meant to be conveyed is that of abiding beauty, and calm, unintermitting power. "Thunder strength" would be better. In the same line (to say nothing of the marring of the versification, which ought to have been fully closed at the end of it, and not broken in the middle) the interpolation of the word even (for which there is no countenance in the original) would of itself, be sufficient to sink the whole version down into Tartarus, even though the rest of it were really steeped in the richest melody that ever flowed from angelic lips. "Though none its meaning fathom may," is an inversion of ordinary syntax which we cannot bring ourselves to consider allowable. However, "the world's unwithered countenance is bright as at (on?) creation's day," fully makes amends for it, and strikes us as extremely beautiful, though very different from the words of the original. By "the world," however, we must understand not the earth merely, but, as the original has it, all "the inconceivably high works" of God.
In the second stanza, Gabriel takes up the note which Raphael had struck, and proceeds to describe his impressions of the gigantic ongoings of the universe. As Raphael had called attention principally to the sun, and made the feeling of serene power the predominant feature of his song; so now Gabriel singles out the earth as the great object of his description, and makes the feeling of unimaginable swiftness the ruling affection of our souls. In the original description before us, we wish to point out one image in particular—in our opinion a very important and picturesque one—which has never yet been brought out, or apparently even seen by any translator. It is contained in the third and fourth lines—lines which, though faithful enough in Shelley's version to the original, as far as the mere words are concerned, by no means body forth or give any sort of colour to the picture spoken of.
"Alternating Elysian brightness
With deep and dreadful night."
Surely this cannot merely mean that our earth is visited alternately by day and by night. The statement of such a truism would be unworthy of any great poet. What more, then, than this is contained or depicted in the original words? Reader! you shall see. Just suppose yourself standing on the point of view from which Gabriel is looking, that the sun is shining in all his glory, and that the earth, at a great distance, is whirling along before your eye with inconceivable velocity—what image would you behold?—what would first and chiefly catch your vision in its contemplation of the revolving earth? Would it not be her dark or unsunned side flashing round every moment into the light, and every moment whirling again as fast round into the shade? This, to us who dwell in mansions of clay, constitutes day and night—a tardy revolution of four-and-twenty hours; but to angel eyes how different! To them, looking forth upon the racing spheres, the day of the dwindled earth is but a momentary flash, and its night is but a momentary shade. Depend upon it, that is the picture which Goethe intended to represent, and which in fact he does most vividly portray,[1] if his translators had but had eyes to see it; and is it not sublime?
In the third stanza, the feeling intended to be conveyed appears to be that of impetuous violence, lulled at last, and subsiding into perfect peace—a feeling, however, which is marred by a blunder all the translators are guilty of, with the exception of Lord Gower and Mr Hayward, who, if we may judge from a note[2] in his admi-
- ↑ For German readers we add the words of the original,—
Es wechselt Paradieses-Helle
Mit tiefer schauervoller Nacht.In the preceding lines Gabriel had described the inconceivably rapid revolution of the earth; and in those before us he points out the consequence of this revolution—not its consequence in relation to us human beings, but in relation to himself and his brother-spectators; namely, that (es wechselt) "there is continually alternating" upon the earth a succession of light and shade, as rapidly as it is possible for them to alternate.
- ↑ Faust, a dramatic poem by Goethe, translated into English prose, with remarks on former translations and notes. By A. Hayward, Esq. Second edition. London: 1834.
