Hesperia (extract)

OUT of the golden remote wild west where the sea without shore is,

Full of the sunset, and sad, if at all, with the fulness of joy,

As a wind sets in with the autumn that blows from the region of stories,

Blows with a perfume of songs and of memories belov’d from a boy,

Blows from the capes of the past oversea to the bays of the present,

Fill’d as with shadow of sound with the pulse of invisible feet,

Far out to the shallows and straits of the future, by rough ways or pleasant,

Is it thither the wind’s wings beat? is it hither to me, O my sweet?

For thee, in the stream of the deep tidewind blowing in with the water,

Thee I behold as a bird borne in with the wind from the west,

Straight from the sunset, across white waves whence rose as a daughter

Venus thy mother, in years when the world was a water at rest.

Out of the distance of dreams, as a dream that abides after slumber,

Stray’d from the fugitive flock of the night, when the moon overhead

Wanes in the wan waste heights of the heaven, and stars without number

Die without sound, and are spent like lamps that are burnt by the dead,

Comes back to me, stays by me, lulls me with touch of forgotten caresses,

One warm dream clad about with a fire as of life that endures;

The delight of thy face, and the sound of thy feet, and the wind of thy tresses,

And all of a man that regrets, and all of a maid that allures.

But thy bosom is warm for my face and profound as a manifold flower,

Thy silence as music, thy voice as an odor that fades in a flame;

Not a dream, not a dream is the kiss of thy mouth, and the bountiful hour

That makes me forget what was sin, and would make me forget were it shame.

Thine eyes that are quiet, thy hands that are tender, thy lips that are loving,

Comfort and cool me as dew in the dawn of a moon like a dream;

And my heart yearns baffled and blind, mov’d vainly toward thee, and moving

As the refluent seaweed moves in the languid exuberant stream,

Fair as a rose is on earth, as a rose under water in prison,

That stretches and swings to the slow passionate pulse of the sea,

Clos’d up from the air and the sun, but alive, as a ghost re-arisen,

Pale as the love that revives as a ghost re-arisen in me.

From the bountiful infinite west, from the happy memorial places

Full of the stately repose and the lordly delight of the dead,

Where the fortunate islands are lit with the light of ineffable faces,

And the sound of a sea without wind is about them, and sunset is red,

Come back to redeem and release me from love that recalls and represses,

That cleaves to my flesh as a flame, till the serpent has eaten his fill;

From the bitter delights of the dark, and the feverish, the furtive caresses

That murder the youth in a man or ever his heart have its will.

Тема 16. Английская поэзия конца XIX века: неоромантизм и эстетизм

Хорольский В.В. Творческая индивидуальность Р.Л. Стивенсона-поэта и проблема «неоромантизма» в его эстетике // Литературный процесс и творческая индивидуальность. Кишинев, 1990. С. 125–133.

Славороссова Е. Дар юности // Иностр. лит. М., 2001. №1. С. 225–227. [О поэзии Стивенсона]

Широков В. Добродетель и порок // Поэзия. М., 2000. №1. С. 122–127 [Предисловие к подборке русских переводов из поэзии О. Уайльда]

Дымшиц В. Редьярд Киплинг // Киплинг Р. Стихотворения. СПб., 1994. С. 5–23.

Витковский Е. Империя по имени Редьярд Киплинг // Киплинг Р. Стихотворения. Роман. Рассказ. М., 1998. С. 5–20.

Оруэлл Дж. Редьярд Киплинг // Оруэлл Дж. Лев и единорог. М., 2003. С. 179–197.

Хорольский В.В. Поэтика фабулы и сюжета в неоромантических стихотворениях Р. Киплинга // Сюжет и фабула в структуре жанра. Калининград, 1990. С. 69–75.

ROBERT LEWIS STEVENSON (1850–1894)