preložila: Jana Kantorová-Báliková
Balada je prvým i posledným zjavením emocionálnej reality v diele Oscara Wilda. On, vyznavač umenia pre umenie to považoval za katastrofu. Hesketh Pearson, 1954
pre milovníkov angličtiny:
I never saw a man who looked
With such a wistful eye
Upon that little tent of blue
Which prisoners call the sky,
And at every drifting cloud that went
With sails of silver by.
Yet each man kills the thing he loves,
By each let this be heard,
Some do it with a bitter look,
Some with a flattering word,
The coward does it with a kiss,
The brave man with a sword!
He did not wring his hands nor weep,
Nor did he peek or pine,
But he drank the air as though it held
Some healthful anodyne;
With open mouth he drank the sun
As though it had been wine!
We sewed the sacks, we broke the stones,
We turned the dusty drill:
We banged the tins, and bawled the hymns,
And sweated on the mill:
But in the heart of every man
Terror was lying still.
Right in we went, with soul intent
On Death and Dread and Doom:
The hangman, with his little bag,
Went shuffling through the gloom:
And I trembled as I groped my way
Into my numbered tomb.
But there is no sleep when men must weep
Who never yet have wept:
So we the fool, the fraud, the knave
That endless vigil kept,
And through each brain on hands of pain
Another's terror crept.
I never saw a man who looked
With such a wistful eye
Upon that little tent of blue
Which prisoners call the sky,
And at every wandering cloud that trailed
Its ravelled fleeces by.
No zabíjať to, čo máš rád, je spôsob človečí
Oscar Wilde a jeho milovaný Alfred
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