Wisdom supreme, and Might divine,
And primal Love established me.
Created birth was none ere mine,
And I endure eternally:
Ye who pass in, all hope resign.
Has anything been lost in the transit from Italian words to English? English speech being organically more concentrated than Italian, does not the reduction of eleven syllables to eight especially subserve what ought to be the twofold aim of all poetic translation, namely, along with fidelity to the thought and spirit of the original, fidelity to the idiom, and cast and play of the translator’s own tongue?
Here is another short passage in a different key,—the opening of the last canto of the “Paradiso”:—
Maid-mother, daughter of thy Son,
Meek, yet above all things create,
Fair aim of the Eternal one,