English Poetry. Stephen Crane. The sage lectured brilliantly. Стивен Крейн.

Stephen Crane (Стивен Крейн)

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The sage lectured brilliantly.
Before him, two images:
”Now this one is a devil,
And this one is me.”
He turned away.
Then a cunning pupil
Changed the positions.

Turned the sage again:
”Now this one is a devil,
And this one is me.”
The pupils sat, all grinning,
And rejoiced in the game.
But the sage was a sage.

Stephen Crane’s other poems:

1. With eye and with gesture
2. There was a man who lived a life of fire
3. When the prophet, a complacent fat man
4. There was a great cathedral
5. The ocean said to me once

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