Цитаты из книги The Ring And The Book

Do you see this Ring?         ’Tis Rome-work, made to match (By Castellani’s imitative craft) Etrurian circlets found, some happy morn, After a dropping April; found alive Spark-like ’mid unearthed slope-side figtree- roots That roof old tombs at Chiusi: soft, you see, Yet crisp as jewel-cutting.

Work, be unhappy but bear life, my son! And troop you, somewhere ’twixt the best and worst,

If God yet have a servant, man a friend, The weak a saviour and the vile a foe —

All human plans and projects come to nought, My life, and what I know of other lives, Prove that: no plan nor project! God shall care!

From my experience of what hate calls love — Much love might be in what their love called hate.

why should ill keep echoing ill, And never let our ears have done with noise?

I am held up, amid the nothingness, By one or two truths only

“Rome is the port, you say: to Rome I go.

“I will live alone, one does so in a crowd, “And look into my heart a little.”

That’s all we may expect of man, this side The grave: his good is — knowing he is bad: Thus will it be with us when the books ope And we stand at the bar on judgment-day.

When I saw enter, stand, and seat herself A lady, young, tall, beautiful, strange, and sad.

“You know how weak the strongest women are.

Answer you, Sirs? Do I understand aright? Have patience! In this sudden smoke from hell — So things disguise themselves — I cannot see My own hand held thus broad before my face And know it again.

Why, I appeal to... sun and moon? Not I! Rather to Plautus, Terence, Boccaccio’s Book,

My townsman, frank Ser Franco’s merry Tales — To all who strip a vizard from a face, A body from its padding, and a soul From froth and ignorance it styles itself —

But when they came to try their gain, my gift, Quit Rome and qualify for Arezzo, take The tone o’ the new sphere that absorbed the old,

Put away gossip Jack and goody Joan And go become familiar with the Great, Greatness to touch and taste and handled now — Why, then — they found that all was vanity, Vexation, and what Solomon describes!

I would have rummaged, ransacked at the word Those old odd corners of an empty heart For remnants of dim love the long disused, And dusty crumblings of romance! But here, We talk of just a marriage, if you please — The every-day conditions and no more;

“She’s young, “Pretty and rich: you’re noble, classic, choice.

“Is it to be a match?” “A match,” said I. Done!

Wells dry up, while the sky is sunny and blue.

First comes this thunderclap of a surprise: Then follow all the signs and silences Premonitory of earthquake.