impossible." Exquisitely done as is this version by Professor Conington, noble student of Virgil as he was, some faint notion of what is lost in the process might be gained by comparing a prose version of, say, Longfellow's "Evangeline" with his hexameters themselves:—
This is the forest primeval. The murmuring pines and the hemlocks
Bearded with moss, and in garments green, indistinct in the twilight,
Stand like Druids of eld, with voices sad and prophetic—
Stand like harpers hoar, with beards that rest on their bosoms.
At the very least, "the noblest measure ever moulded by the lips of man," Virgil's "ocean-roll of rhythm," is lost. That indeed is not revived for us in Conington's own poetical version, not in Dryden's, nor in Morris's. Of Virgil also that is true which T. B. Aldrich, charming poet that he was, wrote me anent his own early translations, "But who could hope to decant the wine of Horace?"
Yet it may be not without interest to compare some verse renderings of the initial lines:—
I (woll now) sing (if that I can,)
The armes and also the man,
That first came through his destinie,
Fugitive fro Troy the countrie
Into Itaile, with full much pine,
Unto the stronds of Lavine.—Chaucer, House of Fame.
Arms, and the man I sing, who, forced by Fate,
And haughty Juno's unrelenting hate,
Expelled and exiled, left the Trojan shore,
Long labors, both by sea and land, he bore,
And in the doubtful war, before he won
The Latian realm, and built the destined town;
His banished gods restored to rites divine,
And settled sure succession in his line,
From whence the race of Alban fathers come
And the long glories of majestic Rome.—Dryden.
