A
translation of such poetry is not really the old meaning in a fresh
dress; it is a new product, something like the poem, though, if one
chooses to say so, more like it in the aspect of meaning than in the
aspect of form.
No one who understands poetry, it seems to me, would dispute this, were
it not that, falling away from his experience, or misled by theory, he
takes the word "meaning" in a sense almost ludicrously inapplicable to
poetry. People say, for instance, "steed" and "horse" have the same
meaning; and in bad poetry they have, but not in poetry that _is_
poetry.
"Bring forth the horse!" The horse was brought:
In truth he was a noble steed!
says Byron in _Mazeppa_. If the two words mean the same here, transpose
them:
"Bring forth the steed!" The steed was brought:
In truth he was a noble horse!
and ask again if they mean the same. Or let me take a line certainly
very free from "poetic diction:"
To be or not to be, that is the question.
You may say that this means the same as "What is just now occupying my
attention is the comparative disadvantages of continuing to live or
putting an end to myself.
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