.

_Cras amet qui nunquam amavit_." "Perhaps if you read it to me--" He shook his head.
"No, child: the thing is late in half a dozen different ways.
The young, whom it understands, cannot understand it: the old, who arrive at understanding, look after it, a thing lost.

Go, dear: don't let me waste your time as well as an old man's." But when she had gone he sat on and wasted another hour in translating-- Time was that a rain-cloud begat her, impregning the heave of the deep.
'Twixt hooves of sea-horses a-scatter, stam- peding the dolphins as sheep, Lo! born of that bridal Dione, rainbowed and bespent of its dew:-- Now learn ye to love who loved never--now ye who have loved, love anew! She, she, with her gem-dripping finger enamels the wreath of the year; She, she, when the maid-bud is nubile and swelling, winds--whispers anear, Disguising her voice in the Zephyr's--'So secret the bed! and thou shy?
'She, she, when the midsummer night is a-hush draws the dew from on high; Dew bright with the tears of its origin, dew with its weight on the bough, Misdoubting and clinging and trembling-- 'Now, now must I fall?
Is it now ?' Brother Copas pushed the paper from him.
"What folly is this," he mused, "that I, who have always scoffed at translations, sit here trying to translate this most untranslatable thing?
Pah! Matthew Arnold was a great man, and he stood up to lecture the University of Oxford on translating Homer.

He proved excellently well that Homer was rapid; that Homer was plain and direct; that Homer was noble.

He took translation after translation, and proved--proved beyond doubting--that each translator had failed in this or in that; this or that being alike essential.