Эмили Э. Дикинсон. Её потери - наш прирост

Её потери — наш прирост —
Груз жизни небольшой
С изяществом несла, Восток
Покачивался за спиной.
Той жизни малый груз тяжёл
Hосильщик каждый знает —
Hапраслинy сказать про мёд —
Он только слаже станет.

1562

Her Losses make our Gains ashamed —
She bore Life's empty Pack
As gallantly as if the East
Were swinging at her Back.
Life's empty Pack is heaviest,
As every Porter knows —
In vain to punish Honey —
It only sweeter grows.

                Emily Dickinson

"This poem is a tribute to the novelist George Eliot. When Emily sent the poem as part of a letter (L814) to the publisher Thomas Niles, she had just been reading a life of George Eliot by Mathilde Blind. Emily had long admired George Eliot. In a letter(L389) of 1873 to her cousins she had said of her, ‘What do I think of Middlemarch? What do I think of glory?’ And after George Eliot’s death on 26 December 1880Emily had written (L710) to her cousins, saying, ‘The look of the words [stating her death] as they lay in print I shall never forget. …The gift of belief which her greatness denied her, I trust she receives in the childhood of the kingdom of heaven. As childhood is earth’s confiding time, perhaps having no childhood, she lost her way tothe early trust, and no later came (L710)."

                David Preest

                Стихи.ру 29 июля 2015 года