Johnson tells us that that only is good poetry which may be
translated into sensible prose. I greatly doubt whether any very
profound emotion can be so rendered. Man is a metrical animal, and it is
not in prose but in nonsense verses that the young mother croons her joy
over the new centre of hope and terror that is sucking life from her
breast. Translate passion into sensible prose and it becomes absurd,
because subdued to workaday associations, to that level of common sense
and convention where to betray intense feeling is ridiculous and
unmannerly. Shall I ask Shakespeare to translate me his love "still
climbing trees in the Hesperides"? Shall I ask Marlowe how Helen could
"make him immortal with a kiss," or how, in the name of all the Monsieur
Jourdains, at once her face could "launch a thousand ships and burn the
topless towers of Ilion"? Could Aeschylus, if put upon the stand, defend
his making Prometheus cry out,
O divine ether and swift-winged winds,
Ye springs of rivers, and of ocean waves
The innumerable smile, all mother Earth,
And Helios' all-beholding round, I call:
Behold what I, a god, from gods endure!
Or could Lear justify his
I tax not you, you elements, with unkindness;
I never gave you kingdoms, call'd you children!
No; precisely what makes the charm of poetry is what we cannot explain
any more than we can describe a perfume.
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