La Ballade de la geôle de Reading et autres poèmes

And all men kill the thing they love,
By all let this be heard,
Some do it with a bitter look,
Some with a flattering word,
The coward does it with a kiss,
The brave man with a sword!

Et tous les hommes, oui, tuent la chose qu'ils aiment,
Que tous entendent bien cela,
Il en est qui le font d'un simple regard aigre,
D'autres d'un mot de flatterie,
Le lâche, pour le faire, utilise un baiser,
Et le courageux, une épée !

(Traduction Berbard Pautrat)
(Épilogue)

He did not wear his scarlet coat,
For blood and wine are red,
And blood and wine were on his hands
When they found him with the dead,
The poor dead woman whom he loved,
And murdered in her bed.

He walked amongst the Trial Men
In a suit of shabby grey;
A cricket cap was on his head,
And his step seemed light and gay;
But I never saw a man who looked
So wistfully at the day.

I never saw a man who looked
With such a wistful eye
Upon that little tent of blue
Which prisoners call the sky,
And at every drifting cloud that went
With sails of silver by.

I walked, with other souls in pain,
Within another ring,
And was wondering if the man had done
A great or little thing,
When a voice behind me whispered low,
"That fellow’s got to swing."

Et la douleur qui l'étreignit au point
Qu'il poussa ce cri si amer,
Et les regrets fous, les sueurs de sang,
Qui les connaissait mieux que moi ?
Car celui-là qui vit plus d'une vie
Doit mourir de plus d'une mort.