1.
To live on an exposed peak,
To write uncomplicated sonnets....
Being sustained by the peasants
With bread, wine, and cutlets.
2.
To burn my ships, those behind and ahead,
To lie down, looking at nothing, in bed.
Drift into dreamless sleep and, for ken's sake,
Some one hundred years or so hence, awake.
1
Жить на вершине голой,
Писать простые сонеты...
И брать от людей из дола
Хлеб, вино и котлеты.
2
Сжечь корабли и впереди, и сзади,
Лечь на кровать, не глядя ни на что,
Уснуть без снов и, любопытства ради,
Проснуться лет чрез сто.
«Quoth nature unto me in tones of stately scorning: / "Begone, and break not in upon my harmony! / I weary of thy tears; mar not with anguished mourning / The calm wherewith my azure nights encompass me. "All have I given thee, — life, youth and freedom given, / But thou in senseless feud...»
«The eventide fondled the earth in farewell, / And in its suspense not a leaf dared to sway; / The creak of a cart far away rose and fell, / Stars marshalled aquiver in silent array. Clear-blue is the sky, — deep and strange is its guise; / But look not upon it with glances that crave, / ...»
«Not bloodshed, nor ills we engender, / Could yet fling a mantle of gloom / On the heavenly palace of splendour, / Or on earth with the lure of its bloom. As of old, we are tenderly ravished / By valleys and blossoms and rills; / Unchanging, the starlight is lavished, / And the tune that...»
«Far above the stretch of hills / The east has flung its lustre round; / Moistened breath of night-time fills / Clods of plough-uprooted ground. See, how with his measured pace / O'er the fields the sower goes; / Calm, as in God's holy place / On earth and in the heaven flows. A sacred ...»