|
Ãëàâíàÿ • Áèîãðàôèè • Ñòèõè ïî òåìàì • Ñëó÷àéíîå ñòèõîòâîðåíèå • Ïåðåâîä÷èêè • Ññûëêè • Àíòîëîãèè Ðåéòèíã ïîýòîâ • Ðåéòèíã ñòèõîòâîðåíèé |
|
Thomas Hardy (Òîìàñ Ãàðäè (Õàðäè)) A Philosophical Fantasy ‘Milton . . . made God argue.’ WALTER BAGEHOT ‘Well, if you wilt, then, ask me; To answer will not task me: I’ve a response, I doubt not, And quite agree to flout not Thy question, if of reason, Albeit not quite in season: A universe to marshal, What god can give but partial Eye to frail Earth – life-shotten Ere long, extinct, forgotten! – But seeing indications That thou read’st my limitations, And since my lack of forethought Aggrieves thy more and more thought, I’ll hearken to thy pleading: Some lore may lie in heeding Thy irregular proceeding.’ ‘ ’Tis this unfulfilled intention, O Causer, I would mention: – Will you, in condescension This evening, ere we’ve parted, Say why you felt fainthearted, And let your aim be thwarted, Its glory be diminished, Its concept stand unfinished? – Such I ask you, Sir or Madam, (I know no more than Adam, Even vaguely, what your sex is, – Though feminine I had thought you Till seers as “Sire” besought you; – And this my ignorance vexes Some people not a little, And, though not me one tittle, It makes me sometimes choose me Call you “It”, if you’ll excuse me?)’ ‘Call me “It” with a good conscience, And be sure it is all nonsense That I mind a fault of manner In a pigmy towards his planner! Be I, be not I, sexless, I am in nature vexless. – How vain must clay-carved man be To deem such folly can be As that freaks of my own framing Can set my visage flaming – Start me volleying interjections Against my own confections, As the Jews and others limned me, And in fear and trembling hymned me! Call me “but dream-projected”, I shall not be affected; Call me “blind force persisting”, I shall remain unlisting; (A few have done it lately, And, maybe, err not greatly). – Another such a vanity In witless weak humanity Is thinking that of those all Through space at my disposal, Man’s shape must needs resemble Mine, that makes zodiacs tremble! ‘Continuing where we started: – As for my aims being thwarted, Wherefore I feel fainthearted, Aimless am I, revealing No heart-scope for faint feeling. – But thy mistake I’ll pardon, And, as Adam’s mentioned to me, (Though in timeless truth there never Was a man like him whatever), I’ll meet thee in thy garden, As I did not him, beshrew me! In the sun of so-called daytime – Say, just about the Maytime Of my next, or next, Creation? (I love procrastination, To use the words in thy sense, Which have no hold on my sense) Or at any future stray-time. – One of thy representatives In some later incarnation I mean, of course, well knowing Thy present conformation But a unit of my tentatives, Whereof such heaps lie blowing As dust, where thou art going; Yea, passed to where suns glow not, Begrieved of those that go not, (Though what grief is, I know not). ‘Perhaps I may inform thee, In case I should alarm thee, That no dramatic stories Like ancient ones whose core is A mass of superstition And monkish imposition Will mark my explanation Of the world’s sore situation (As thou tell’st), with woes that shatter; Though from former aions to latter To me ’tis malleable matter For treatment scientific More than sensitive and specific – Stuff without moral features, Which I’ve no sense of ever, Or of ethical endeavour, Or of justice to Earth’s creatures, Or how Right from Wrong to sever: ‘Let these be as men learn such; For me, I don’t discern such, And – real enough I daresay – I know them but by hearsay As something Time hath rendered Out of substance I engendered, Time, too, being a condition Beyond my recognition. – I would add that, while unknowing Of this justice earthward owing, Nor explanation offering Of what is meant by suffering, Thereof I’m not a spurner, Or averse to be a learner. ‘To return from wordy wandering To the question we are pondering; Though, viewing the world in my mode, I fail to see it in thy mode As “unfulfilled intention”, Which is past my comprehension Being unconscious in my doings So largely, (whence thy rueings); – Aye, to human tribes nor kindlessness Nor love I’ve given, but mindlessness, Which state, though far from ending, May nevertheless be mending. ‘However, I’ll advise him – Him thy scion, who will walk here When Death hath dumbed thy talk here – In phrase that may surprise him, What thing it was befel me, (A thing that my confessing Lack of forethought helps thy guessing), And acted to compel me By that purposeless propension Which is mine, and not intention, Along lines of least resistance, Or, in brief, unsensed persistence, That saddens thy existence To think my so-called scheming Not that of my first dreaming.’ Thomas Hardy's other poems:
Ðàñïå÷àòàòü (Print) Êîëè÷åñòâî îáðàùåíèé ê ñòèõîòâîðåíèþ: 1374 |
||
Àíãëèéñêàÿ ïîýçèÿ. Àäðåñ äëÿ ñâÿçè eng-poetry.ru@yandex.ru |