My Virtual Reading Room

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Ничего никогда не вернуть,
Как на солнце не вытравить пятна.
И в обратный отправившись путь,
Всё равно не вернёшься обратно.

Эта истина очень проста
И она, словно смерть, непреложна.
Можно в те же вернуться места,
Но вернуться назад невозможно.

[translation here--and yes, the original is rhymed]

Nothing can ever be brought back,
Just as the sunspots cannot be removed from the sun.
And setting out on the road back,
One still cannot come back to the same place.

This truth is a very simple one
And, like death, it is inexorable.
One can come back to the same location,
But one cannot ever go back.

The Careless Gallant

Let us drink and be merry, dance, joke and rejoice,
With claret and sherry, theorbo and voice;
The changeable world to our joy is unjust,
All treasure's uncertain, then down with your dust;
In frolics dispose your pounds, shillings, and pence,
For we shall be nothing a hundred years hence.

We'll sport and be free with Frank, Betty, and Dolly,
Have lobsters and oysters to cure melancholy;
Fish dinners will make a man spring like a flea,
Dame Venus, love's lady, was born of the sea,
With her and with Bacchus we'll tickle the sense,
For we shall be past it a hundred years hence.

Your beautiful bit who hath all eyes upon her,
That her honesty sells for a hogo of honor,
Whose lightness and brightness doth cast such a splendor,
That none are thought fit but the stars to attend her,
Though now she seems pleasant and sweet to the sense,
Will be damnable moldy a hundred years hence.

Your usurer that in the hundred takes twenty,
Who wants in his wealth and pines in his plenty,
Lays up for a season which he shall ne'er see,
The year of one thousand eight hundred and three,
Shall have changed all his bags, his houses and rents
For a worm-eaten coffin a hundred years hence.

Your Chancery lawyer, who by conscience thrives
In spinning a suit to the length of three lives,
A suit which the client doth wear out in slavery,
Whilst pleader makes conscience a cloak for his knavery,
Can boast of his cunning i' the present tense,
For non est inventus a hundred years hence.

Then why should we turmoil in cares and fears,
And turn our tranquility to sighs and tears?
Let's eat, drink and play ere the worms do corrupt us,
For I say that Post mortem nulla voluptas;
Let's deal with our damsels that we may from thence
Have broods to succeed us a hundred years hence.

(Thomas Jordan)

A CDC study on 1,400 adults and 500 children hospitalized with the H1N1 flu across 10 states showed that 55% of the patients who died from the flu had other medical conditions and most were younger than 65 years old. Asthma, immunosuppression, chronic lung disease and chronic heart disease were the most common underlying conditions among adults, while children had asthma, chronic lung diseases, neurological or neuromuscular diseases, and sickle cell or other blood conditions. Reuters (10/13)

Ничто не стоит так дёшево и не ценится так дорого, как вежливость.

(Мигель де Сервантес)

Nothing else costs as little and is valued as dearly as courtesy.

(Miguel de Cervantes)