Английский язык

EMILY DICKINSON

Рoem 1

I know some lonely Houses off the Road
A Robber'd like the look of -
Wooden barred,
And Windows hanging low,
Inviting to -
A Portico,
Where two could creep -
One - hand the Tools -
The other peep -
To make sure All's Asleep -
Old fashioned eyes -
Not easy to surprise!

How orderly the Kitchen'd look, by night,
With just a Clock -
But they could gag the Tick -
And Mice won't bark -
And so the Walls - don't tell -
None - will -

A pair of Spectacles ajar just stir -
An Almanac's aware -
Was it the Mat - winked,
Or a Nervous Star?
The Moon - slides down the stair,
To see who's there!

There's plunder - where
Tankard, or Spoon -
Earring - or Stone -
A Watch - Some Ancient Brooch
To match the Grandmama -
Staid sleeping - there -

Day - rattles - too
Stealth's - slow -
The Sun has got as far
As the third Sycamore -
Screams Chanticleer,
"Who's there"?

And Echoes - Trains away,
Sneer - "Where"!
While the old Couple, just astir,
Fancy the Sunrise - left the door ajar!

Daphne du Maurier  «Frenchman's Creek»

When the east wind blows up Helford river the shining waters become troubled and disturbed, and the little waves beat angrily upon the sandy shores. The short seas break above the bar at ebb-tide, and the waders fly inland to the mud-flats, their wings skimming the surface, and calling to one another as they go. Only the gulls remain, wheeling and crying above the foam, diving now and again in search of food, their grey feathers glistening with the salt spray.

   The long rollers of the channel, travelling from beyond Lizard point, follow hard upon the steep seas at the river mouth, and mingling with the surge and wash of deep sea water comes the brown tide, swollen with the last rains and brackish from the mud, bearing upon its face dead twigs and straws, and strange forgotten things, leaves too early fallen, young birds, and the buds of flowers.

The open roadstead is deserted, for an east wind makes uneasy anchorage, and but for the few houses scattered here and there above Helford passage, and the group of bungalows about Port Navas, the river would be the same as it was in a century now forgotten, in a time that has left few memories.

In those days the hills and the valleys were alone in splendour, there were no buildings to desecrate the rough fields and cliffs, no chimney pots to peer out of the tall woods. There were a few cottages in Helford hamlet, but they made no impression upon the river life itself, which belonged to the birds - curlew and redshank, guillemot and puffin. No yachts rode to the tide then, as they do today, and that stretch of placid water where the river divides to Constantine and Gweek was calm and undisturbed.

The river was little known, save to a few mariners who had found shelter there when the south-west gales drove them inshore from their course up-channel, and they found the place lonely and austere, a little frightening because of the silence, and when the wind was fair again were glad to weigh anchor and set sail. Helford hamlet was no inducement to a sailor ashore, the few cottage folk dull-witted and uncommunicative, and the fellow who has been away from warmth and women overlong has little desire to wander in the woods or dabble with the waders in the mud at ebb-tide. So the winding river remained unvisited, the woods and the hills untrodden, and all the drowsy beauty of midsummer that gives Helford river a strange enchantment, was never seen and never known.