The inadequacy of translations will be more strikingly exemplified by comparing the following lines of Shakespeare with such a version as we might expect in another language:
“How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank!
Here will we sit, and let the sounds of music
Creep in our ears; soft stillness and the night
Become the touches of sweet harmony.”
A foreign translator, says Leigh Hunt, would dilute and take all taste and freshness out of this draught of poetry, after some such fashion as the following:
“With what a charm the moon serene and bright
Lends on the bank its soft reflected light!
Sit we, I pray, and let us sweetly hear
The strains melodious, with a raptured ear;