"What if the former Love once more
Return—"
Two other rhymes were found with little difficulty in the di of diductos and in excutitur, which suggested wide and cast aside, and the whole stanza, omitting strictly metrical considerations, appeared, or rather might have appeared, for I have changed it slightly, as follows:—
"What if the former Love once more
Return and yoke the sweethearts parted wide,
If fair-haired Chloë be cast aside,
And open stand for Lydia the door?"
This stanza seemed to have the merit of almost complete literalness, since it omitted only two epithets, and I thought it had no unpardonable defects of rhythm and diction. So I took it as a model, and with little difficulty translated the entire ode—with what success I should not say and others need not inquire.
That rhymes and their position in the stanza are often determined for the translator by his original or else by a prose rendering of that original seems also to be shown by the following version of the closing ode of the first book (Carm. xxxviii)—the graceful "Persicos odi":—
"I hate your Persian trappings, boy,
Your linden-woven crowns annoy,
Cease searching for the spot where blows
The lingering rose.
"To simple myrtle nothing add;
The myrtle misbecomes, my lad,
Nor thee nor me drinking my wine
’Neath close-grown vine."
Here "puer," boy, and "Displicent," displease or annoy, seem to determine, not merely the first rhyme, but the rhyme arrangement (a, a), and it needs but a glance at the close of the first stanza of the original to show that another word rhyming with "boy" would be hard to obtain. It follows that, if we are to have a quatrain, the third and fourth verses should probably be made to rhyme (b, b), and it is not difficult to comply with this requirement, or to cast the second stanza in the mold of the first. It is, alas! too true that no equivalent to "blows" will be found in Horace, that "Sedulus curo" has been unceremoniously thrown aside, that the poet does not specifically mention "wine" as the beverage he liked to drink in his rustic arbor. But a "rose," which Horace does mention, certainly "blows" or blooms very often in English verse; it is not too far-fetched to get "nothing add" and "lad" out of "nihil allabores" and "ministrum"; and "vine" ("vite") has suggested "wine" to many generations of poets. But it is rhyme suggestions and their influence upon the choice of stanzaic form that have occasioned this mild protest against Professor Conington’s precepts of rigid stanzaic conformity. I am convinced, from the above examples and from many more, not only that uniformity of stanza is not to be strictly insisted upon when one is employing rhymes, but also that translators should search more diligently than they appear to do for the rhyme suggestions implicit in so many Horatian stanzas.
Upon other points it is easier to agree with Conington. For most of the odes the iambic movement natural to English is preferable, as Milton may be held to have perceived. He abandoned rhyme in his celebrated version of the "Quis multa gracilis" (i., v.), and hence he had an excellent opportunity to indulge in experiments in so-called logaœdic verse. But he clung to the iambic movement, and the fact is significant, although not to be pressed, since he gave us no other rendering of an entire ode. Here too, however, I must plead for a careful study of each ode by the would-be translator, for there seem to be cases in which it would be almost disastrous to attempt a version in iambics. Such a case is presented by the beautiful "Diffugere nives" (iv., vii.). The iambic renderings of Professor Conington and Sir Theodore Martin seem to stray far from the original movement—as far as the former’s "'No 'scaping death' proclaims the year" does from the diction of Horace or of any other good poet. It is true that English dactyls are dangerous things, especially in translations, where the padding or packing which is natural to the measure when employed in English, is increased by the padding inevitably introduced into a translation from a synthetic into an analytic language. Yet the dactylic movement of the First Archilochian, in which the "Diffugere nives" is written, is hardly without great loss to be represented by any use of English iambics. It presents more difficulty than the introduction of something resembling the movement of dactylic hexameters proper into our blank verse.
When the translator makes up his mind to attempt a close approximation to the Horatian meter, it would seem that he should eschew the use of rhyme as likely to operate against that effect of likeness to the original which he is striving to secure. But, since the use of rhyme in lyric poetry appears, as Conington held, to be essential at present if the English version is to be acceptable as poetry, this close approximation can be desirable in a few special cases only. It will not do to dogmatize on such matters, but it may be safely said that no poet, not even Milton or Whitman, has yet accustomed the English or the American ear to the use of rhymeless verse in lyrical poetry. Here and there a successful rhymeless lyric, such as Collins’s "Ode to Evening" and Tennyson’s "Alcaics" on Milton, shows us that rhymeless stanzas may occasionally be used for lyric purposes with good effect; but thus far those translators of Horace who have made a practice of eschewing rhyme have failed, as a rule, like the first Lord Lytton,[10] to give us versions that charm. Yet charm is what the translator of Horace should chiefly endeavor to convey.