My doughty giants all are slain or fled,
And all my knights, blue, green, and yellow, dead!
No more the midnight fairy tribe I view,
All in the merry moonshine tippling dew;
E'en the last lingering fiction of the brain,
The church-yard ghost, is now at rest again;
And all these wayward wanderings of my youth
Fly Reason's power and shun the light of truth.
With fiction then does real joy reside,
And is our reason the delusive guide?
Is it then right to dream the syrens sing?
Or mount enraptured on the dragon's wing?
No, 'tis the infant mind, to care unknown,
That makes the imagined paradise its own;
Soon as reflections in the bosom rise,
Light slumbers vanish from the clouded eyes:
The tear and smile, that once together rose,
Are then divorced; the head and heart are foes.
Enchantment bows to Wisdom's serious plan,
And Pain and Prudence make and mar the man.
While thus, of power and fancied empire vain,
With various thoughts my mind I entertain;
While books my slaves, with tyrant hand I seize,
Pleased with the pride that will not let them please;
Sudden I find terrific thoughts arise,
And sympathetic sorrow fills my eyes;
For, lo! while yet my heart admits the wound,
I see the Critic army ranged around.
Foes to our race! if ever ye have known
A father's fears for offspring of your own;—
If ever, smiling o'er a lucky line,
Ye thought the sudden sentiment divine,
Then paused and doubted, and then, tired of doubt,
With rage as sudden dashed the stanza out;—
If, after fearing much and pausing long,
Ye ventured on the world your laboured song,
And from the crusty critics of those days
Implored the feeble tribute of their praise;
Remember now the fears that moved you then,
And, spite of truth, let mercy guide your pen.
What venturous race are ours! what mighty foes
Lie waiting all around them to oppose!
What treacherous friends betray them to the fight!
What dangers threaten them!—yet still they write:
A hapless tribe! to every evil born,
Whom villains hate, and fools affect to scorn:
Strangers they come, amid a world of woe,
And taste the largest portion ere they go.
Pensive I spoke, and cast mine eyes around;
The roof, methought, returned a solemn sound;
Each column seemed to shake, and clouds like smoke,
From dusty piles and ancient volumes broke;
Gathering above, like mists condensed they seem,
Exhaled in summer from the rushy stream;
Like flowing robes they now appear, and twine
Round the large members of a form divine;
His silver beard, that swept his aged breast,
His piercing eye, that inward light expressed,
Were seen,—but clouds and darkness veiled the rest.
Fear chilled my heart: to one of mortal race,
How awful seemed the Genius of the place!
So in Cimmerian shores, Ulysses saw
His parent-shade, and shrunk in pious awe;
Like him I stood, and wrapt in thought profound,
When from the pitying power broke forth a solemn sound:—
'Care lives with all; no rules, no precepts save
The wise from woe, no fortitude the brave;
Grief is to man as certain as the grave:
Tempests and storms in life's whole progress rise,
And hope shines dimly through o'erclouded skies;
Some drops of comfort on the favoured fall,
But showers of sorrow are the lot of all:
Partial to talents, then, shall Heaven withdraw
The afflicting rod, or break the general law?
Shall he who soars, inspired by loftier views,
Life's little cares and little pains refuse?
Shall he not rather feel a double share
Of mortal woe, when doubly armed to bear?
'Hard is his fate who builds his peace of mind
On the precarious mercy of mankind;
Who hopes for wild and visionary things,
And mounts o'er unknown seas with venturous wings:
But as, of various evils that befall
The human race, some portion goes to all;
To him perhaps the milder lot's assigned,
Who feels his consolation in his mind;
And, locked within his bosom, bears about
A mental charm for every care without.
E'en in the pangs of each domestic grief,
Or health or vigorous hope affords relief;
And every wound the tortured bosom feels,
Or virtue bears, or some preserver heals;
Some generous friend, of ample power possessed;
Some feeling heart, that bleeds for the distressed;
Some breast that glows with virtues all divine;
Some noble RUTLAND, Misery's friend and thine.
'Nor say, the Muse's song, the Poet's pen,
Merit the scorn they meet from little men.
With cautious freedom if the numbers flow,
Not wildly high, nor pitifully low;
If vice alone their honest aims oppose,
Why so ashamed their friends, so loud their foes?
Happy for men in every age and clime,
If all the sons of vision dealt in rhyme.
Go on then, Son of Vision! still pursue
Thy airy dreams; the world is dreaming too.
Ambition's lofty views, the pomp of state,
The pride of wealth, the splendour of the great,
Stripped of their mask, their cares and troubles known,
Are visions far less happy than thy own:
Go on! and, while the sons of care complain,
Be wisely gay and innocently vain;
While serious souls are by their fears undone,
Blow sportive bladders in the beamy sun,
And call them worlds! and bid the greatest show
More radiant colours in their worlds below:
Then, as they break, the slaves of care reprove,
And tell them, Such are all the toys they love.'
G. Crabbe.
БИБЛИОТЕКА
Here, e'en the sturdy democrat may find,
Nor scorn their rank, the nobles of the mind;
While kings may learn, nor blush at being shown
How Learning's patents abrogate their own.
A goodly company and fair to see;
Royal plebeians; earls of low degree;
Beggars whose wealth enriches every clime;
Princes who scarce can boast a mental dime;
Crowd here together like the quaint array
Of jostling neighbours on a market day.
Homer and Milton,—can we call them blind?—
Of godlike sight, the vision of the mind;
Shakespeare, who calmly looked creation through,
'Exhausted worlds, and then imagined new';
Plato the sage, so thoughtful and serene,
He seems a prophet by his heavenly mien;
Shrewd Socrates, whose philosophic power
Xantippe proved in many a trying hour;
And Aristophanes, whose humour run
In vain endeavour to be-'cloud' the sun;
Majestic Aeschylus, whose glowing page
Holds half the grandeur of the Athenian stage;
Pindar, whose odes, replete with heavenly fire,
Proclaim the master of the Grecian lyre;
Anacreon, famed for many a luscious line,
Devote to Venus and the god of wine.
I love vast libraries; yet there is a doubt
If one be better with them or without—
Unless he use them wisely, and, indeed,
Knows the high art of what and how to read.
At Learning's fountain it is sweet to drink,
But 'tis a nobler privilege to think;
And oft, from books apart, the thirsting mind
May make the nectar which it cannot find.
'Tis well to borrow from the good and great;
'Tis wise to learn; 'tis godlike to create!
J. G. Saxe.
О БИБЛИОТЕКАХ: БОДЛИАНСКАЯ
Чем обязаны Оксфорд, да и этот остров, достойнейшему Бодли, чья библиотека, возможно, содержит больше превосходных книг, чем древние могли найти всеми своими любопытными поисками?.. К такому достойному делу должны стремиться и вносить свой вклад все любители знаний; и кто не знает, какие великие последствия могут последовать от малых начинаний? Если, возможно, мы рассмотрим истоки величайших библиотек Европы (как Демокрит говорил о мире, что он был создан из атомов), мы обнаружим, что они были лишь малыми; ибо как бы велики они ни были в своем нынешнем совершенстве, эти Карфагены когда-то были хижинами. Библиотеки подобны лесам, в которых можно найти не только высокие кедры и дубы, но и кустарники, и карликовые деревья; и как в аптекарских лавках разрешено быть всякого рода лекарствам, так и всякого рода книги могут быть в библиотеке. И как они из гадюк, скорпионов и ядовитых растений часто извлекают полезные лекарства для жизни человечества, так и из любой книги можно извлечь добрые наставления и примеры. — Уильям Драммонд. «О библиотеках».
НА СМЕРТЬ СЭРА ТОМАСА БОДЛИ
One Homer was enough to blazon forth
In a full lofty style Ulysses' praise,
Caesar had Lucan to enrol his worth
Unto the memory of endless days.
Of thy deeds, Bodley, from thine own pure spring
A thousand Homers and sweet Lucans sing.
One volume was a monument to bound
The large extent of their deserving pains,
In learning's commonwealth was never found
So large a decade to express thy strains,
Which who desires to character aright,
Must read more books than they had lines to write.
Yet give this little river leave to run,
Into the boundless ocean of thy fame;
Had they first ended I had not begun,
Sith each is a Protogenes to frame
So curiously the picture of thy worth
That when all's done, art wants to set it forth.
Peter Prideaux (Exeter College, 1613).
БЫТЬ ПРИКОВАННЫМ К ХОРОШИМ АВТОРАМ
Король Яков в 1605 году, когда он приехал осмотреть наш Оксфордский университет и среди прочих зданий отправился посмотреть ту знаменитую библиотеку, обновленную сэром Томасом Бодли в подражание Александру при его отъезде, разразился такой благородной речью: «Если бы я не был королем, я был бы университетским человеком: и если бы случилось так, что я должен быть узником, если бы я мог загадать желание, я бы пожелал не иметь иной тюрьмы, кроме этой библиотеки, и быть прикованным вместе со столькими хорошими авторами, et mortuis magistris». Столь сладостно наслаждение учением, что чем больше они знают (как тот, кто болен водянкой: чем больше пьет, тем сильнее жажда), тем больше они жаждут учиться, и последний день — prioris discipulus; учение поначалу сурово, radices amarae, но fructus dulces, согласно словам Исократа, приятно в конце; чем дольше они живут, тем больше они влюбляются в Муз. Хейнзий, хранитель библиотеки в Лейдене, в Голландии, был заперт в ней круглый год; и то, что, по твоему разумению, должно было породить отвращение, вызвало в нем еще большую любовь. «Я не успеваю (говорит он) войти в библиотеку, как запираю за собой дверь, исключая похоть, честолюбие, алчность и все подобные пороки, чья кормилица — Праздность, мать Невежества, и сама Меланхолия, и на самом лоне вечности, среди стольких божественных душ, я занимаю свое место с таким возвышенным духом и сладостным довольством, что жалею всех наших вельмож и богачей, которые не знают этого счастья».
Я не пребываю в неведении тем временем (несмотря на то, что я сказал), насколько варварски и низко, по большей части, наше грубое дворянство ценит библиотеки и книги, как они пренебрегают и презирают столь великое сокровище, столь неоценимое благо, как петух Эзопа — драгоценный камень, который он нашел в навозной куче; и все это из-за заблуждений, невежества и отсутствия образования. — Р. Бертон. «Анатомия меланхолии».
ОДА, АДРЕСОВАННАЯ МИСТЕРУ ДЖОНУ РАУСУ
БИБЛИОТЕКАРЮ ОКСФОРДСКОГО УНИВЕРСИТЕТА
Об утраченном томе моих стихов, который он просил меня заменить, чтобы он мог добавить их к другим моим работам, хранящимся в библиотеке.
Strophe.
My two-fold book! single in show,
But double in contents,
Neat, but not curiously adorned,
Which, in his early youth,
A poet gave, no lofty one in truth,
Although an earnest wooer of the Muse—
Say while in cool Ausonian shades
Or British wilds he roamed,
Striking by turns his native lyre,
By turns the Daunian lute,
And stepped almost in air,—
Antistrophe.
Say, little book, what furtive hand
Thee from thy fellow-books conveyed,
What time, at the repeated suit
Of my most learnèd friend,
I sent thee forth, an honoured traveller,
From our great city to the source of Thames,
Caerulian sire!
Where rise the fountains, and the raptures ring,
Of the Aonian choir,
Durable as yonder spheres,
And through the endless lapse of years
Secure to be admired?
Strophe II.
Now what God, or Demigod
For Britain's ancient Genius moved,
(If our afflicted land
Have expiated at length the guilty sloth
Of her degenerate sons)
Shall terminate our impious feuds,
And discipline, with hallowed voice, recall?
Recall the Muses too,
Driven from their ancient seats
In Albion, and well nigh from Albion's shore,
And with keen Phoebean shafts,
Piercing the unseemly birds,
Whose talons menace us,
Shall drive the Harpy race from Helicon afar?
Antistrophe.
But thou, my book, though thou hast strayed,
Whether by treachery lost
Or indolent neglect, thy bearer's fault,
From all thy kindred books,
To some dark cell or cave forlorn,
Where thou endurest, perhaps
The chafing of some hard untutored hand,
Be comforted—
For lo! again the splendid hope appears
That thou mayest yet escape,
The gulfs of Lethe, and on oary wings
Mount to the everlasting courts of Jove!
Strophe III.
Since Rouse desires thee, and complains
That, though by promise his,
Thou yet appear'st not in thy place
Among the literary noble stores,
Given to his care,
But, absent, leavest his numbers incomplete:
He, therefore, guardian vigilant
Of that unperishing wealth,
Calls thee to the interior shrine, his charge,
Where he intends a richer treasure far
Than Iön kept (Iön, Erectheus' son
Illustrious, of the fair Creüsa born)
In the resplendent temple of his God,
Tripods of gold, and Delphic gifts divine.
Antistrophe.
Haste, then, to the pleasant groves,
The Muses' favourite haunt;
Resume thy station in Apollo's dome,
Dearer to him
Than Delos, or the forked Parnassian hill!
Exulting go,
Since now a splendid lot is also thine,
And thou art sought by my propitious friend;
For there thou shalt be read
With authors of exalted note,
The ancient glorious lights of Greece and Rome.
Epode.
Ye, then, my works, no longer vain,
And worthless deemed by me!
Whate'er this sterile genius has produced
Expect, at last, the rage of envy spent,
An unmolested happy home,
Gift of kind Hermes, and my watchful friend,
Where never flippant tongue profane
Shall entrance find,
And whence the coarse unlettered multitude
Shall babble far remote.
Perhaps some future distant age,
Less tinged with prejudice, and better taught,
Shall furnish minds of power
To judge more equally.
Then, malice silenced in the tomb,
Cooler heads and sounder hearts,
Thanks to Rouse, if aught of praise
I merit, shall with candour weigh the claim.
W. Cowper. Translated from Milton.
ПИНДАРИЧЕСКАЯ ОДА
Hail! Learning's Pantheon! Hail, the sacred Ark,
Where all the world of science does embark!
Which ever shall withstand, and hast so long withstood,
Insatiate time's devouring flood!
Hail, Tree of Knowledge! thy leaves fruit! which well
Dost in the midst of Paradise arise,
Oxford, the Muses' Paradise!
From which may never Sword the blest expel.
Hail, Bank of all past ages, where they lie
To enrich with interest posterity!
Hail, Wit's illustrious Galaxy,
Where thousand lights into one brightness spread,
Hail, living University of the Dead!
Unconfused Babel of all Tongues, which e'er
The mighty linguist, Fame, or Time, the mighty traveller,
That could speak or this could hear!
Majestic Monument and Pyramid,
Where still the shapes of parted souls abide
Embalmed in verse! exalted souls, which now,
Enjoy those Arts they wooed so well below!
Which now all wonders printed plainly see
That have been, are, or are to be,
In the mysterious Library,
The Beatific Bodley of the Dead!
Will ye into your sacred throng admit
The meanest British wit?
Ye General Council of the Priests of Fame,
Will ye not murmur and disdain
That I a place amongst ye claim
The humblest Deacon of her train?
Will ye allow me the honourable chain?
The chain of ornament, which here
Your noble prisoners proudly wear?
A chain which will more pleasant seem to me
Than all my own Pindaric liberty.
Will ye to bind me with these mighty names submit
Like an Apocrypha with Holy Writ?
Whatever happy Book is chainèd here,
No other place or people needs to fear;
His chain's a passport to go everywhere.
As when a seat in Heaven
Is to an unmalicious sinner given,
Who casting round his wondering Eye
Does none but Patriarchs and Apostles there espy,
Martyrs who did their lives bestow
And Saints who Martyrs lived below,
With trembling and amazement he begins
To recollect his frailties past and sins,
He doubts almost his station there,
His soul says to itself, 'How came I here?'
It fares no otherwise with me
When I myself with conscious wonder see
Amidst this purified elected company;
With hardship they and pain
Did to their happiness attain.
No labours I or merits can pretend;
I think, Predestination only was my friend.
Ah! if my author had been tied like me,
To such a place and such a company,
Instead of several countries, several men,
And business, which the Muses hate!
He might have then improved that small estate
Which Nature sparingly did to him give,
He might perhaps have thriven then,
And settled upon me, his child, somewhat to live;
It had happier been for him, as well as me.
For when all, alas, is done,
We Books, I mean you Books, will prove to be
The best and noblest conversation.
For though some errors will get in,
Like tinctures of original sin,
Yet sure we from our Father's wit
Draw all the strength and spirits of it,
Leaving the grosser parts for conversation,
As the best blood of man's employed on generation.
A. Cowley.
О БИБЛИОТЕКЕ СЭРА ТОМАСА БОДЛИ, АВТОР В ТО ВРЕМЯ НАХОДИЛСЯ В ОКСФОРДЕ
Boast not, proud Golgotha, that thou canst show
The ruins of mankind and let us know
How frail a thing is flesh! though we see there
But empty skulls, the Rabbins still live here.
They are not dead, but full of blood again,
I mean the sense, and every line a vein.
Triumph not o'er their dust; whoever looks
In here, shall find their brains all in their books.
Nor is't old Palestine alone survives,
Athens lives here, more than in Plutarch's Lives.
The stones which sometimes danced unto the strain
Of Orpheus, here do lodge his muse again.
And you the Roman spirits, Learning has
Made your lives longer than your empire was.
Caesar had perished from the world of men,
Had not his sword been rescued by his pen.
Rare Seneca! how lasting is thy breath!
Though Nero did, thou could'st not bleed to death.
How dull the expert tyrant was, to look
For that in thee, which livèd in thy book!
Afflictions turn our blood to ink, and we
Commence, when writing, our eternity.
Lucilius here I can behold, and see
His counsels and his life proceed from thee.
But what care I to whom thy Letters be?
I change the name, and thou dost write to me;
And in this age, as sad almost as thine,
Thy stately Consolations are mine.
Poor earth! what though thy viler dust enrolls
The frail enclosures of these mighty souls?
Their graves are all upon record; not one
But is as bright and open as the sun,