e fay."

"My father, my father, and seest thou not
His sorceress daughter in yonder dark spot?"
"I see something truly, thou dear little fool,--
I see the great alders that hang by the pool."

"Sweet baby, I doat on that beautiful form,
And thou shalt ride with me the wings of the storm."
"O father, my father, he grapples me now,
And already has done me a mischief, I vow."

The father was terrified, onward he press'd,
And closer he cradled the child to his breast,
And reach'd the far cottage, and, wild with alarm,
He found that the baby hung dead on his arm!

The only criticism that need be passed on this is that any man of some
intelligence and patience can hope to do as well: he seldom wrote any
verse that was either much better or much worse. At the same time it
must not be forgotten that the success of the translation is no measure
of the impression made on the young Borrow by the legend.

His translations from Ab Gwilym are not interesting either to lovers of
that poet or to lovers of Borrow: some are preserved in a sort of life in
death in the pages of "Wild Wales."

From the German he had also translated F. M. Von Klinger's "Faustus: his
life, death and descent into hell." {75a} The preface announces that
"although scenes of vice and crime are here exhibited, it is merely in
the hope that they may serve as beacons, to guide the ignorant and unwary
from the shoals on which they might otherwise be wrecked." He insisted,
furthermore, that the book contained "the highly useful advice," that
everyone should bear their lot in patience and not seek "at the expense
of his repose to penetrate into those secrets which the spirit of man,
while dressed in the garb of mortality cannot and must not unveil. . . .
To the mind of man all is dark; he is an enigma to himself; let him live,
therefore, in the hope of once seeing clearly; and happy indeed is he who
in that manner passeth his days."

From the Danish of Johannes Evald, he translated "The Death of Balder," a
play, into blank verse with consistently feminine endings, as in this
speech of Thor to Balder: {75b}

How long dost think, degenerate son of Odin,
Unmanly pining for a foolish maiden,
And all the weary train of love-sick follies,
Will move a bosom that is steel'd by virtue?
Thou dotest! Dote and weep, in tears swim ever;
But by thy father's arm, by Odin's honour,
Haste, hide thy tears and the