I soon found it quite easy to be both terse and literal; and having rhythm only to care for without the tag of rhyme, I soon pleased my hearers and in some sort myself, reading "off the reel" directly from the Greek into the English.
This version is still unblotted by printer's ink: if any compositor pleases he is welcome to work on the copy; which I can supply gratis: only I do not promise to do more than I have done, Book Alpha.

Life is too short for such literary playwork.
Here followeth a sample: quite literal: line for line, almost word for word: my translation renders Homer exactly.

I choose the short bit where Thetis pleads with Jove for her irate son, because I am sure Tennyson must have had this passage in his mind when he drew his word-picture of Vivien with Merlin.
"But now at length the twelfth morn from the first had arrived; and returning Came to Olympus together the glorious band of immortals, Zeus the great king at their head.

And Thetis, remembering the cravings Of her own son, and his claims, uprose to the surface of ocean, And through the air flew swift to high heaven, ascending Olympus.
There she found sitting alone on the loftiest peak of the mountain All-seeing Zeus, son of Kronos, apart from the other celestials.
So she sat closely beside him, embracing his knees with her left hand, While with her right she handled his beard, and tenderly stroked it, Whispering thus her prayer to Zeus, the great king, son of Kronos," &c.

&c.
Let that suffice with a _caetera desunt_.
I need not say that I have written innumerable other, translated pieces, from earliest days of school exercises to these present.