My master — he disliked me from the start.
He never knew me, never saw or heard me,
but all the same he feared me like the plague
and hated me with all his dreary heart.
When I bowed my head before him,
it seemed to him I hid a smile.
When he made me cry, he thought
my tears were crocodile.
And all my life I worked my heart out for him,
each night I lay down late, and got up early.
I loved him and was wounded for his sake.
But nothing I could do would ever take.
I took his portrait everywhere I went,
I hung it up in every but and tent,
I looked and looked, and kept on looking,
and slowly, as the years went past,
his hatred hurt me less and less.
And nowadays it hardly seems to matter:
the age-old truth is men like me
are always hated by their master.
А мой хозяин не любил меня —
Не знал меня, не слышал и не видел,
А всё-таки боялся, как огня,
И сумрачно, угрюмо ненавидел.
Когда меня он плакать заставлял,
Ему казалось: я притворно плачу.
Когда пред ним я голову склонял,
Ему казалось: я усмешку прячу.
А я всю жизнь работал на него,
Ложился поздно, поднимался рано,
Любил его. И за него был ранен.
Но мне не помогало ничего.
А я возил с собой его портрет.
В землянке вешал и в палатке вешал —
Смотрел, смотрел, не уставал смотреть.
И с каждым годом мне всё реже, реже
Обидною казалась нелюбовь.
И ныне настроенья мне не губит
Тот явный факт, что испокон веков
Таких, как я, хозяева не любят.
«When on the squares in silence / We slowly lose our minds / Cruel winter offers to us / The cold and clean rhine wine It gives in silver bucket / The Valhalla's white wine / And of a northern man / With glimmer it reminds. But northern skalds are rougher / They know no joy of game / ...»
«Among the priests a young Levite / As morning sentinel for long remained / Judean night grew denser over him, / A ruined temple stood in bitter pain. He spoke: The yellow of the sky is menace / Run, Jews, over Euphrates it is night. / And old men thought: We should not take the blame here...»
«1 A river of golden honey from the bottle was pouring / So long and so thick that the hostess had time to speak: / "To this sad Taurides, where life does not get boring, / We jouneyed through fortune" — and looked over the neck. 2 There are Bacchus's services everywhere, as if in the whol...»
«The wooden organ did not roar this evening. / The cradle song of Schubert to us sang / The windmill blew and in the hurricane's singing / Laughing blue-eyed intoxication rang. The world of ancient song is green and brown, / The world of ancient song, young for all age, / Where nightingale...»