The bronze Horseman / Медный всадник. Книга для чтения на английском языке

For wisdom of the loftiest
And weirdest kind are given. Awesome
Their powers are: what was and also
What will be they have knowledge of,
Life can they snuff and foster love.

“And I, love’s mad and avid seeker,
In my despair that ne’er grew weaker,
By means of magic thought to start
In proud Nahina’s icy heart
Of love for me at least a flicker.
Toward the murk of woodland free
My steps in hot impatience turning,
The subtle craft of wizardry
I spent unnumbered years in learning.
Then were the fearsome secrets, sought
By me with such despair, such yearning,
Revealed to my enlightened thought;
Of charms and spells I knew the power:
Love’s aim achieved – О happy hour!
‘Nahina, thou art mine!’ I cried.
‘Now shall I have thee for my bride.’
But once again by fate defeated
Was I and of my triumph cheated.

“Enraptured, with young dreams aglow,
Filled with love’s fervour and elation,
I loudly chant an incantation
And on dark spirits call, and lo! —
A flash of light, a crash of thunder,
And magic whirlwinds start awake,
I feel the earth begin to quake,
I hear it hum and rumble under
My feet, and there in front of me,
The picture of senility,
A crone stands. She is bent and shrunken,
Her hair is white, her eye is sunken
And glazed with age, her head is shaking…
And yet, and yet – had I mistaken
Her for another? – Nay, O knight;
Nahina ’twas!… In doubt, in fright
The horrid vision now I measured
With unbelieving gaze, my sight
Mistrusting… ’Thou! Art thou my treasured
Nahina? Speak!’ from me the cry
Burst forth. ‘Where is thy beauty? Why
Have the gods changed thee so? Have I
Long, then, from life and love been parted?’
‘For forty years!’ I heard her say.
‘Indeed, I’m seventy to-day!…
But never mind! So are lives charted
And so they pass. Thy spring has flown
And mine has too. We are, I own,
Old, both, but be thou not disheartened
By fickle youth’s swift passage. True,
I’m grey, a trifle crooked too,
Less lively and perhaps less charming
Than once I was…’ This in disarming
Tones she declared, her voice a squeak.
‘Come, do not look, I beg, so tragic…
I am – in confidence I speak —
Like thee become well versed in magic.’

“A sorceress! What had she said!…
Struck dumb was I by the admission
And felt a fool, a dunderhead
For all my store of erudition.

“But worse by far was that the spell
That I had cast worked far too well.
My shrivelled idol flared with passion;
She loved me – loved me to obsession!
Her grey lips twisted in a smile,
In graveyard tones the old hag muttered
The wildest of avowals, while
I suffered silently, in utter
Disgust and loathing, and upon
The ground my eyes kept. She wheezed on,