Читать книгу Poems - Victor Hugo, Clara Inés Bravo Villarreal - Страница 15

     Ho, warriors! I was reared in the land of the Gauls;

     O'er the Rhine my ancestors came bounding like balls

     Of the snow at the Pole, where, a babe, I was bathed

     Ere in bear and in walrus-skin I was enswathed.

     Then my father was strong, whom the years lowly bow, —

     A bison could wallow in the grooves of his brow.

     He is weak, very old – he can scarcely uptear

     A young pine-tree for staff since his legs cease to bear;

     But here's to replace him! – I can toy with his axe;

     As I sit on the hill my feet swing in the flax,

     And my knee caps the boulders and troubles the trees.

     How they shiver, yea, quake if I happen to sneeze!

     I was still but a springald when, cleaving the Alps,

     I brushed snowy periwigs off granitic scalps,

     And my head, o'er the pinnacles, stopped the fleet clouds,

     Where I captured the eagles and caged them by crowds.

     There were tempests! I blew them back into their source!

     And put out their lightnings! More than once in a course,

     Through the ocean I went wading after the whale,

     And stirred up the bottom as did never a gale.

     Fond of rambling, I hunted the shark 'long the beach,

     And no osprey in ether soared out of my reach;

     And the bear that I pinched 'twixt my finger and thumb,

     Like the lynx and the wolf, perished harmless and dumb.

     But these pleasures of childhood have lost all their zest;

     It is warfare and carnage that now I love best:

     The sounds that I wish to awaken and hear

     Are the cheers raised by courage, the shrieks due to fear;

     When the riot of flames, ruin, smoke, steel and blood,

     Announces an army rolls along as a flood,

     Which I follow, to harry the clamorous ranks,

     Sharp-goading the laggards and pressing the flanks,

     Till, a thresher 'mid ripest of corn, up I stand

     With an oak for a flail in my unflagging hand.

     Rise the groans! rise the screams! on my feet fall vain tears

     As the roar of my laughter redoubles their fears.

     I am naked. At armor of steel I should joke —

     True, I'm helmed – a brass pot you could draw with ten yoke.

     I look for no ladder to invade the king's hall —

     I stride o'er the ramparts, and down the walls fall,

     Till choked are the ditches with the stones, dead and quick,

     Whilst the flagstaff I use 'midst my teeth as a pick.

     Oh, when cometh my turn to succumb like my prey,

     May brave men my body snatch away from th' array

     Of the crows – may they heap on the rocks till they loom

     Like a mountain, befitting a colossus' tomb!