Extinct volcanoes brood in silence.
Ash scatters down into their keep.
Reposing from their evil deeds,
the giants now are sunk in sleep.
A growing chill pervades their realm.
Their shoulders hunch under the strain.
But, as before, their sinful visions
come haunting them at night again.
They dream of a city doomed to perish
that has no inkling of its fate,
of basalt hardening into columns,
and gardens framed in lava’s spate.
Girls fill their arms with flowers there,
flowers that bloomed a time ago.
Bacchantes lure the men who sip
cool wine beneath a portico.
The feast’s begun; excitement mounts
and stupifies, and speech grows coarse.
O my lovely girl, Pompeii, child
begotten of a slave and empress!
A captive of your oozy fate,
what were you thinking, and of whom,
when you so bravely leaned upon
Vesuvius for some elbow room.
Rapt by the stories he was telling,
you stared big-eyed in terror,
unable to resist the peals
of his overbearing ardor.
At the close of day, it came about,
he fell and pressed his brightest brow
to your already lifeless feet,
and burst out with: “Forgive me now!”
Молчат потухшие вулканы,
на дно их падает зола.
Там отдыхают великаны
после содеянного зла.
Все холоднее их владенья,
все тяжелее их плечам,
но те же грешные виденья
являются им по ночам.
Им снится город обреченный,
не знающий своей судьбы,
базальт, в колонны обращенный
и обрамляющий сады.
Там девочки берут в охапки
цветы, что расцвели давно,
там знаки подают вакханки
мужчинам, тянущим вино.
Все разгораясь и глупея,
там пир идет, там речь груба.
О девочка моя, Помпея,
дитя царевны и раба!
В плену судьбы своей везучей
о чем ты думала, о ком,
когда так храбро о Везувий
ты опиралась локотком?
Заслушалась его рассказов,
расширила зрачки свои,
чтобы не вынести раскатов
безудержной его любви.
И он челом своим умнейшим
тогда же, на исходе дня,
припал к ногам твоим умершим
и закричал: «Прости меня!»
«Peace-loving Stassen who appears so pious / Is most inflammable and could well fry us. / He wears an olive branch in his lapel. / But sits on bombs like some hen doing well / In her present condition. Still he can / Consider any disarmament plan.»
«We enter — and our shocked hearts shudder... Cruel / Death, desolation, emptiness yawn here... / Where are the swans... and brooks? Where are the muses? / The beauty that from childhood we’ve held dear? Where are the gardeners? Where are the people / Who used to cherish peaceful parks l...»
«...I won’t give my enemies that consolation: / My death — hypocritically to deplore. / The hook where I’d hang myself is not yet driven, / Not yet forged. Not dug out from the earth as ore. / I’ll rise over all of my bottomless life, / The terrors, the whole iron anguish I knew. / ...»
«As a sad look I fancy autumn. / On a serene and misty day / To woods I often choose my way / And gratified there stay / Alone in pleasant mood begotten. / Beneath a pine in a land of needles, / While tasting lazily a berry, / I muse on matters sad and merry / And listen to wood...»