Here, in order to keep Homer’s effect of perfect plainness and directness, I repeat the word ‘fires’ as he repeats πυρά without scruple; although in a more elaborate and literary style of poetry this recurrence of the same word would be a fault to be avoided. I omit the epithet of Morning, and whereas Homer says that the steeds ‘waited for Morning’, I prefer to attribute this expectation of Morning to the master and not to the horse. Very likely in this particular, as in any other single particular, I may be wrong: what I wish you to remark is my endeavour after absolute plainness of speech, my care to avoid anything which may the least check or surprise the reader, whom Homer does not check or surprise. Homer’s lively personal familiarity with war, and with the war-horse as his master’s companion, is such that, as it seems to me, his attributing to the one the other’s feelings comes to us quite naturally; but, from a poet without this familiarity, the attribution strikes as a little unnatural; and therefore, as everything the least unnatural is un-Homeric, I avoid it.
Again, in the address of Zeus to the horses of Achilles, Cowper has:
Jove saw their grief with pity, and his brows Shaking, within himself thus, pensive, said. ‘Ah hapless pair! wherefore by gift divine Were ye to Peleus given, a mortal king, Yourselves immortal and from age exempt?’
There is no want of dignity here, as in the versions of Chapman and Mr Newman, which I have already quoted: but the whole effect is much too slow. Take Pope:
Nor Jove disdained to cast a pitying look While thus relenting to the steeds he spoke. ‘Unhappy coursers of immortal strain! Exempt from age and deathless now in vain; Did we your race on mortal man bestow Only, alas! to share in mortal woe?’
Here there is no want either of dignity or rapidity, but all is too artificial. ‘Nor Jove disdained’, for instance, is a very artificial and literary way of rendering Homer’s words and so is, ‘coursers of immortal strain’.
Μυρομένω δ’ ἄρα τώ γε ἰδὼν, ἐλέησε Κρονίων.
And with pity the son of Saturn saw them bewailing, And he shook his head, and thus addressed his own bosom. ‘Ah, unhappy pair, to Peleus why did we give you, To a mortal? but ye are without old age and immortal. Was it that ye, with man, might have your thousands of sorrows? For than man, indeed, there breathes no wretcheder creature, Of all living things, that on earth are breathing and moving’.