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Никто не мыслил, край ваш захватив.
Идём на ощупь, словно сельдь в сети,
Упёршись в неизвестности извив.
Вы жили ожиданьем перспектив,
Нам так же с круга мыслей не сойти.
Стоим мы, путь друг другу преградив,
И бьёт слепец слепца на том пути.
Наступит мир, оглянемся назад,
И свежим взором каждый оглядит
Другого, ведь любовь сильней обид.
Обнявшись, высмеем ту боль и ад,
Когда наступит мир. Пока ж грозит
Нам тьма: шторма и грозы, дождь и град.
Перевод Б. Булаева
Edward Wyndham Te
Home Thoughts in Laventie
Green gardens in Laventie!
Soldiers only know the street
Where the mud is churned and splashed about
By battle-wending feet;
And yet beside one stricken house there is a glimpse of grass,
Look for it when you pass.
Beyond the Church whose pitted spire
Seems balanced on a strand
Of swaying stone and tottering brick
Two roofless ruins stand,
And here behind the wreckage where the back-wall should have been
We found a garden green.
The grass was never trodden on,
The little path of gravel
Was overgrown with celandine,
No other folk did travel
Along its weedy surface, but the nimble-footed mouse
Ru
So all among the vivid blades
Of soft and tender grass
We lay, nor heard the limber wheels
That pass and ever pass,
In noisy continuity, until their stony rattle
Seems in itself a battle.
At length we rose up from our ease
Of tranquil happy mind,
And searched the garden’s little length
A fresh pleasaunce to find;
And there, some yellow daffodils and jasmine hanging high
Did rest the tired eye.
The fairest and most fragrant
Of the many sweets we found,
Was a little bush of Daphne flower
Upon a grassy mound,
And so thick were the blossoms set, and so divine the scent,
That we were well content.
Hungry for Spring I bent my head,
The perfume fa
And all my soul was dancing
In that lovely little place,
Dancing with a measured step from wrecked and shattered towns
Away. upon the Downs.
I saw green banks of daffodil,
Slim poplars in the breeze,
Great tan-brown hares in gusty March
A-courting on the leas;
And meadows with their glittering streams, and silver scurrying dace,
Home — what a perfect place!
Reincarnation
I too remember distant golden days
When even my soul was young; I see the sand
Whirl in a blinding pillar towards the band
Of orange sky-line ’neath a turquoise blaze—
(Some burnt-out sky spread o’er a glistening land)
— And slim brown jargoning men in blue and gold,
I know it all so well, I understand
The ecstasy of worship ages-old.
Hear the first truth: The great far-seeing soul
Is ever in the humblest husk; I see
How each succeeding section takes its toll
In fading cycles of old memory.
And each new life the next life shall control
Until perfection reach Eternity.
Light after Darkness
Once more the Night, like some great dark drop-scene
Eclipsing horrors for a brief entr’acte,
Descends, lead-weighty. Now the space between,
Fringed with the eager eyes of men, is racked
By spark-tailed lights, curvetting far and high,
Swift smoke-flecked coursers, raking the black sky.
And as each sinks in ashes grey, one more
Rises to fall, and so through all the hours
They strive like petty empires by the score,
Each confident of its success and powers,
And, hovering at its zenith, each will show
Pale, rigid faces, lying dead, below.
There shall they lie, tainting the i
Until the dawn, deep veiled in mournful grey,
Sadly and quietly shall lay them bare,
The broken heralds of a doleful day.
Эдвард Уиндем Теннант (1897–1916)