Blessed are the ones that left your daughters, Earth,
To fight in wartime battle and to run,
Blessed are the ones that having never tried
Comfort went to the fields Elysian.
Thus grows the laurel - writer of the years,
Heater of battle, sober, with harsh leaves.
I will never exchange for bitter fate of love
The friendship's over-the-clouds cliffs.
Блаженны дочерей твоих, Земля,
Бросавшие для боя и для бега.
Блаженны в Елисейские поля
Вступившие, не обольстившись негой.
Так лавр растёт, — жестоколист и трезв,
Лавр-летописец, горячитель боя.
— Содружества заоблачный отвес
Не променяю на юдоль любови.
____
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«Like a white stone deep in a draw-well lying, / As hard and clear, a memory lies in me. / I cannot strive nor have I heart for striving: / It is such pain and yet such ecstasy. It seems to me that someone looking closely / Into my eyes would see it, patent, pale. / And, seeing, would grow...»
«From my poor sins I am set free. / In lilac dusk the taper smolders; / The dark stole's rigid drapery / Conceals a massive head and shoulders. "Talitha kumi": Is it He / Once more? How fast the heart is beating . . . / A touch: a hand moves absently / The customary cross repeating.»
«Broad gold, the evening colors glow, / The April air is cool and tender. / You should have come ten years ago, / And yet in welcome I surrender. Come here, sit closer in our nook, / And turn gay eyes at what my nurses / Might never glimpse: the blue-bound book / That holds my awkward ch...»
«Give me comfortless seasons of sickness, / Visitations of wrath and of wrong / On my house; Lord, take child and companion, / And destroy the sweet power of song. Thus I pray at each matins, each vespers, / After these many wearying days, / That the storm-cloud which broods over Russia / ...»