The steep be graded,
The mountain tunnelled,
The sand shaded,
The orchard planted,
The glebe tilled,
The prairie granted,
The steamer built.
Let man serve law for man;
Live for friendship, live for love,
For truth’s and harmony’s behoof;
The state may follow how it can,
As Olympus follows Jove.
Yet do not I implore
The wrinkled shopman to my sounding woods,
Nor bid the unwilling senator
Ask votes of thrushes in the solitudes.
Every one to his chosen work; —
Foolish hands may mix and mar;
Wise and sure the issues are.
Round they roll till dark is light,
Sex to sex, and even to odd; —
The over-god
Who marries Right to Might,
Who peoples, unpeoples, —
He who exterminates
Black by white faces, —
Knows to bring honey
Out of the lion;
Grafts gentlest scion
On pirate and Turk.
The Cossack eats Poland,
Like stolen fruit;
Her last noble is ruined,
Her last poet mute:
Straight, into double band
The victors divide;
Half for freedom strike and stand; —
The astonished Muse finds thousands at her side.
Astræa
Each the herald is who wrote
His rank, and quartered his own coat.
There is no king nor sovereign state
That can fix a hero’s rate;
+
Горазд крутить,
И человека съел.
Он годен лес валить,
Откосы крепить,
Туннели пробить,
Пески срыть;
Сад посадили,
Плуг пущен в ход,
Степь возродили,
Нов пароход.
Пусть службу нам закон несёт,
Даст дружбе и любви расцвет;
В гармонии и правде прок;
А следом пусть страна идёт,
Как Олимп шёл Зевсу вслед.
Не стану я молить,
Чтоб внял торгаш, сколь чащи хороши,
Надутого сенатора просить,
Чтоб голоса́ дроздов искал в глуши.
Каждый сам себе выбрал труд:
Руки глупые вредят,
Умным дорог результат.
Тьме дать свет им хватит сил,
К полу пол, чёт в нечет лёг;
Верховный бог,
Что Право с Мощью поженил,
Дал люду с нелюдом —
Гонит чёрного вон,
Кто белым рождён —
Урок набрать мёду
Из львиной туши>133;
Наследник в угоду
Вам, турок, пират!
Каза́ки жрут Польшу>134,
Как краденый плод,
Нет славы там больше,
Поэт не поёт;
Раскол победных сил
Не мог быть полней:
Мир воли половине мил —
И музу то дивит, что тысячи с ней.
Астре́я>135
Всяк глашатай, кто решит
Взять званье и раскрасить щит.
Нет трона, власти никакой,
Чтоб решала, кто герой;
+
Each to all is venerable,
Cap-a-pie invulnerable,
Until he write, where all eyes rest,
Slave or master on his breast.
I saw men go up and down,
In the country and the town,
With this tablet on their neck,
‘Judgment and a judge we seek.’
Not to monarchs they repair,
Nor to learned jurist’s chair;
But they hurry to their peers,
To their kinsfolk and their dears;
Louder than with speech they pray, —
‘What am I? companion, say.’
And the friend not hesitates
To assign just place and mates;
Answers not in word or letter,
Yet is understood the better;
Each to each a looking-glass,
Reflects his figure that doth pass.
Every wayfarer he meets
What himself declared repeats,
What himself confessed records,
Sentences him in his words;
The form is his own corporal form,
And his thought the penal worm.
Yet shine forever virgin minds,
Loved by stars and purest winds,
Which, o’er passion throned sedate,
Have not hazarded their state;
Disconcert the searching spy,
Rendering to a curious eye
The durance of a granite ledge.
To those who gaze from the sea’s edge
It is there for benefit;
It is there for purging light;
There for purifying storms;
And its depths reflect all forms;
It cannot parley with the mean, —
Pure by impure is not seen.
For there ’s no sequestered grot,
Lone mountain tarn, or isle forgot,
But Justice, journeying in the sphere,
Daily stoops to harbor there.
Étienne de la Boéce
I serve you not, if you I follow,
Shadowlike, o’er hill and hollow;