Стихотворения и поэмы - [2]

I had a silvery name, I had a silvery name,

I had a silvery name – do you remember

The name you cried beside the tumbling sea?”

Chang turned not to the lady slim -

He went to his work, ironing away;

But she was arch and knowing and glowing.

And the bird on his shoulder spoke for him.

“Darling… darling… darling… darling…”

Said the Chinese nightingale.

…………………………………………….

The great gray joss on a rustic shelf,

Rakish and shrewd, with his collar away,

Sang impolitely, as though by himself,

Drowning with his bellowing the nightingale’s cry:

“Back through a hundred,hundred years

Hear the waves as they climb the piers,

Hear the howl of the silver seas,

Hear the thunder!

Hear the gongs of holy China

How the waves and tunes combine

In a rhythmic clashing wonder,

Incantation old and fine:

«Dragons,dragons,Chinese dragons;

Red fire-crackers, and green fire-crackers,

And dragons,dragons,Chinese dragons».”

Then the lady, rosy-red,

Turned to her lover Chang and said:

“Dare you forget that turquoise dawn

When we stood in our mist-hung velvet lawn,

And worked a spell this great joss taught

Till a God of the Dragons was charmed and caught?

From the flag high over our palace-home

He knew to our feet in rainbow-foam –

A king of beauty and tempest and thunder

Panting to tear our sorrows asunder,

A dragon of fair adventure and wonder.

We mounted the back of that royal slave

With thoughts of desire that were noble and grave.

We swam down the shore to the dragon-mountains,

We whirled to the peaks and the fiery fountains.

To our secret ivory house we were borne.

We looked down the wonderful wing – filled regions

Where the dragons darted in glimmering legions.

Right by my breast the nightingale sang;

The old rhymes rang in the sunlit mist

That we this hour regain –

Song-fire for the brain.

When my hands and my hair and my feet you kissed,

When you cried for your heart’s new pain,

What was my name in the dragon-mist,

In the rings of rainbowed rain?”

“Sorrow and love, glory and love”,

Said the Chinese nightingale.

“Sorrow and love, glory and love”,

Said the Chinese nightingale.

And now the joss broke in with his song:

“Dying ember, bird of Chang,

Soul of Chang, Do you remember? –

Ere you returned to the shining harbour

There were pirates by ten thousand

Descended on the town

In vessels mountain-high and red and brown,

Moon-ships that climbed the storms

and cut the skies.

On their prows were painted

terrible bright eyes.

But I was then a wizard and a scholar and a priest;

I stood upon the sand;

With lifted hand I looked upon them

And sunk their vessels

with my wizard eyes,

And the stately lacquer-gate made safe again.

Deep, deep below the bay, the sea-weed and the spray

Embalmed in amber every piret lies,

Embalmed in amber every piret lies”.

Then this did the noble lady say:

“Bird, do you dream of our home-coming day

When you flew like a courier on before

From the dragon-peak to our palace-door,

And we drove the steed in your singing path –

The ramping dragon of laughter and wrath;

And found our city all aglow,

And knighted this joss that decked it so?

There were golden fishes in the purple river

And silver fishes and rainbow fishes.

There were golden junks in the laughing river,

And silver junks and rainbow junks:

There were golden lilies by the bay and river,

And silver lilies and tiger-lilies,

And tinkling wind-bells

in the gardens of the town

By the black-lacquer gate

Were walked in state

The kind king Chang

And his sweet-heart mate…

With his flag-born dragon

And his crown of pearl… and… jade;

And his nightingale reigning in the mulberry shade,

And sailors and soldiers on the sea-sands brown,

And priests who bowed them down to your song –

By the city called Han,

the peacock town,

By the city called Han, the nightingale town,

The nightingale town”.

Then sang the bird, so strangely gay,

Fluttering, fluttering ghostly and gray,

A vague, unravelling, answering tune,

Like a long unwinding silk cocoon;

Sang as though for the soul of him

Who ironed away in that bower dim:

“I have forgotten

Your dragons great,

Merry and mad and friendly and bold.

Dim is your proud lost palace-gate.

I vaguely know

There were heroes of old,

Troubles more than the heart could hold,

There were wolves in the woods

Yet lambs in the fold,