ack desire
In those who sail the sea, and melts the heart,
The day they've said to their sweet friends farewell;
And the new pilgrim penetrates with love,
If he doth hear from far away a bell
That seemeth to deplore the dying day." [55]

[55] "Era gia l' ora che volge il disio
Ai naviganti, e intenerisce il core
Lo di ch' hen detto ai dolci amici addio;
E che lo nuovo peregrin d' amore
Punge, se ode squilla di lontano,
Che paia il giorno pianger che si more."

This passage affords an excellent example of what the method of literal
translation can do at its best. Except in the second line, where "those
who sail the sea" is wisely preferred to any Romanic equivalent of
naviganti the version is utterly literal; as literal as the one the
school-boy makes, when he opens his Virgil at the Fourth Eclogue,
and lumberingly reads, "Sicilian Muses, let us sing things a little
greater." But there is nothing clumsy, nothing which smacks of the
recitation-room, in these lines of Mr. Longfellow. For easy grace and
exquisite beauty it would be difficult to surpass them. They may well
bear comparison with the beautiful lines into which Lord Byron has
rendered the same thought:--

"Soft hour which wakes the wish, and melts the heart,
Of those who sail the seas, on the first day
When they from their sweet friends are torn apart;
Or fills with love the pilgrim on his way,
As the far bell of vesper makes him start,
Seeming to weep the dying day's decay.
Is this a fancy which our reason scorns?
Ah, surely nothing dies but something mourns!" [56]

[56] Don Juan, III. 108.

Setting aside the concluding sentimental generalization,--which is much
more Byronic than Dantesque,--one hardly knows which version to call
more truly poetical; but for a faithful rendering of the original
conception one can hardly hesitate to give the palm to Mr. Longfellow.

Thus we see what may be achieved by the most highly gifted of
translators who contents himself with passively reproducing the diction
of his original, who constitutes himself, as it were, a conduit through
which the meaning of the original may flow. Where the differences
inherent in the languages employed do not intervene to alloy the result,
the stream of the original may, as in the verses just cited, come out
pure and unweakened. Too often, however, such is the subtle chemistr