The Pilgrims of Hope (1885). William Morris
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Название: The Pilgrims of Hope (1885)
Автор: William Morris
Издательство: Ingram
Жанр: Языкознание
isbn: 9781473367029
isbn:
The painters have fashioned their tales of delight;
For what and for whom hath the world’s book been gilded,
When all is for these but the blackness of night?
How long and for what is their patience abiding?
How oft and how oft shall their story be told,
While the hope that none seeketh in darkness is hiding
And in grief and in sorrow the world groweth old?
Come back to the inn, love, and the lights and the fire,
And the fiddler’s old tune and the shuffling of feet;
For there in a while shall be rest and desire,
And there shall the morrow’s uprising be sweet.
Yet, love, as we wend the wind bloweth behind us
And beareth the last tale it telleth to-night,
How here in the spring-tide the message shall find us;
For the hope that none seeketh is coming to light.
Like the seed of midwinter, unheeded, unperished,
Like the autumn-sown wheat ‘neath the snow lying green,
Like the love that o’ertook us, unawares and uncherished,
Like the babe ‘neath thy girdle that groweth unseen,
So the hope of the people now buddeth and groweth -
Rest fadeth before it, and blindness and fear;
It biddeth us learn all the wisdom it knoweth;
It hath found us and held us, and biddeth us hear:
For it beareth the message: “Rise up on the morrow
And go on your ways toward the doubt and the strife;
Join hope to our hope and blend sorrow with sorrow,
And seek for men’s love in the short days of life.”
But lo, the old inn, and the lights and the fire,
And the fiddler’s old tune and the shuffling of feet;
Soon for us shall be quiet and rest and desire,
And to-morrow’s uprising to deeds shall be sweet.
THE BRIDGE AND THE STREET
In the midst of the bridge there we stopped and we wondered
In London at last, and the moon going down,
All sullied and red where the mast-wood was sundered
By the void of the night-mist, the breath of the town.
On each side lay the City, and Thames ran between it
Dark, struggling, unheard ‘neath the wheels and the feet.
A strange dream it was that we ever had seen it,
And strange was the hope we had wandered to meet.
Was all nought but confusion? What man and what master
Had each of these people that hastened along?
Like a flood flowed the faces, and faster and faster
Went the drift of the feet of the hurrying throng.
Till all these seemed but one thing, and we twain another,
A thing frail and feeble and young and unknown;
What sign mid all these to tell foeman from brother?
What sign of the hope in our hearts that had grown?
We went to our lodging afar from the river,
And slept and forgot—and remembered in dreams;
And friends that I knew not I strove to deliver
From a crowd that swept o’er us in measureless streams,
Wending whither I knew not: till meseemed I was waking
To the first night in London, and lay by my love,
And she worn and changed, and my very heart aching
With a terror of soul that forbade me to move.
Till I woke, in good sooth, and she lay there beside me,
Fresh, lovely in sleep; but awhile yet I lay,
For the fear of the dream-tide yet seemed to abide me
In the cold and sad time ere the dawn of the day.
Then I went to the window, and saw down below me
The market-wains wending adown the dim street,
And the scent of the hay and the herbs seemed to know me,
And seek out my heart the dawn’s sorrow to meet.
They passed, and day grew, and with pitiless faces
The dull houses stared on the prey they had trapped;
‘Twas as though they had slain all the fair morning places
Where in love and in leisure our joyance had happed.
My heart sank; I murmured, “What’s this we are doing
In this grim net of London, this prison built stark
With the greed of the ages, our young lives pursuing
A phantom that leads but to death in the dark?”
Day grew, and no longer was dusk with it striving,
And now here and there a few people went by.
As an image of what was once eager and living
Seemed the hope that had led us to live or to die.
Yet nought else seemed happy; the past and its pleasure
Was light, and unworthy, had been and was gone;
If hope had deceived us, if hid were its treasure,
Nought now would be left us of all life had СКАЧАТЬ