Английская поэзия XIV–XX веков в современных русских переводах (билингва)

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