Волшебница Шалотт и другие стихотворения

Many a morning on the moorland did we hear the copses ring,

And her whisper throng’d my pulses with the fullness of the Spring.

Many an evening by the waters did we watch the stately ships,

And our spirits rush’d together at the touching of the lips.

О my cousin, shallow-hearted! О my Amy, mine no more!

О the dreary, dreary moorland! О the barren, barren shore!

Falser than all fancy fathoms, falser than all songs have sung,

Puppet to a father’s threat, and servile to a shrewish tongue!

Is it well to wish thee happy? — having known me — to decline

On a range of lower feelings and a narrower heart than mine!

Yet it shall be: thou shalt lower to his level day by day,

What is fine within thee growing coarse to sympathise with clay.

As the husband is, the wife is: thou art mated with a clown,

And the grossness of his nature will have weight to drag thee down.

He will hold thee, when his passion shall have spent its novel force,

Something better than his dog, a little dearer than his horse.

What is this? his eyes are heavy: think not they are glazed with wine.

Go to him: it is thy duty: kiss him: take his hand in thine.

It may be my lord is weary, that his brain is overwrought:

Soothe him with thy finer fancies, touch him with thy lighter thought.

He will answer to the purpose, easy things to understand —

Better thou wert dead before me, tho’ I slew thee with my hand!

Better thou and I were lying, hidden from the heart’s disgrace,

Roll’d in one another’s arms, and silent in a last embrace.

Cursed be the social wants that sin against the strength of youth!

Cursed be the social lies that warp us from the living truth!

Cursed be the sickly forms that err from honest Nature’s rule!

Cursed be the gold that gilds the straiten’d forehead of the fool!

Well — ‘tis well that I should bluster! — Hadst thou less unworthy proved —

Would to God — for I had loved thee more than ever wife was loved.

Am I mad, that I should cherish that which bears but bitter fruit?

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