Here is the long-bided hour: the labor of years is accomplished.
Why should this sadness unplumbed secretly weigh on my heart?
Is it, my work being done, I stand like a laborer, useless,
One who has taken his pay, alien to unwonted tasks?
Is it the work I regret, the silent companion of midnight,
Friend of the golden-haired Dawn, friend of the gods of the hearth?
Миг вожделенный настал: окончен мой труд многолетний.
Что ж непонятная грусть тайно тревожит меня?
Или, свой подвиг свершив, я стою, как подёнщик ненужный,
Плату приявший свою, чуждый работе другой?
Или жаль мне труда, молчаливого спутника ночи,
Друга Авроры златой, друга пенатов святых?
«Beside their big fire they had laid themselves down, / Their powerless bodies prostrate. / A bullet had gone through the temple of one / To home in the head of his mate. The hands of the two had locked in a vice / The now dead machine gun they’d manned, / And neither the storm nor the s...»
«I’ve never been even once in a bar-room, / I’ve never drunk whisky neat with sailors, / I’ll never, I guess, on a horse go charging / Across the desert steppes of Arabia. I'm not cut out for hauling in canvas, / For waving an oar, braving stormy weather. / She loves a young salt, do...»
«Times aren’t what they were like, people feel dislocated, / And the ground underfoot’s not the same, don’t you doubt it. / Was a time with their God people cooperated, / Then they had second thoughts-they would manage without Him. Granny dearest, you haven’t a body to talk to. / In ...»
«Taras, in the tale / Gogol tells us, was tough... / No quarter he gave / Foe or traitor. / I hear him call / At midnight to his son, / “The child of my loins, I shall slay thee!” The beautiful pani, / Andrii’s fateful love, / Pale-faced, old Taras implores mutely... / The pi...»