Волшебница Шалотт и другие стихотворения - Теннисон Альфред (2007)

I will not cease to grasp the hope I hold

Of saintdom, and to clamour, mourn and sob,

Battering the gates of heaven with storms of prayer,

Have mercy, Lord, and take away my sin.

Let this avail, just, dreadful, mighty God,

This not be all in vain, that thrice ten years,

Thrice multiplied by superhuman pangs,

In hungers and in thirsts, fevers and cold,

In coughs, aches, stitches, ulcerous throes and cramps,

A sign betwixt the meadow and the cloud,

Patient on this tall pillar I have borne

Rain, wind, frost, heat, hail, damp, and sleet, and snow;

And I had hoped that ere this period closed

Thou wouldst have caught me up into thy rest,

Denying not these weather-beaten limbs

The meed of saints, the white robe and the palm.

О take the meaning, Lord: I do not breathe,

Not whisper, any murmur of complaint.

Pain heap’d ten-hundred-fold to this, were still

Less burthen, by ten-hundred-fold, to bear,

Than were those lead-like tons of sin that crush’d

My spirit flat before thee.

О Lord, Lord,

Thou knowest I bore this better at the first,

For I was strong and hale of body then;

And tho’ my teeth, which now are dropt away,

Would chatter with the cold, and all my beard

Was tagg’d with icy fringes in the moon,

I drown’d the whoopings of the owl with sound

Of pious hymns and psalms, and sometimes saw

An angel stand and watch me, as I sang.

Now am I feeble grown; my end draws nigh;

I hope my end draws nigh: half deaf I am,

So that I scarce can hear the people hum

About the column’s base, and almost blind,

And scarce can recognise the fields I know,

And both my thighs are rotted with the dew;

Yet cease I not to clamour and to cry,

While my stiff spine can hold my weary head,

Till all my limbs drop piecemeal from the stone,

Have mercy, mercy: take away my sin.

О Jesus, if thou wilt not save my soul,

Who may be saved? who is it may be saved?

Who may be made a saint, if I fail here?

Show me the man hath suffer’d more than I.

For did not all thy martyrs die one death?

For either they were stoned or crucified

Or burn’d in fire, or boil’d in oil, or sawn

In twain beneath the ribs; but I die here

To-day, and whole years long, a life of death.

Bear witness, if I could have found a way

(And heedfully I sifted all my thought)

More slowly-painful to subdue this home

Of sin, my flesh, which I despise and hate,

I had not stinted practice, О my God.

For not alone this pillar-punishment,

Not this alone I bore: but while I lived

In the white convent down the valley there,

For many weeks about my loins I wore

The rope that haled the buckets from the well,

Twisted as tight as I could knot the noose;

And spake not of it to a single soul,

Until the ulcer, eating thro’ my skin,

Betray’d my secret penance, so that all

My brethren marvell’d greatly. More than this

I bore, whereof, О God, thou knowest all.

Three winters, that my soul might grow to thee,

I lived up there on yonder mountain side.

My right leg chain’d into the crag, I lay

Pent in a roofless close of ragged stones;

Inswathed sometimes in wandering mist, and twice

Black’d with thy branding thunder, and sometimes

Sucking the damps for drink, and eating not,

Except the spare chance-gift of those that came

To touch my body and be heal’d, and live:

And they say then that I work’d miracles,

Whereof my fame is loud amongst mankind,

Cured lameness, palsies, cancers. Thou, О God,