They have enough as ’tis: I see
In many an eye that measures me
The mortal sickness of a mind
Too unhappy to be kind.
Undone with misery, all they can
Is to hate their fellow man;
And till they drop they needs must still
Look at you and wish you ill.

@темы: h, 19, housman, a.e., english-british

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[Lika_k]

A.E. Housman
A Shropshire Lad
XXX
Others, I am not the first,
Have willed more mischief than they durst:
If in the breathless night I too
Shiver now, ’tis nothing new.

More than I, if truth were told,
Have stood and sweated hot and cold,
And through their reins in ice and fire
Fear contended with desire.

Agued once like me were they,
But I like them shall win my way
Lastly to the bed of mould
Where there’s neither heat nor cold.

But from my grave across my brow
Plays no wind of healing now,
And fire and ice within me fight
Beneath the suffocating night.

@темы: h, 19, housman, a.e., english-british

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[Lika_k]

A.E. Housman
A Shropshire Lad
XXVIII. The Welsh Marches
High the vanes of Shrewsbury gleam
Islanded in Severn stream;
The bridges from the steepled crest
Cross the water east and west.

The flag of morn in conqueror’s state
Enters at the English gate:
The vanquished eve, as night prevails,
Bleeds upon the road to Wales.

Ages since the vanquished bled
Round my mother’s marriage-bed;
There the ravens feasted far
About the open house of war:

When Severn down to Buildwas ran
Coloured with the death of man,
Couched upon her brother’s grave
The Saxon got me on the slave.

The sound of fight is silent long
That began the ancient wrong;
Long the voice of tears is still
That wept of old the endless ill.

In my heart it has not died,
The war that sleeps on Severn side;
They cease not fighting, east and west,
On the marches of my breast.

Here the truceless armies yet
Trample, rolled in blood and sweat,
They kill and kill and never die;
And I think that each is I.

None will part us, none undo
The knot that makes one flesh of two,
Sick with hatred, sick with pain,
Strangling—When shall we be slain?

When shall I be dead and rid
Of the wrong my father did?
How long, how long, till spade and hearse
Put to sleep my mother’s curse?

@темы: h, 19, housman, a.e., english-british

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[Lika_k]

A.E. Housman
A Shropshire Lad
XXVI
Along the field as we came by
A year ago, my love and I,
The aspen over stile and stone
Was talking to itself alone.
‘Oh who are these that kiss and pass?
A country lover and his lass;
Two lovers looking to be wed;
And time shall put them both to bed,
But she shall lie with earth above,
And he beside another love.’

And sure enough beneath the tree
There walks another love with me,
And overhead the aspen heaves
Its rainy-sounding silver leaves;
And I spell nothing in their stir,
But now perhaps they speak to her,
And plain for her to understand
They talk about a time at hand
When I shall sleep with clover clad,
And she beside another lad.

@темы: h, 19, housman, a.e., english-british

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[Lika_k]

A.E. Housman
A Shropshire Lad
XXIV
Say, lad, have you things to do?
Quick then, while your day’s at prime
Quick, and if ’tis work for two,
Here am I, man: now’s your time

Send me now, and I shall go;
Call me, I shall hear you call;
Use me ere they lay me low
Where a man’s no use at all;

Ere the wholesome flesh decay,
And the willing nerve be numb,
And the lips lack breath to say,
‘No, my lad, I cannot come.’

@темы: h, 19, housman, a.e., english-british

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[Lika_k]

William Wordsworth
Daffodils
I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed--and gazed--but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.
1804.

@темы: w, 19, romanticism, english-british

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[Lika_k]

Derek Walcott
Love After Love
The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other’s welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.

@темы: 20, w, english-other, walcott, derek

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[Lika_k]

W.H. Auden
Nocturne
Now through night's caressing grip
Earth and all her oceans slip,
Capes of China slide away
From her fingers into day
And th'Americas incline
Coasts towards her shadow line.

Now the ragged vagrants creep
Into crooked holes to sleep:
Just and unjust, worst and best,
Change their places as they rest:
Awkward lovers like in fields
Where disdainful beauty yields:

While the splendid and the proud
Naked stand before the crowd
And the losing gambler gains
And the beggar entertains:
May sleep's healing power extend
Through these hours to our friend.
Unpursued by hostile force,
Traction engine, bull or horse
Or revolting succubus;
Calmly till the morning break
Let him lie, then gently wake.

Benjamin Britten, from "On this Island" song cycle for voice & piano, Op. 11

@темы: music, b, a, 20, youtube, auden, w.h., english: anglo-american

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[Lika_k]

A.E. Housman
A Shropshire Lad
XV
Look not in my eyes, for fear
Thy mirror true the sight I see,
And there you find your face too clear
And love it and be lost like me.
One the long nights through must lie
Spent in star-defeated sighs,
But why should you as well as I
Perish? gaze not in my eyes.

A Grecian lad, as I hear tell,
One that many loved in vain,
Looked into a forest well
And never looked away again.
There, when the turf in springtime flowers,
With downward eye and gazes sad,
Stands amid the glancing showers
A jonquil, not a Grecian lad.

@темы: h, 19, housman, a.e., english-british

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[Lika_k]

Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Sonnet LXXXIII: Barren Spring
Once more the changed year's turning wheel returns:
And as a girl sails balanced in the wind,
And now before and now again behind
Stoops as it swoops, with cheek that laughs and burns,—
So Spring comes merry towards me here, but earns
No answering smile from me, whose life is twin'd
With the dead boughs that winter still must bind,
And whom to-day the Spring no more concerns.
Behold, this crocus is a withering flame;
This snowdrop, snow; this apple-blossom's part
To breed the fruit that breeds the serpent's art.
Nay, for these Spring-flowers, turn thy face from them,
Nor stay till on the year's last lily-stem
The white cup shrivels round the golden heart.

Данте Габриэль Россетти
Бесплодная весна
Кружится быстро колесо времен;
И словно девочка на карусели,
Вся устремясь к какой-то дивной цели,
Летит, смеясь, — и ветер ей вдогон! —
Весна мне мчит навстречу; но, смущен,
Молчу в ответ; томят мой дух метели
Прошедших зим, и мне не до веселий —
Остыла кровь среди замерзших крон.
Взгляни: пророчит ландыш о снегах,
Цвет яблоневый, нежно оробелый, —
О Змие, что погубит плод созрелый.
Не радуйся же лилиям в лугах,
Не жди, когда рассыплется во прах
Вкруг сердца золотого венчик белый.

пер. Гр. Кружков

@темы: sonnet, 19, pre-raphaelite brotherhood, english-british, и/й, kruzhkov, grigory, к (rus), р (rus), r

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[Lika_k]

W.H. Auden
Atlantis
Being set on the idea
Of getting to Atlantis,
You have discovered of course
Only the Ship of Fools is
Making the voyage this year,
As gales of abnormal force
Are predicted, and that you
Must therefore be ready to
Behave absurdly enough
To pass for one of The Boys,
At least appearing to love
Hard liquor, horseplay and noise.

Should storms, as may well happen,
Drive you to anchor a week
In some old harbour-city
Of Ionia, then speak
With her witty sholars, men
Who have proved there cannot be
Such a place as Atlantis:
Learn their logic, but notice
How its subtlety betrays
Their enormous simple grief;
Thus they shall teach you the ways
To doubt that you may believe.

If, later, you run aground
Among the headlands of Thrace,
Where with torches all night long
A naked barbaric race
Leaps frenziedly to the sound
Of conch and dissonant gong:
On that stony savage shore
Strip off your clothes and dance, for
Unless you are capable
Of forgetting completely
About Atlantis, you will
Never finish your journey.

Again, should you come to gay
Carthage or Corinth, take part
In their endless gaiety;
And if in some bar a tart,
As she strokes your hair, should say
“This is Atlantis, dearie,”
Listen with attentiveness
To her life-story: unless
You become acquainted now
With each refuge that tries to
Counterfeit Atlantis, how
Will you recognise the true?

Assuming you beach at last
Near Atlantis, and begin
That terrible trek inland
Through squalid woods and frozen
Thundras where all are soon lost;
If, forsaken then, you stand,
Dismissal everywhere,
Stone and now, silence and air,
O remember the great dead
And honour the fate you are,
Travelling and tormented,
Dialectic and bizarre.

Stagger onward rejoicing;
And even then if, perhaps
Having actually got
To the last col, you collapse
With all Atlantis shining
Below you yet you cannot
Descend, you should still be proud
Even to have been allowed
Just to peep at Atlantis
In a poetic vision:
Give thanks and lie down in peace,
Having seen your salvation.

All the little household gods
Have started crying, but say
Good-bye now, and put to sea.
Farewell, my dear, farewell: may
Hermes, master of the roads,
And the four dwarf Kabiri,
Protect and serve you always;
And may the Ancient of Days
Provide for all you must do
His invisible guidance,
Lifting up, dear, upon you
The light of His countenance.
1941

@темы: a, 20, auden, w.h., english: anglo-american

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[Lika_k]

W. H. Auden
A Voyage
I. Whither?
Where does this journey look which the watcher
upon the quay,
Standing under his evil star, so bitterly envies,
As the mountains swim away with slow calm strokes
And the gulls abandon their vow? Does it promise a
juster life?
Alone with his heart at last, does the fortunate
traveler find
In the vague touch of a breeze, the fickle flash of a wave,
Proofs that somewhere exists, really, the Good Place,
Convincing as those that children find in stones and
holes?

No, he discovers nothing: he does not want to arrive.
His journey is false, his unreal excitement really an illness
On a false island where the heart cannot act and
will not suffer:
He condones his fever; he is weaker than he thought;
his weakness is real.

But at moments, as when real dolphins with leap and panache
Cajole for recognition or, far away, a real island
Gets up to catch his eye, his trance is broken: he
remembers
Times and places where he was well; he believes in joy,
That, maybe, his fever shall find a cure, the true journey an end
Where hearts meet and are really true, and crossed
this ocean, that parts
Hearts which alter but is the same always, that goes
Everywhere, as truth and falsehood go, but cannot suffer.

II. The Ship
All streets are brightly lit; our city is kept clean;
Her Third-Class deal from greasy packs, her First bid high;
Her beggars banished to the bows have never seen
What can be done in state-rooms: no one asks why.
Lovers are writing letters, athletes playing ball,
One doubts the virtue, one the beauty of his wife,
A boy's ambitious: perhaps the Captain hates us all;
Someone perhaps is leading a civilised life.

Slowly our Western culture in full pomp progresses
Over the barren plains of a sea; somewhere ahead
A septic East, odd fowl and flowers, odder dresses:
Somewhere a strange and shrewd To-morrow goes to bed,
Planning a test for men from Europe; no one guesses
Who will be most ashamed, who richer, and who dead.

III. The Sphinx
Did it once issue from the carver's hand
Healthy? Even the earliest conqueror saw
The face of a sick ape, a bandaged paw,
An ailing lion crouched on dirty sand.

We gape, then go uneasily away:
It does not like the young nor love nor learning.
Time hurt it like a person: it lies turning
A vast behind on shrill America,
And witnesses. The huge hurt face accuses
And pardons nothing, least of all success:
What counsel it might offer it refuses
To those who face akimbo its distress.

"Do people like me?" No. The slave amuses
The lion. "AM I to suffer always?" Yes.

IV. Hong Kong
Its leading characters are wise and witty,
Their suits well-tailored, and they wear them well,
Have many a polished parable to tell
About the mores of a trading city.

Only the servants enter unexpected,
Their silent movements make dramatic news;
Here in the East our bankers have erected
A worthy temple to the Comic Muse.
Ten thousand miles from home and What's-Her-Name
A bugle on this Late Victorian hill
Puts out the soldier's light; off-stage, a war

Thuds like the slamming of a distant door:
Each has his comic role in life to fill,
Though Life be neither comic nor a game.

V. Macao
A weed from Catholic Europe, it took root
Between some yellow mountains and a sea,
Its gay stone houses an exotic fruit,
A Portugal-cum-China oddity.

Rococo images of Saint and Saviour
Promise its gamblers fortunes when they die,
Churches alongside brothels testify
That faith can pardon natural behavior.

A town of such indulgence need not fear
Those mortal sins by which the strong are killed
And limbs and governments are torn to pieces:
Religious clocks will strike, the childish vices
Will safeguard the low virtues of the child,
And nothing serious can happen here.

VI. A Major Port
No guidance can be found in ancient lore:
Banks jostle in the sun for domination,
Behind them stretch like sorry vegetation
The low recessive houses of the poor.

We have no destiny assigned us,
No data but our bodies: we plan
To better ourselves; bleak hospitals alone remind us
of the equality of man.
Children are really loved here, even by police:
They speak of years before the big were lonely.
Here will be no recurrence.
Only
The brass-bands throbbing in the parks foretell
Some future reign of happiness and piece.
We learn to pity and rebel.
from "Journey to a War" by W.H. Auden and Christopher Isherwood, 1939

У. Х. Оден
Куда?
Что путешествие скажет тому, кто стоит у борта
под несчастливой звездой и глядит
на залив, где горы,
плавно качаясь на волнах,
уходят все дальше, дальше
в море, где даже чайки не держат слова?

Нынче, оставшись один на один
с собою, странник
в этих касаниях ветра, во всплесках моря
ищет приметы того, что отыщется
наконец то место,
где хорошо. Вспоминает из детства
пещеры, овраги, камни.

Но ничего не находит, не открывает.
Возвращаться не с чем.
Путешествие в мертвую точку
было смертельной ошибкой.
Здесь, на мертвом острове, ждал,
что боль в сердце утихнет.
Подхватил лихорадку. Оказался слабее,
чем раньше думал.

Но временами, наблюдая, как в море
мелькают дельфины,
в прятки играя, или растет
на горизонте незнакомый остров
точкой опоры зрачку, он с надеждой верит
в те времена и места, где был счастлив.
В то, что

боль и тревога проходят и ведут дороги
на перекресток сердец, рассекая море, ибо
сердце изменчиво, но остается
в конечном счете
прежним повсюду. Как правда и ложь,
что друг с другом схожи.

пер. Гл. Шульпяков

@темы: a, 20, auden, w.h., english: anglo-american, о (rus)

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[Lika_k]

A.E. Housman
A Shropshire Lad
ix
On moonlit heath and lonesome bank
The sheep beside me graze;
And yon the gallows used to clank
Fast by the four cross ways.

A careless shepherd once would keep
The flocks by moonlight there, [1]
And high amongst the glimmering sheep
The dead man stood on air.

They hang us now in Shrewsbury jail:
The whistles blow forlorn,
And trains all night groan on the rail
To men that die at morn.

There sleeps in Shrewsbury jail to-night,
Or wakes, as may betide,
A better lad, if things went right,
Than most that sleep outside.

And naked to the hangman's noose
The morning clocks will ring
A neck God made for other use
Than strangling in a string.

And sharp the link of life will snap,
And dead on air will stand
Heels that held up as straight a chap
As treads upon the land.

So here I'll watch the night and wait
To see the morning shine,
When he will hear the stroke of eight
And not the stroke of nine;

And wish my friend as sound a sleep
As lads' I did not know,
That shepherded the moonlit sheep
A hundred years ago.

[1] Hanging in chains was called keeping sheep by moonlight.

Альфред Хаусман
Парень из Шропшира
ix
Уныньем залил лунный свет
Овцу и всё, что мог,
Хоть виселицы больше нет
У четырех дорог.
Вот так же раньше свет луны
Оберегал овец,
И неподвижно с вышины
На них взирал мертвец.
Мы в Шрусбери повисли в ряд,
Был глух последний стон, —
Здесь ночью поезда скорбят
О тех, кто днем казнен.
А тот, кто жив, не может спать,
Судьбы постигнув зло:
Он лучше многих мог бы стать,
Да вот не повезло.
И будет утренний финал
Затягивать нули
Вкруг шеи, что Господь создал
Отнюдь не для петли.
Прервется жизнь одним рывком,
И мертвый воспарит
Так твердо, будто босиком
На лестнице стоит.
Я буду караулить тьму,
И колокол пробьет
Наутро другу моему
Последних восемь нот.
Пусть спит от сущего вдали
Ровесник тех парней,
Которых овцы стерегли
В ночи минувших дней.
Пер. А. Беляков

@темы: h, 19, housman, a.e., english-british, х (rus)

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[Lika_k]

A.E. Housman
A Shropshire Lad
XI
ON your midnight pallet lying,
Listen, and undo the door:
Lads that waste the light in sighing
In the dark should sigh no more;
Night should ease a lover’s sorrow;
Therefore, since I go to-morrow,
Pity me before.

In the land to which I travel,
The far dwelling, let me say—
Once, if here the couch is gravel,
In a kinder bed I lay,
And the breast the darnel smothers
Rested once upon another’s
When it was not clay.

@темы: h, 19, housman, a.e., english-british

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[Lika_k]

W. H. Auden
Detective Story
For who is ever quite without his landscape,
The straggling village street, the house in trees,
All near the church, or else the gloomy town house,
The one with the Corinthian pillars, or
The tiny workmanlike flat: in any case
A home, the centre where the three or four things
That happen to a man do happen? Yes,
Who cannot draw the map of his life, shade in
The little station where he meets his loves
And says good-bye continually, and mark the spot
Where the body of his happiness was first discovered?

An unknown tramp? A rich man? An enigma always
And with a buried pastbut when the truth,
The truth about our happiness comes out
How much it owed to blackmail and philandering.

The rest's traditional. All goes to plan:
The feud between the local common sense
And that exasperating brilliant intuition
That's always on the spot by chance before us;
All goes to plan, both lying and confession,
Down to the thrilling final chase, the kill.

Yet on the last page just a lingering doubt:
That verdict, was it just? The judge's nerves,
That clue, that protestation from the gallows,
And our own smile . . . why yes . . .
But time is always killed. Someone must pay for
Our loss of happiness, our happiness itself.

@темы: a, 20, auden, w.h., english: anglo-american

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[Lika_k]

W.H. Auden
Academic Graffiti (In Memoriam Ogden Nash)
My First Name, Wystan,
Rhymes with Tristan,
But--O dear!-- I do hope
I'm not quite such a dope.

Henry Adams
Was mortally afraid of Madams:
In a disorderly house
He sat quiet as a mouse.

St Thomas Aquinas
Always regarded wine as
A medicinal juice
That helped him to deduce.

Johann Sebastian Bach
Was a master of his Fach:
Nothing could be more kluge
Than his Kunst der Fuge.

Thomas Lovell Beddoes
Could never walk through meadows
Without getting the glooms
And thinking of tombs.

Ludwig van Beethoven
Believed it proven
That, for mortal dust,
What must be, must.

Good Queen Bess
Couldn't have liked it less,
When Burghley and Cecil
Drank out of the same vessel.

William Blake
Found Newton hard to take,
And was not enormously taken
With Francis Bacon.

Said Robert Bridges,
When badly bitten by midges:
"They're only doing their duty
As a testament to my beauty."

Robert Browning
Immediately stopped frowning
And started to blush,
When fawned on by Flush.

Martin Buber
Never said "Thou" to a tuber:
Despite his creed,
He did not feel the need.

Lord Byron
Once succumbed to a Siren:
His flesh was weak,
Hers Greek.

Among the prosodists, Bysshe
Was the syllable-counting old sissy,
Guest
The accentual pest.

When Arthur Hugh Clough
Was jilted by a piece of fluff,
He sighed "Quel dommage!",
And wrote Amours de Voyage.

Dante
Was utterly enchanté
When Beatrice cried in tones that were peachy:
Noi siamo amici.

Hugh De Vries
During a visit to Greece
Composed a pastoral poem,
Xylem & Phloem.

Charles Dickens
Could find nothing to say to chickens,
But gossipping with rabbits
Became one of his habits.

Desiderius Erasmus
Always avoided chiasmus,
But grew addicted as time wore on
To oxymoron.

Fulke Greville
Wrote beautifully at sea level:
With each rising contour his verse
Got progressively worse.

The Geheimrat in Goethe
Made him all the curter
With Leute who were leery
Of his Color Theory.

Sir Rider Haggard,
Was completly staggered
When his bride-to-be
Announced "I AM SHE!"

Georg Friedrich Händel
Was highly respected in Kendal:
It was George Frederick Handel
Who caused all the scandal.

Thomas Hardy
Was never tardy
When summoned to fulfill
The Immanent Will.

Joseph Haydn
Never read Dryden
Nor did John Dryden
Ever hear Haydn.

No one could ever inveigle
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
Into offering the slightest apology
For his Phenomenology.

George Herbert
Once tried ordering sherbet
On Salisbury Plain:
He ordered in vain.

Robert Herrick
Certainly did not write Eric:
So far
As we know, it was Dean Farrar.

Henry James
Abhorred the word Dames,
And always wrote "Mommas"
With inverted commas.

When the young Kant
Was told to kiss his aunt,
He obeyed the Categorical Must,
But only just.

Søren Kierkegaard
Tried awfully hard
To take The Leap
But fell in a heap.

Karl Kraus
Always had some grouse:
Among his bête noires
Were Viennese choirs.

Archbishop Laud
Was High, not Broad:
He could never descend
To celebrating the North End.

Edward Lear
Was haunted by a fear
While travelling in Albania
Of contracting kleptomania.

Joseph Lister,
According to his sister,
Was not an alcoholic:
His vice was carbolic.

Mr Robert Liston
Used the saw like a piston:
He was that elated
When he amputated.

Luther & Zwingli
Should be treated singly:
L hated the Peasants,
Z the Real Presence.

Mallarmé
Had too much to say:
He could never quite
Leave the paper white.

Mary, Queen of Scots,
Could tie the most complicated knots,
But she couldn't bake
The simplest cake.

Queen Mary (The Bloody)
Had an understudy
Who was a Prot:
She was not.

When Karl Marx
Found the phrase "financial sharks,"
He sang a Te Deum
In the British Museum.

John Milton
Never stayed in a Hilton
Hotel,
Which was just as well.

William Henry Monk
Lived in a perpetual blue funk
Of being taken on hikes
By John Bacchus Dykes.

Thomas Moore
Caused a furore
Every time he bellowed his
Irish Melodies.

Cardinal Newman
Was being only human
When he dreamed of panning
The latest tract by Cardinal Manning.

Nietzsche
Had the habit as a teacher
Of cracking his joints
To emphasize his points.

Oxbridge philosophers, to be cursory,
Are products of a middle-class nursery:
Their arguments are anent
What Nanny really meant.

Louis Pasteur,
So his colleagues aver,
Lived on excellent terms
With most of his germs.

Alexander Pope
Never gave up hope
Of finding a motto
To affix to his Grotto.

Christina Rossetti
Thought it rather petty,
When her brother, D.G.,
Put laudanum in her tea.

When Sir Walter Scott
Made a blot,
He stamped with rage
And started a new page.

"Ma foi!", exclaimed Stendhal,
"Ce Scarpia n'est pas si mal,
But he's no Count Mosca,
Unluckily for Tosca."

Adalbert Stifter
Was no weight-lifter:
He would hire old lags
To carry his bags.

William Makepeace Thackeray
Wept into his daiquiri,
When he heard St John's Wood
Thought he was no good.

Thomas the Rhymer
Was probably a social climber:
He should have known Fairy Queens
Were beyond his means.

Thomas Traherne
Could always discern
The Angel in boys,
Even when they made a noise.

Paul Valéry
Earned a meagre salary,
Walking through the Bois,
Observing his Moi.

Good Queen Victoria
In a fit of euphoria
Commanded Disraeli
To blow up the Old Bailey.

James Watt
Was the hard-boiled kind of Scot:
He thought any dream
Sheer waste of steam.

Oscar Wilde
Was greatly beguiled,
When into the Café Royal walked Boise
Wearing a tea-cosy.

Sir Thomas Wyatt
Never went on a diet,
Unlike the Earl of Surrey,
Who ate nothing but curry.

Whenever Xantippe
Wasn't feeling too chippy,
She would bawl at Socrates:
"Why aren't you Hippocrates?"

T.S. Eliot is quite at a loss
When clubwomen bustle across
At literary teas,
Crying:-- "What, if you please,
Did you mean by The Mill on the Floss?"

To get the Last Poems of Yeats,
You need not mug up on dates;
All a reader requires
Is some knowledge of gyres
And the sort of people he hates.

@темы: a, 20, auden, w.h., english: anglo-american

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[Lika_k]

Listen to 90 Famous Authors & Celebrities Read Great Stories & Poems

@темы: interesting, poetry, literature, links

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[Lika_k]

W.H. Auden
Orpheus
What does the song hope for? And moved the hands
A little way from the birds, the shy, the delightful?
To be bewildered and happy,
Or most of all the knowledge of life?

But the beautiful are content with the sharp notes of the air;
The warmth is enough. O if winter really
Oppose, if the weak snowflake,
What will the wish, what will the dance do?

У. Х. Оден
Орфей
О чем хлопочет песня? Танец рук,
Берущих птичий лад робея и чаруя?
Забыться в диком исступленье
Или проникнуть в тайну естества?
Но гармонию питает воздух, полный терпких нот;
Покуда тепло. А если и вправду —
Зима, и снежинок рой,
Тогда — о чем, как ты тогда запляшешь

пер. С. Михайлов

@темы: a, 20, auden, w.h., english: anglo-american, о (rus)

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[Lika_k]

W. H. Auden
Adolescence
He maketh me to lie down in green pastures; He leadeth me beside the still waters."
(King James Bible, Psalms 23:2)

By landscape reminded once of his mother's figure
The mountain heights he remembers get bigger and bigger:
With the finest of mapping pens he fondly traces
All the family names on the familiar places.

Among green pastures straying he walks by still waters;
Surely a swan he seems to earth's unwise daughters,
Bending a beautiful head, worshipping not lying,
'Dear' the dear beak in the dear concha crying.

Under the trees the summer bands were playing;
'Dear boy, be brave as these roots', he heard them saying:
Carries the good news gladly to a world in danger,
Is really to argue, he smiles, with any stranger.

And yet this prophet, homing the day is ended,
Receives odd welcome from the country he so defended:
The band roars "Coward, Coward', in his human fever.
The giantess shuffles nearer, cries 'Deceiver'.

У. Х. Оден
Отрочество
Перед ним пейзаж, напоминавший когда-то
материнский профиль.
Нынче все не то: подросли горы,
стало больше кровель.
И, склоняясь над картой,
он тщательно отмечает
Имена тех мест, что, как прежде,
он помнит, знает.

Заплутав в лугах, он выходит
на плоский песчаный берег,
Глупый лебедь плывет по воде,
зацветает вереск.

Выгнув шею, лебедь молится,
жалуется кому-то.
«Дорогой» — твердит дорогим клювом.
Смутно

Он запомнил — в тот вечер здесь играл
духовой оркестр.
«Будь мужчиной» — сказали ему,
но его реестр
Новостей пополнялся скорее тем,
что мир, похоже,
Стал безумным. О чем, улыбаясь,
говорил прохожим.

Но плохой из него пророк,
он желает домой и вскоре
Получает билет в те края, за которые
он хлебнул горя,
Но толпа на вокзале, надрываясь,
кричит ему: «Трус, бездельник!»
И какая-то баба, глядя в упор, говорит:
«Изменник».

пер. Гл. Шульпяков

@темы: a, 20, auden, w.h., english: anglo-american, о (rus)

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[Lika_k]

Thomas Hardy (1840-1928)
A Night In November
I marked when the weather changed,
And the panes began to quake,
And the winds rose up and ranged,
That night, lying half-awake.

Dead leaves blew into my room,
And alighted upon my bed,
And a tree declared to the gloom
Its sorrow that they were shed.

One leaf of them touched my hand,
And I thought that it was you
There stood as you used to stand,
And saying at last you knew!
(1913)

Томас Гарди
Ночь в ноябре
Я заметил, что когда
Наступают холода, --
Ветра странствием полна,
Ночь в движенье полусна:

Листья в комнату летят,
Под кроватью шелестят,
Дерево, роняя их,
Плачет, словно о живых,

И когда тихонько вдруг
Тонкий лист коснется рук --
Это ты пришла опять
То последнее сказать.
пер. О. Татариновой

@темы: 20, h, hardy, thomas, english-british, г (rus)