seemed to him, however, that Cowper's version had very
great defects. The style of Homer is simple, and he has been praised for
fire and rapidity of narrative. Does anybody find these qualities in
Cowper's Homer? If Cowper had rendered him into such English as he
employed in his "Task," there would be no reason to complain; but in
translating Homer he seems to have thought it necessary to use a
different style from that of his original work. Almost every sentence is
stiffened by some clumsy inversion; stately phrases are used when
simpler ones were at hand, and would have rendered the meaning of the
original better. The entire version has the appearance of being hammered
out with great labor, and as a whole it is cold and constrained; scarce
any thing seems spontaneous; it is only now and then that the translator
has caught the fervor of his author. Homer, of course, wrote in
idiomatic Greek, and, in order to produce either a true copy of the
original, or an agreeable poem, should have been translated into
idiomatic English.

I am almost ashamed, after this censure of an author whom, in the main,
I admire as much as I do Cowper, to refer to my own translation of the
Fifth Book of the Odyssey. I desire barely to say that I have endeavored
to give the verses of the old Greek poet at least a simpler presentation
in English, and one more conformable to the genius of our language.

Page 315.

_The mock-grape's blood-red banner_, etc.

_Ampelopis_, mock-grape. I have here literally translated the botanical
name of the Virginia creeper--an appellation too cumbrous for verse.

Page 320.

A BRIGHTER DAY.

This poem was written shortly after the author's return from a visit to
Spain, and more than a twelvemonth before the overthrow of the
tyrannical government of Queen Isabella and the expulsion of the
Bourbons. It is not "from the Spanish" in the ordinary sense of the
phrase, but is an attempt to put into a poetic form sentiments and hopes
which the author frequently heard, during his visit to Spain, from the
lips of the natives. We are yet to see whether these expectations of an
enlightened government and national liberty are to become a reality
under the new order of things.

THE END.

End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant, by
William Cullen Bryant

*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT ***

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