Меняя все вниманьем глаз прозрачных,

Зачем тревожишь ты поэта сон,

О коршун! крылья чьи - взмах истин мрачных!

Тебя любить? и мудрой счесть тебя?

Зачем же ты мертвишь его усилья,

Когда, алмазы неба возлюбя,

Он мчится ввысь, раскинув смело крылья!

Дианы коней кто остановил?

Кто из леса изгнал Гамадриаду,

Услав искать приюта меж светил?

Кто выхватил из лона вод Наяду?

Из веток Эльфа? Кто бред летних грез,

Меж тамарисов, от меня унес?

(1924)

Перевод В. Брюсова

8. AL AARAAF

PART I

O! nothing earthly save the ray

(Thrown back from flowers) of Beauty's eye,

As in those gardens where the day

Springs from the gems of Circassy

O! nothing earthly save the thrill

Of melody in woodland rill

Or (music of the passion-hearted)

Joy's voice so peacefully departed

That like the murmur in the shell,

Its echo dwelleth and will dwell

Oh, nothing of the dross of ours

Yet all the beauty - all the flowers

That list our Love, and deck our bowers

Adorn yon world afar, afar

The wandering star.

'Twas a sweet time for Nesace - for there

Her world lay lolling on the golden air,

Near four bright suns - a temporary rest

An oasis in desert of the blest.

Away - away - 'mid seas of rays that roll

Empyrean splendor o'er th' unchained soul

The soul that scarce (the billows are so dense)

Can struggle to its destin'd eminence

To distant spheres, from time to time, she rode,

And late to ours, the favour'd one of God

But, now, the ruler of an anchor'd realm,

She throws aside the sceptre - leaves the helm,

And, amid incense and high spiritual hymns,

Laves in quadruple light her angel limbs.

Now happiest, loveliest in you lovely Earth,

Whence sprang the "Idea of Beauty" into birth,

(Falling in wreaths thro' many a startled star,

Like woman's hair 'mid pearls, until, afar,

It lit on hills Achaian, and there dwelt)

She look'd into Infinity - and knelt.

Rich clouds, for canopies, about her curled

Fit emblems of the model of her world

Seen but in beauty - not impeding sight

Of other beauty glittering thro' the light

A wreath that twined each starry form around,

And all the opal'd air in color bound.

All hurriedly she knelt upon a bed

Of flowers: of lilies such as rear'd the head

On the fair Capo Deucato, and sprang

So eagerly around about to hang

Upon the flying footsteps of - deep pride

Of her who lov'd a mortal - and so died.

The Sephalica, budding with young bees,

Uprear'd its purple stem around her knees:

And gemmy flower, of Trebizond misnam'd

Inmate of highest stars, where erst it sham'd

All other loveliness: its honied dew

(The fabled nectar that the heathen knew)

Deliriously sweet, was dropp'd from Heaven,

And fell on gardens of the unforgiven

In Trebizond - and on a sunny flower

So like its own above that, to this hour,

It still remaineth, torturing the bee

With madness, and unwonted reverie:

In Heaven, and all its environs, the leaf

And blossom of the fairy plant, in grief

Disconsolate linger - grief that hangs her head,

Repenting follies that full long have fled,

Heaving her white breast to the balmy air,

Like guilty beauty, chasten'd, and more fair:

Nyctanthes too, as sacred as the light

She fears to perfume, perfuming the night:

And Clytia pondering between many a sun,

While pettish tears adown her petals run:

And that aspiring flower that sprang on Earth

And died, ere scarce exalted into birth,

Bursting its odorous heart in spirit to wing

Its way to Heaven, from garden of a king:

And Valisnerian lotus thither flown

From struggling with the waters of the Rhone: