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

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
⁠Running from house to house.

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 fanned my face,
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