(no subject)
* * *
(с английского)
Как разгромил чужую рать,
Я вспоминал с утра:
Чтоб их прогнать,
Я строил гать,
В бою кричал «Ура!»
Но где найти достойный лад
Для доблестей моих?
Поёт солдат
Язык баллад,
Или латинский стих?
А за окном - капель синиц
И зеленушек спор!
Про пыль границ -
И пыль страниц
Забыв, бегу во двор…
19-20 марта 2008
Оригинал стихотворения:
THE GREENFINCH
I sat down in the nursery
One sunny morn in May
To write a deathless Epic,
For I had holiday.
My mind was full of dragons,
Of Knights with lance in rest,
And maidens in far islands
That fringe the golden West;
Of mists and misty marshes
By forests dank and low;
And seas where spectre vessels
Glide ghost-like to and fro.
But how to choose a hero,
That were a task indeed!
`Twixt Lancelot and Brutus,
Roland and Ganymede.
Who best would urge my numbers
Alike in war and peace,
Amid the splendour of romance
Or the marble myths of Greece?
And while I sat debating
The pros and cons of these,
The Greenfinches were calling
Among the apple trees.
Adown the moated sunbeams
There calls continuous fell,
A little harsh and grating
And musical as well.
And I forgot the tourney;
The winding of the horn;
The trip from Troy to Britain;
The journey Eagle-borne;
And up the moated sunbeams
I climbed away from these,
To where the green birds called me
Among the apple trees.
Is it thirty years or forty
Since I sat down that day
Beside the nursery table
To write the deathless lay?
No matter, `tis unwritten;
And in the silent hall
Of thought, still waits the Epic,
For still the finches call.
I. Henry Wallis «The Cloud Kingdom»
...и замечательный перевод, сделанный k_bogomol