Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth.
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.
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.
Церковь святой Елены
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 traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
Robert Lee Frost
ЗАМОК В ASHBY DE LA ZOUCH AND POEM BY EDWIN BROCK (Рассказ про сам замок, который Вальтер Скотт описал в Айвенго)
именно этот замок описал Вальтер Скотт в романе Айвенго.
There are many cumbersome ways to kill a man.
You can make him carry a plank of wood
to the top of a hill and nail him to it.
To do this
properly you require a crowd of people
wearing sandals, a cock that crows, a cloak
to dissect, a sponge, some vinegar and one
man to hammer the nails home.
Or you can take a length of steel,
shaped and chased in a traditional way,
and attempt to pierce the metal cage he wears.
But for this you need white horses,
English trees, men with bows and arrows,
at least two flags, a prince, and a
castle to hold your banquet in.
Dispensing with nobility, you may, if the wind
allows, blow gas at him.
But then you need
a mile of mud sliced through with ditches,
not to mention black boots, bomb craters,
more mud, a plague of rats, a dozen songs
and some round hats made of steel.
In an age of aeroplanes, you may fly
miles above your victim and dispose of him by
pressing one small switch.
All you then
require is an ocean to separate you, two
systems of government, a nation's scientists,
several factories, a psychopath and
land that no-one needs for several years.
These are, as I began, cumbersome ways
to kill a man.
Simpler, direct, and much more neat
is to see that he is living somewhere in the middle
of the twentieth century, and leave him there.
Poem by Edwin Brock
Сегодня, несмотря на то, что от крепости остались одни развалины, туристы все еще имеют уникальную возможность взобраться на самую вершину башни, к которой ведут 98 ступеней. Во время английской революции башня была почти полностью разрушена. Тайный подземный ход, ведущий из кухни в башню, активно использовался в годы гражданской войны в
Англии. Посетители, вооружившись фонариками, с удовольствием исследуют его. А это голуби свили гнездо на одной из этих девяносто восьми ступеней - приходиться перешагивать.