The Complete Poetical Works. Томас Харди
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Название: The Complete Poetical Works

Автор: Томас Харди

Издательство: Bookwire

Жанр: Языкознание

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isbn: 9788027241361

isbn:

СКАЧАТЬ thick thoughts and memories multitudinous

       One thought alone brings he.

      I can recall no word

       Of anything he did;

       For me he is a man who died and was interred

       To leave a pyramid

      Whose purpose was exprest

       Not with its first design,

       Nor till, far down in Time, beside it found their rest

       Two countrymen of mine.

      Cestius in life, maybe,

       Slew, breathed out threatening;

       I know not. This I know: in death all silently

       He does a kindlier thing,

      In beckoning pilgrim feet

       With marble finger high

       To where, by shadowy wall and history-haunted street,

       Those matchless singers lie . . .

      —Say, then, he lived and died

       That stones which bear his name

       Should mark, through Time, where two immortal Shades abide;

       It is an ample fame.

      Lausanne

       In Gibbon’s Old Garden: 11–12 P.M.

       Table of Contents

      June27, 1897

      (The 110th anniversary of the completion of the “Decline and Fall” at the same hour and place)

      A spirit seems to pass,

       Formal in pose, but grave and grand withal:

       He contemplates a volume stout and tall,

       And far lamps fleck him through the thin acacias.

      Anon the book is closed,

       With “It is finished!” And at the alley’s end

       He turns, and soon on me his glances bend;

       And, as from earth, comes speech—small, muted, yet composed.

      “How fares the Truth now?—Ill?

       —Do pens but slily further her advance?

       May one not speed her but in phrase askance?

       Do scribes aver the Comic to be Reverend still?

      “Still rule those minds on earth

       At whom sage Milton’s wormwood words were hurled:

       ‘Truth like a bastard comes into the world Never without ill-fame to him who gives her birth’?”

      Zermatt

       To the Matterhorn

       Table of Contents

      (June-July, 1897)

      Thirty-two years since, up against the sun,

       Seven shapes, thin atomies to lower sight,

       Labouringly leapt and gained thy gabled height,

       And four lives paid for what the seven had won.

      They were the first by whom the deed was done,

       And when I look at thee, my mind takes flight

       To that day’s tragic feat of manly might,

       As though, till then, of history thou hadst none.

      Yet ages ere men topped thee, late and soon

       Thou watch’dst each night the planets lift and lower;

       Thou gleam’dst to Joshua’s pausing sun and moon,

       And brav’dst the tokening sky when Cæsar’s power

       Approached its bloody end: yea, saw’st that Noon

       When darkness filled the earth till the ninth hour.

       Table of Contents

      (Spring, 1887)

      I

      When of tender mind and body

       I was moved by minstrelsy,

       And that strain “The Bridge of Lodi”

       Brought a strange delight to me.

      II

      In the battle-breathing jingle

       Of its forward-footing tune

       I could see the armies mingle,

       And the columns cleft and hewn

      III

      On that far-famed spot by Lodi

       Where Napoleon clove his way

       To his fame, when like a god he

       Bent the nations to his sway.

      IV

      Hence the tune came capering to me

       While I traced the Rhone and Po;

       Nor could Milan’s Marvel woo me

       From the spot englamoured so.

      V

      And to-day, sunlit and smiling,

       Here I stand upon the scene,

       With its saffron walls, dun tiling,

       СКАЧАТЬ