Читать Баллады. Роберт Стивенсон, Роберт Бернс, Джон Китс, Иоган Гёте, Фридрих Шиллер,Александр Пушкин, Николай Самойлов - Джон Китс, Роберт Бернс

Роберт Стивенсон

Вересковыйэль

    “Heather Ale” by Robert Luis Stevenson

      From the bonny bells of heather

      They brewed a drink long-syne,

      Was sweeter far then honey,

      Was stronger far than wine.

      They brewed it and they drank it,

      And lay in a blessed swound

      For days and days together

      In their dwellings underground.

      There rose a king in Scotland,

      A fell man to his foes,

      He smote the Picts in battle,

      He hunted them like roes.

      Over miles of the red mountain

      He hunted as they fled,

      And strewed the dwarfish bodies

      Of the dying and the dead.

      Summer came in the country,

      Red was the heather bell;

      But the manner of the brewing

      Was none alive to tell.

      In graves that were like children’s

      On many a mountain head,

      The Brewsters of the Heather

      Lay numbered with the dead.

      The king in the red moorland

      Rode on a summer’s day;

      And the bees hummed, and the curlews

      Cried beside the way.

      The king rode, and was angry,

      Black was his brow and pale,

      To rule in a land of heather

      And lack the Heather Ale.

      It fortuned that his vassals,

      Riding free on the heath,

      Came on a stone that was fallen

      And vermin hid beneath.

      Rudely plucked from their hiding,

      Never a word they spoke;

      A son and his aged father —

      Last of the dwarfish folk.

      The king sat high on his charger,

      He looked on the little men;

      And the dwarfish and swarthy couple

      Looked at the king again.

      Down by the shore he had them;

      And there on the giddy brink —

      «I will give you life, ye vermin,

      For the secret of the drink.»

      There stood the son and father,

      And they looked high and low;

      The heather was red around them,

      The sea rumbled below.

      And up and spoke the father,

      Shrill was his voice to hear:

      «I have a word in private,

      A word for the royal ear.

      «Life is dear to the aged,

      And honour a little thing;

      I would gladly sell the secret,»

      Quoth the Pict to the king.

      His voice was small as a sparrow’s,

      And shrill and wonderful clear:

      «I would gladly sell my secret,

      Only my son I fear.