Читать книгу Poems of the Past and the Present - Thomas Hardy, Eleanor Bron, Томас Харди (Гарди) - Страница 14

When mid-autumn’s moan shook the night-time,

   And sedges were horny,

And summer’s green wonderwork faltered

   On leaze and in lane,

I fared Yell’ham-Firs way, where dimly

   Came wheeling around me

Those phantoms obscure and insistent

   That shadows unchain.

Till airs from the needle-thicks brought me

   A low lamentation,

As ’twere of a tree-god disheartened,

   Perplexed, or in pain.

And, heeding, it awed me to gather

   That Nature herself there

Was breathing in aërie accents,

   With dirgeful refrain,

Weary plaint that Mankind, in these late days,

   Had grieved her by holding

Her ancient high fame of perfection

   In doubt and disdain.

– “I had not proposed me a Creature

   (She soughed) so excelling

All else of my kingdom in compass

   And brightness of brain

“As to read my defects with a god-glance,

   Uncover each vestige

Of old inadvertence, annunciate

   Each flaw and each stain!

“My purpose went not to develop

   Such insight in Earthland;

Such potent appraisements affront me,

   And sadden my reign!

“Why loosened I olden control here

   To mechanize skywards,

Undeeming great scope could outshape in

   A globe of such grain?