There are names like stifling flowers
And gazes like a dancing flame…
There are dark sinuous mouths
With deep damp corners.
There are women. — Their hair, like a helmet,
Their fan smells deadly and delicate.
They are thirty. — Why, why do you need
My Spartan child’s soul?
Есть имена, как душные цветы,
И взгляды есть, как пляшущее пламя…
Есть тёмные извилистые рты
С глубокими и влажными углами.
Есть женщины. — Их волосы, как шлем,
Их веер пахнет гибельно и тонко.
Им тридцать лет. — Зачем тебе, зачем
Моя душа спартанского ребёнка?
«Whispering and timid breathings, / Nightingale's soft trill, / Silvery and rippling motion / Of the drowsy rill, Nightime radiance, nightime shadows, / Shadows' endless dance, / Magic sequences transforming / Love's dear countenance, ...»
«Amid the virgin maples and the weeping birches / Upon those arrogant pines to gaze I cannot brook; / The flocks of my sweet living daydreams they disturb, / Hateful to me their sober look. Amid the gathering of their reborn neighbours / It's they alone that stir not, whisper not, nor sigh, ...»
«Like a wavy cloud-shape, / Distant dust stirs there; / Mounted horseman, footman — / In the dust unclear. Someone I see that gallops, / Horsed, swift as the wind. / Friend, my friend far distant, / Call me back to mind.»
«(After a performance of 'Freischiitz') The silent theatre's dark. Agathe / Lies in her marksman's soft embrace. / The soul is swathed in melodies, / Luminous — and life a grace. All sleeps. And as the river gleams / The sky above the narrow street, / Far off, a wheel's sound dies away,...»