But much more
because in doing so I have also changed the _meaning_ of Virgil's line.
What that meaning is _I_ cannot say: Virgil has said it. But I can see
this much, that the translation conveys a far less vivid picture of the
outstretched hands and of their remaining outstretched, and a far less
poignant sense of the distance of the shore and the longing of the
souls. And it does so partly because this picture and this sense are
conveyed not only by the obvious meaning of the words, but through the
long-drawn sound of "tendebantque," through the time occupied by the
five syllables and therefore by the idea of "ulterioris," and through
the identity of the long sound "or" in the penultimate syllables of
"ulterioris amore"--all this, and much more, apprehended not in this
analytical fashion, nor as _added_ to the beauty of mere sound and to
the obvious meaning, but in unity with them and so as expressive of the
poetic meaning of the whole.
It is always so in fine poetry. The value of versification, when it is
indissolubly fused with meaning, can hardly be exaggerated.
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