"Nathaniel Hawthorne - The Maypole of Merry Mount" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hawthorne Nathaniel)

wondrous, stood a real bear of the dark forest, lending each of his
fore paws to the grasp of a human hand, and as ready for the dance
as any in that circle. His inferior nature rose half way, to meet
his companions as they stooped. Other faces wore the similitude of man
or woman, but distorted or extravagant, with red noses pendulous
before their mouths, which seemed of awful depth, and stretched from
ear to ear in an eternal fit of laughter. Here might be seen the
Salvage Man, well known in heraldry, hairy as a baboon, and girdled
with green leaves. By his side, a noble figure, but still a
counterfeit, appeared an Indian hunter, with feathery crest and wampum
belt. Many of this strange company wore foolscaps, and had little
bells appended to their garments, tinkling with a silvery sound,
responsive to the inaudible music of their gleesome spirits. Some
youths and maidens were of soberer garb, yet well maintained their
places in the irregular throng by the expression of wild revelry
upon their features. Such were the colonists of Merry Mount, as they
stood in the broad smile of sunset round their venerated Maypole.

Had a wanderer, bewildered in the melancholy forest, heard their
mirth, and stolen a half-affrighted glance, he might have fancied them
the crew of Comus, some already transformed to brutes, some midway
between man and beast, and the others rioting in the flow of tipsy
jollity that foreran the change. But a band of Puritans, who watched
the scene, invisible themselves, compared the masques to those
devils and ruined souls with whom their superstition peopled the black
wilderness.

Within the ring of monsters appeared the two airiest forms that had
ever trodden on any more solid footing than a purple and golden cloud.
One was a youth in glistening apparel, with a scarf of the rainbow
pattern crosswise on his breast. His right hand held a gilded staff,
the ensign of high dignity among the revellers, and his left grasped
the slender fingers of a fair maiden, not less gayly decorated than
himself. Bright roses glowed in contrast with the dark and glossy
curls of each, and were scattered round their feet, or had sprung up
spontaneously there. Behind this lightsome couple, so close to the
Maypole that its boughs shaded his jovial face, stood the figure of an
English priest, canonically dressed, yet decked with flowers, in
heathen fashion, and wearing a chaplet of the native vine leaves. By
the riot of his rolling eye, and the pagan decorations of his holy
garb, he seemed the wildest monster there, and the very Comus of the
crew.

"Votaries of the Maypole," cried the flower-decked priest,
"merrily, all day long, have the woods echoed to your mirth. But be
this your merriest hour, my hearts! Lo, here stand the Lord and Lady
of the May, whom I, a clerk of Oxford, and high priest of Merry Mount,
am presently to join in holy matrimony. Up with your nimble spirits,
ye morris-dancers, green men, and glee maidens, bears and wolves,
and horned gentlemen! Come; a chorus now, rich with the old mirth of