5. Wystan hugh auden

O Where Are You Going?*

«O where are you going?» said reader to rider,

«That valley is fatal where furnaces burn,

Yonder's the midden whose odours will madden.

That gap is the grave where the tall return».

«O do you imagine,» said fearer to farer,

«That dusk will delay on your path to the pass,

Your diligent looking discover the laching

Your footsteps feel from granite to grass?»

«O what was that bird,» said horror to hearer,

«Did you see that shape in the twisted trees?

Behind you swiftly the figure comes softly,

The spot on your skin is a shocking disease».

«Out of this house» - said rider to reader,

«Yours never will» - said farer to fearer,

«They're looking for you» - said hearer to horror,

As he left them there, as he left them there.

*Anthology of English and American Verse. Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1972, pp. 404-405.

6. Ogden nash Just a Piece of Lettuce and Some Lemon Juice, Thank You*

The human body is composed

Of head and limbs and torso,

Kept slim by gents

At great expense,

By ladies, even more so.

The human waistline will succumb

To such and such a diet.

The ladies gnaw

On carrots raw,

Their husbands will not try it.

The human bulk can be compressed

By intricate devices

Which ladies hie

In droves to buy

At pre-depression prices.

The human shape can be subdued

By rolling on the floor.

Though many wives

Thus spend their lives

To husbands it's a bore.

Though human flesh can be controlled,

We're told, by this and that,

You cannot win:

The thin stay thin,

The fat continue fat.

**Vesnic D.A., Natanson E.A., Tokareva N.D. English by Correspondence: Third Year. Moscow, p. 231.

7. Dylan thomas

And Death shall Have No Dominion*

And death shall have no dominion.

Dead men naked they shall be one

With the man in the wind and the west moon;

When their bones are picked clean

and the clean bones gone,

They shall have stars at elbow and foot;

Though they go mad they shall be sane,

Though they sink through the sea they

shall rise again;

Though lovers be lost love shall not;

And death shall have no dominion.

And death shall have no dominion.

Under the windings of the sea

They lying long shall not die mindily;

Twisting on racks when sinews give way,

Strapped to a wheel, yet they shall not break;

Faith in their hands shall snap in two,

And the unicorn evils run them through;

Split all ends up they shan't crack;

And death shall have no dominion.

And death shall have no dominion.

No more may gulls cry at their ears

Or waves break loud on the seashores;

Where blew a flower may a flower no more

Lift its head to the blows of the rain;

Though they be mad and dead as nails,

Heads of the characters hammer through daises;

Break in the sun till the sun breaks down,

And death shall have no dominion.

*Anthology of English and American Verse. Moscow; Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1972, p.410.

8. Robert frost

The Roads Not Taken*

1. Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveller, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;

2. Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,

3. And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.

4. I shall be telling this with, a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I –

I took the one less travelled by,

And that has made all the difference.

*Prokkorova V.I, Soshtavskaya E.S. Stylistic Analysis. Moscow, 1976, pp. 28-29.