Т.В. Артеменко, Е.В. Кривощекова, Е.В. Кравченко, Н.Е. Николаева - Reader in Language and Culture (1098538), страница 15
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In 1884 Wilde married Constance Lloyd (died 1898), and tosupport his family Wilde edited in 1887-89 Woman's World. In 1888 he publishedThe Happy Prince and Other Tales, fairy-stories written for his two sons. Wilde'smarriage ended in 1893. He had met an few years earlier Lord Alfred Douglas, anathlete and a poet, who became both the love of the author's life and his downfall.Wilde made his reputation in the theatre world between the years 1892 and1895 with a series of highly popular plays.
Lady Windermere's Fan (1892) dealt100with a blackmailing divorcée driven to self-sacrifice by maternal love. In AWoman of No Importance (1893) an illegitimate son is torn between his father andmother. An Ideal Husband (1895) dealt with blackmail, political corruption andpublic and private honor. The Importance of Being Earnest (1895) was about twofashionable young gentlemen and their eventually successful courtship. Before histheatrical success Wilde produced several essays.
His two major literarytheoretical works were the dialogues "The Decay of Lying" (1889) and "The Criticas Artist" (1890).Although married and the father of two children, Wilde's personal life wasopen to rumors. His years of triumph ended dramatically, when his intimateassociation with Alfred Douglas led to his trial on charges of homosexuality (thenillegal in Britain). He was sentenced to two years hard labor for the crime ofsodomy. Wilde was first in Wandsworth prison, London, and then in ReadingGaol. During this time he wrote De Profundis (1905), a dramatic monologue andautobiography, which was addressed to Alfred Douglas.After his release in 1897 Wilde in Berneval, near Dieppe. He wrote "TheBallad of Reading Gaol", revealing his concern for inhumane prison conditions.Wilde died of cerebral meningitis on November 30, 1900, penniless, in a cheapParis hotel at the age of 46.Amor IntellectualisOft have we trod the vales of CastalyAnd heard sweet notes of sylvan music blownFrom antique reeds to common folk unknown:And often launched our bark upon that seaWhich the nine Muses hold in empery,And ploughed free furrows through the wave and foam,Nor spread reluctant sail for more safe homeTill we had freighted well our argosy.101Of which despoilèd treasures these remain,Sordello's passion, and the honied lineOf young Endymion, lordly TamburlaineDriving his pampered jades, and more than these,The seven-fold vision of the Florentine,And grave-browed Milton's solemn harmonies.William WordsworthWilliam Wordsworth was born on 7 April 1770 in Cockermouth,Cumberland, in the Lake District.
His father was John Wordsworth, Sir JamesLowther's attorney. The magnificent landscape deeply affected Wordsworth'simagination and gave him a love of nature. He lost his mother when he was eightand five years later his father. The domestic problems separated Wordsworth fromhis beloved and neurotic sister Dorothy, who was a very important person in hislife.With the help of his two uncles, Wordsworth entered a local school andcontinued his studies at Cambridge University.
Wordsworth made his debut as awriter in 1787, when he published a sonnet in The European Magazine . In thatsame year he entered St. John's College, Cambridge, from where he took his B.A.in 1791.During a summer vacation in 1790 Wordsworth went on a walking tourthrough revolutionary France and also traveled in Switzerland. On his secondjourney in France, Wordsworth had an affair with a French girl, Annette Vallon, adaughter of a barber-surgeon, by whom he had a illegitimate daughter AnneCaroline. The affair was basis of the poem "Vaudracour and Julia", but otherwiseWordsworth did his best to hide the affair from posterity.In 1795 he met Coleridge. Wordsworth's financial situation became better in1795 when he received a legacy and was able to settle at Racedown, Dorset, with102his sister Dorothy.Encouraged by Coleridge and stimulated by the close contact with nature,Wordsworth composed his first masterwork, Lyrical Ballads, which opened withColeridge's "Ancient Mariner." About 1798 he started to write a large andphilosophical autobiographical poem, completed in 1805, and publishedposthumously in 1850 under the title The Prelude.Wordsworth spent the winter of 1798-99 with his sister and Coleridge inGermany, where he wrote several poems, including the enigmatic 'Lucy' poems.After return he moved Dove Cottage, Grasmere, and in 1802 married MaryHutchinson.
They cared for Wordsworth's sister Dorothy for the last 20 years ofher life.Wordsworth's second verse collection, Poems, In Two Volumes, appeared in1807. Wordsworth's central works were produced between 1797 and 1808. Hispoems written during middle and late years have not gained similar criticalapproval. Wordsworth's Grasmere period ended in 1813. He was appointed officialdistributor of stamps for Westmoreland.
He moved to Rydal Mount, Ambleside,where he spent the rest of his life. In later life Wordsworth abandoned his radicalideas and became a patriotic, conservative public man.In 1843 he succeeded Robert Southey (1774-1843) as England's poetlaureate. Wordsworth died on April 23, 1850.DaffodilsI wandered lonely as a cloudThat floats on high o'er vales and hills,When all at once I saw a crowd,A host, of golden daffodils;Beside the lake, beneath the trees,Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.103Continuous as the stars that shineAnd twinkle on the milky way,They stretched in never-ending lineAlong the margin of a bay:Ten thousand saw I at a glance,Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.The waves beside them danced, but theyOut-did the sparkling leaves in glee;A poet could not be but gay,In such a jocund company!I gazed—and gazed—but little thoughtWhat wealth the show to me had brought:For oft, when on my couch I lieIn vacant or in pensive mood,They flash upon that inward eyeWhich is the bliss of solitude;And then my heart with pleasure fills,And dances with the daffodils.Robert Louis StevensonRobert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894), Scottish essayist, poet and author offiction and travel books, known especially for his novels of adventure.Stevenson was born on November 13, 1850 in Edinburgh as the son ofThomas Stevenson, joint-engineer to the Board of Northern Lighthouses.
Since hischildhood Stevenson suffered from tuberculosis. In 1867 he entered EdinburghUniversity to study engineering, but changed to law and in 1875 he was called to104the Scottish bar. During these years his first works were published in TheEdinburgh University Magazine (1871) and The Portfolio (1873).Instead of practicing law, Stevenson devoted himself to writing travelsketches, essays, and short stories for magazines. An account of his canoe tour ofFrance and Belgium was published in 1878 as An Inland Voyage, and TravelsWith A Donkey In The Cervennes appeared next year.
In 1879 Stevenson movedto California with Fanny Osbourne, whom he had met in France. They married in1880, and after a brief stay at Calistoga, which was recorded in The SilveradoSquatters (1883), they returned to Scotland, and then moved often in search ofbetter climates.Stevenson became famous with the romantic adventure story TreasureIsland, which appeared in 1883. Among his other popular works are Kidnapped(1886), The Strange Case Of Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde (1886) and The Master OfBallantrae (1889).
He also contributed to various periodicals, including TheCornhill Magazine and Longman's Magazine, where his best-known article "AHumble Remonstrance" was published in 1884. It was a reply to Henry James's'The Art of Fiction' and started a lifelong friendship between the two authors.From the late 1880s Stevenson lived with his family in the South Seas, inSamoa. Fascinated by the Polynesian culture, Stevenson wrote several letters toThe Times on the islanders' behalf and published novels like The Beach Of Falesa(1893) and The Ebb-Tide (1894), which condemned European colonialexploitation.Stevenson died on December 3, 1894, in Vailima, Samoa. His last work,Weir Of Hermiston (1896), was left unfinished.Heather Ale(A Galloway legend)105From the bonny bells of heatherThey 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 swoundFor days and days togetherIn 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 mountainHe hunted as they fled,And strewed the dwarfish bodiesOf the dying and the dead.Summer came in the country,Red was the heather bell;But the manner of the brewingWas none alive to tell.In graves that were like children'sOn many a mountain head,The Brewsters of the HeatherLay numbered with the dead.The king in the red moorlandRode on a summer's day;And the bees hummed, and the curlews106Cried beside the way.The king rode, and was angry,Black was his brow and pale,To rule in a land of heatherAnd lack the Heather Ale.It fortuned that his vassals,Riding free on the heath,Came on a stone that was fallenAnd 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 coupleLooked 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:107"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."For life is a little matter,And death is nought to the young;And I dare not sell my honourUnder the eye of my son.Take him, O king, and bind him,And cast him far in the deep;And it's I will tell the secretThat I have sworn to keep."They took the son and bound him,Neck and heels in a thong,And a lad took him and swung him,And flung him far and strong,And the sea swallowed his body,Like that of a child of ten; -And there on the cliff stood the father,Last of the dwarfish men.108"True was the word I told you:Only my son I feared;For I doubt the sapling courageThat goes without the beard.But now in vain is the torture,Fire shall never avail:Here dies in my bosomThe secret of Heather Ale."Foreign LandsFrom Child's Garden of VersesUp into the cherry treeWho should climb but little me?I held the trunk with both my handsAnd looked abroad in foreign lands.I saw the next door garden lie,Adorned with flowers, before my eye,And many pleasant places moreThat I had never seen before.I saw the dimpling river passAnd be the sky's blue looking-glass;The dusty roads go up and downWith people tramping in to town.If I could find a higher treeFarther and farther I should see,To where the grown-up river slips109Into the sea among the ships,To where the road on either handLead onward into fairy land,Where all the children dine at five,And all the playthings come alive.In the StatesWith half a heart I wander hereAs from an age gone byA brother -- yet though young in years,An elder brother.
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