It smites their strength, and bellowing flings
Its silver foam afar--
So stern and thick the Danaan kings
And soldiers marched to war.
Each leader gave his men the word,
Each warrior deep in silence heard,
So mute they marched, them couldst not ken
They were a mass of speaking men;
And as they strode in martial might
Their flickering arms shot back the light.

It is, however, in dealing with poetry which is neither didactic nor
descriptive that the difficulty--indeed often the impossibility--of
reconciling the genius of the two languages becomes most apparent. It
may be said with truth that the best way of ascertaining how a fine or
luminous idea can be presented in any particular language is to set
aside altogether the idea of translation, and to inquire how some master
in the particular language has presented the case without reference to
the utterances of his predecessors in other languages. A good example of
this process may be found in comparing the language in which others have
treated Vauvenargues' well-known saying: "Pour exécuter de grandes
choses, il faut vivre comme si on ne devait jamais mourir."
Bacchylides[37] put the same idea in the following words:

θνατὸν εὖντα χρὴ διδύμους ἀέξειν
γνώμας, ὅτι τ' αὔριον ὄψεαι
μοῦνον ἁλίου φάος,
χὥτι πεντήκοντ' ἔτεα
ζωὰν βαθύπλουτον τελεῖς.[38]