"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.

A poem, a genuine poem, assumes its form by an inward necessity.
"Paradise Lost," conceived in Milton's brain, could not utter itself
in any other mode than the unrhymed harmonies that have given to our
language a new music. It could not have been written in the Spenserian
stanza. What would the "Fairy Queen" be in blank verse? For his theme
and mood Dante felt the need of the delicate bond of rhyme, which
enlivens musical cadence with swe