Читать книгу Poems of the Past and the Present - Thomas Hardy, Eleanor Bron, Томас Харди (Гарди) - Страница 3
WAR POEMS
DEPARTURE
(Southampton Docks: October, 1899)
ОглавлениеWhile the far farewell music thins and fails,
And the broad bottoms rip the bearing brine —
All smalling slowly to the gray sea line —
And each significant red smoke-shaft pales,
Keen sense of severance everywhere prevails,
Which shapes the late long tramp of mounting men
To seeming words that ask and ask again:
“How long, O striving Teutons, Slavs, and Gaels
Must your wroth reasonings trade on lives like these,
That are as puppets in a playing hand? —
When shall the saner softer polities
Whereof we dream, have play in each proud land,
And patriotism, grown Godlike, scorn to stand
Bondslave to realms, but circle earth and seas?”