Стихи и эссе

Оден Уистан Хью

6. The First Temptation

Ashamed to be the darling of his grief He joined a gang of rowdy stories where His gift for magic quickly made him chief Of all these boyish powers of the air; Who turned his hungers into Roman food, The town's asymmetry into a park; All hours took taxis; any solitude Became his flattered duchess in the dark. But if he wished for anything less grand, The nights came padding after him like wild Beasts that meant harm, and all the doors cried Thief; And when Truth met him and put out her hand, He clung in panic to his tall belief And shrank away like an ill-treated child.

7. The Second Temptation

The library annoyed him with its look Of calm belief in being really there; He threw away a rival's silly book, And clattered panting up the spiral stair. Swaying upon the parapet he cried: "O Uncreated Nothing, set me free Now let Thy perfect be identified, Unending passion of the Night, with Thee." And his long suffering flesh, that all the time Had felt the simple cravings of the stone And hoped to be rewarded for her climb, Took it to be a promise when he spoke That now at last she would be left alone, And plunged into the college quad, and broke.

8. The Third Temptation

He watched with all his organs of concern How princes walk, what wives and children say; Reopened old graves in his heart to learn What laws the dead had died to disobey. And came reluctantly to his conclusion: "All the arm-chair philosophers are false; To love another adds to the confusion; The song of pity is the Devil's Waltz." And bowed to fate and was successful so That soon he was the king of all the creatures: Yet, shaking in an autumn nightmare saw, Approaching down a ruined corridor, A figure with his own distorted features That wept, and grew enormous, and cried Woe.

9. The Tower

This is architecture for the odd; Thus heaven was attacked by the afraid, So once, unconsciously, a virgin made Her maiden head conspicuous to a god. Here on dark nights while worlds of triumph sleep Lost Love in abstract speculation burns, And exiled Will to politics returns In epic verse that lets its traitors weep. Yet many come to wish their tower a well; For those who dread to drown of thirst may die, For those who see all become invisible: Here great magicians caught in their own spell Long for a natural climate as they sigh "Beware of Magic" to the passer-by.

10. The Presumptuous

They noticed that virginity was needed To trap the unicorn in every case, But not that, of those virgins who succeeded, A high percentage had an ugly face. The hero was as daring as they thought him, But his peculiar boyhood missed them all; The angel of a broken leg had taught him The right precautions to avoid a fall. So in presumption they set forth alone On what, for them, was not compulsory: And stuck halfway to settle in some cave With desert lions to domesticity; Or turned aside to be absurdly brave, And met the ogre and were turned to stone.

11. The Average

His peasant parents killed themselves with toil To let their darling leave a stingy soil For any of those smart professions which Encourage shallow breathing, and grow rich. The pressure of their fond ambition made Their shy and country-loving child afraid No sensible career was good enough, Only a hero could deserve such love. So here he was without maps or supplies, A hundred miles from any decent town; The desert glared into his blood-shot eyes; The silence roared displeasure: looking down, He saw the shadow of an Average Man Attempting the Exceptional, and ran.

12. Vocation

Incredulous, he stared at the amused Official writing down his name among Those whose request to suffer was refused. The pen ceased scratching: though he came too late To join the martyrs, there was still a place Among the tempters for a caustic tongue To test the resolution of the young With tales of the small failings of the great, And shame the eager with ironic praise Though mirrors might be hateful for a while, Women and books should teach his middle age The fencing wit of an informal style To keep the silences at bay and cage His pacing manias in a worldly smile.

13. The Useful

The over-logical fell for the witch Whose argument converted him to stone; Thieves rapidly absorbed the over-rich; The over-popular went mad alone, And kisses brutalized the over-male. As agents their effectiveness soon ceased; Yet, in proportion as they seemed to fail, Their instrumental value was increased To those still able to obey their wish. By standing stones the blind can feel their way, Wild dogs compel the cowardly to fight, Beggars assist the slow to travel light, And even madmen manage to convey Unwelcome truths in lonely gibberish.

14. The Way

Fresh addenda are published every day To the encyclopedia of the Way. Linguistic notes and scientific explanations And texts for schools with modernized spelling and illustrations. Now everyone knows the hero must choose the old horse, Abstain from liquor and sexual intercourse, And look out for a stranded fish to be kind to: Now everyone thinks he could find, had he a mind to, The way through the waste to the chapel in the rock For a vision of the Triple Rainbow or the Astral Clock Forgetting his information comes mostly from married men Who liked fishing and a flutter on the horses now and then And how reliable can any truth be that is got By observing oneself and then just inserting a Not?

15. The Lucky

Suppose he'd listened to the erudite committee, He would have only found where not to look; Suppose his terrier when he whistled had obeyed, It would not have unearthed the buried city; Suppose he had dismissed the careless maid, The cryptogram would not have fluttered from the book. "It was not I," he cried as, healthy and astounded, He stepped across a predecessor's skull; "A nonsense jingle simply came into my head And left the intellectual Sphinx dumbfounded; I won the Queen because my hair was red; The terrible adventure is a little dull." Hence Failure's torment: "Was I doomed in any case, Or would I not have failed had I believed in Grace?"