I could easily multiply beautiful and effective passages from the
poetry of Manzoni; but I will give only one more version, “The Fifth
of May”, that ode on the death of Napoleon, which, if not the most
perfect lyric of modern times as the Italians vaunt it to be, is
certainly very grand. I have followed the movement and kept the
meter of the Italian, and have at the same time reproduced it quite
literally; yet I feel that any translation of such a poem is only a
little better than none. I think I have caught the shadow of this
splendid lyric; but there is yet no photography that transfers the
splendor itself, the life, the light, the color; I can give you the
meaning, but not the feeling, that pervades every syllable as the
blood warms every fiber of a man, not the words that flashed upon the
poet as he wrote, nor the yet more precious and inspired words that
came afterward to his patient waiting and pondering, and touched the
whole with fresh delight and grace. If you will take any familiar
passage from one of our poets in which every motion of the music is
endeared by long association and remembrance, and every tone is sweet
upon the tongue, and substitute a few strange words for the original,
you will have some notion of the wrong done by translation.