Английский для смелых. Истории о духах и привидениях / Great Ghost Stories

 No, I have no knowledge of what it was. The sum of what we knew at death is the measure of what we know afterward of all that went before. Of this existence we know many things, but no new light falls upon any page of that; in memory is written all of it that we can read. Here are no heights of truth overlooking the confused landscape of that dubitable domain. We still dwell in the Valley of the Shadow, lurk in its desolate places, peering from brambles and thickets at its mad, malign inhabitants. How should we have new knowledge of that fading past?

What I am about to relate happened on a night. We know when it is night, for then you retire to your houses and we can venture from our places of concealment to move unafraid about our old homes, to look in at the windows, even to enter and gaze upon your faces as you sleep. I had lingered long near the dwelling where I had been so cruelly changed to what I am, as we do while any that we love or hate remain. Vainly I had sought some method of manifestation, some way to make my continued existence and my great love and poignant pity understood by my husband and son. Always if they slept they would wake, or if in my desperation I dared approach them when they were awake, would turn toward me the terrible eyes of the living, frightening me by the glances that I sought from the purpose that I held.

On this night I had searched for them without success, fearing to find them (в эту ночь я безуспешно их искала, боясь их найти); they were nowhere in the house (их не было нигде в доме), nor about the moonlit lawn (не было и на залитой лунным светом лужайке перед домом). For, although the sun is lost to us forever (так как, хотя солнце и потеряно для нас навеки), the moon, full-orbed or slender, remains to us (луна, полная ли или тоненьким серпом, светит нам по-прежнему; full – полный, наполненный целиком, заполненный; orbed – округлый, шарообразный, сферический; slender – тонкий, узкий; to remain – оставаться). Sometimes it shines by night, sometimes by day (иногда она сияет ночью, иногда днем), but always it rises and sets, as in that other life (но всегда она встает и заходит, как в той, другой жизни).