Беспокойное бессмертие: 450 лет со дня рождения Уильяма Шекспира

Methoughts that I had broken from the Tower,
And was embarked to cross to Burgundy,
And, in my company my brother Gloucester,
Who from my cabin tempted me to walk
Upon the hatches. There we looked toward England
And cited up a thousand heavy times
During the wars of York and Lancaster
That had befallen us. As we paced along
Upon the giddy footing of the hatches,
Methought that Gloucester stumbled, and in falling
Struck me, that thought to stay him, overboard
Into the tumbling billows of the main.
O Lord, methought, what pain it was to drown,
What dreadful noise of waters in mine ears,
What sights of ugly death within mine eyes.
Methoughts I saw a thousand fearful wracks,
Ten thousand men that fishes gnawed upon,
Wedges of gold, great anchors, heaps of pearl,
Inestimable stones, unvalued jewels,
All scattered in the bottom of the sea.
Some lay in dead men’s skulls, and in the holes
Where eyes did once inhabit there were crept,
As ʼtwere in scorn of eyes, reflecting gems,
Which wooed the slimy bottom of the deep
And mocked the dead bones that lay scattered by.

Keeper

 Had you such leisure in the time of death
To gaze upon the secrets of the deep?

Clarence

 Methought I had, and often did I strive
To yield the ghost; but still the envious flood
Stopped in my soul and would not let it forth
To seek the empty, vast and wandering air,
But smothered it within my panting bulk,
Which almost burst to belch it in the sea.

Keeper

Awaked you not in this sore agony?

Clarence

 No, no, my dream was lengthened after life.
Oh, then began the tempest to my soul.
I passed, methought, the melancholy flood,
With that sour ferryman which poets write of,
Unto the kingdom of perpetual night.
The first that there did greet my stranger-soul
Was my great father-in-law, renownèd Warwick,
Who spake aloud, ʼWhat scourge for perjury
Can this dark monarchy afford false Clarence?’
And so he vanished. Then came wandering by
A shadow like an angel, with bright hair
Dabbled in blood, and he shrieked out aloud,
ʼClarence is come: false, fleeting, perjured Clarence,
That stabbed me in the field by Tewksbury.
Seize on him, furies, take him unto torment.’
With that, methought, a legion of foul fiends
Environed me, and howlèd in mine ears
Such hideous cries that with the very noise
I trembling waked, and for a season after
Could not believe but that I was in hell,
Such terrible impression made my dream.

Keeper

 No marvel, lord, though it affrighted you.
I am afraid, methinks, to hear you tell it.

Clarence