Anster:—
'Mysterious all—yet all is good,
All fair as at the birth of light.'
Shelley:—
'The world's unwithered countenance
Is bright as at the birth of day.'
Mr. Taylor's liability to mistake Goethe's meaning—a liability shared by most translators, because the poet is really simple, when they fancy him only an utterer of enigmas—is curiously shown by his rendering of a famous line:—
'Es irrt der Mensch, so lang er strebt.'
Goethe meant simply this, 'Man errs when he strives'—calm is both power and joy—leave the great movement of the world do to its work, and be passive in the hands of the Creator. His faith was in repose. Well, Mr. Taylor gives us the renderings of nine translators, none of whom have approached the simplicity, and only one or two the meaning of the original.
Ex. gr.:—