the poetry, as possible.  A poem it is we sit down to read, not a relation of facts, or an historical or critical or philosophical or theological exposition,—­a poem, only in another dress.  Thence a work in verse, that has poetic quality enough to be worth translating, must be made to lose by the process as little as may be of its worth; and its worth every poem owes entirely to its poetic quality and the degree of that.  A prose translation of a poem is an aesthetic impertinence, Shakespeare was at first opened to the people of the Continent in prose, because there was not then culture enough to reproduce him in verse.  And in Shakespeare there is so much practical sense, so much telling comment on life, so much wit, such animal spirits, such touching stories so well told, that the great gain of having him even in prose concealed the loss sustained by the absence of rhythmic sound, and by the discoloration (impallidation, we should say, were the word already there) of hundreds of liveliest tinted flowers, the deflowering of many delicate stems.  Forty years ago, Mr. Hay ward translated the “Faust” of Goethe into prose; but let any one compare the Hymn of the Archangels and other of the more highly-wrought passages, as rendered by him, with any of the better translations in verse,—­with that of Mr. Brooks for example,—­to perceive at once the insufficiency, the flatness and meagreness of even so verbally faithful a prose version.  The effect on “Faust,” or on any high passionate poem, of attempting to put it into prose, is akin to what would be the effect on an exquisite bas-relief of reducing its projection one half by a persevering application of pumice.  In all genuine verse (that is, in all poetic verse) the substance is so inwrought into the form and sound, that if in translating you entirely disregard these, rejecting both rhyme and measure, you subject the verse to a second depletion right upon that which it has to suffer by the transplanting of it into another soil.

The translator of a poem has a much higher and subtler duty than just to take the words and through them attempt passively to render the page into his own language.  He must brace himself into an active state, a creative mood, the most creative he can command, then transport himself into the mind and mental attitude of the poet he would translate, feeling and seeing as the poet saw and felt.  To get into the mood out of which the words sprang, he should go behind the words, embracing them from within, not merely seizing them from without.  Having imbued himself with the thought and sentiment of the original, let him, if he can, utter them in a still higher key.  Such surpassing excellence would be the truest fidelity to the original, and any cordial poet would especially rejoice in such elevation of his verse; for the aspiring writer will often fall short of his ideal, and to see it more nearly approached by a translator who has been kindled by himself, to find some delicate new flower revealed in a nook which he had opened, could not but give him a delight akin to that of his own first inspirations.