here all tinged with rose,
And the other heaven with fair serene adorned;"

I do not see how any English-speaking reader could hesitate for a moment
in finding a charm far greater in the first version than in the second,
or fail to recognize in it more of that quality which has made the name
of Dante immortal. If this be true, the only question that can be raised
is whether this advantage has been won by a sacrifice of that degree of
literalness which may fairly be demanded of a translation in poetic
form. Perfect and absolute literalness, it must be remembered, can only
be expected of a prose version, and even after the most perfect metrical
translation a prose version may be as needful as ever. Let us consider
for a moment the two examples as given above. It may be conceded at the
outset that the adverb _gia_ is more strictly and carefully rendered by
"ere" than by "oft," but the difference is not important, as any one old
enough to describe a daybreak has undoubtedly seen more than one. The
difference between "the approach of day" and "as day began" is
important, since the last moment of the approach coincides with the
first moment of the beginning. In the second line, "la parte oriental"
is both more literally and more tersely rendered by "the orient sky,"
than by the more awkward expression "the eastern hemisphere," unless it
be claimed that "sky" does not sufficiently recognize the earth as seen
in the view; to which it may justly be replied that the word
"hemisphere," if applied only to the earth, equally omits the sky, and
the two defects balance each other. "Tinged with rose" is undoubtedly a
briefer expression for the untranslatable "rosata" than "stained with
roseate hues" would be. The last line of the three finds an identical
rendering in the two versions, and while "bel sereno" is more literally
rendered by "fair serene" than by "light serene," yet the earlier phrase
has the advantage of being better English, serene being there used as an
adjective only, whereas in the later translation it is used as a noun, a
practice generally regarded as obsolete in the dictionaries. Even where
the word is thus employed, they tell us, it does not describe the
morning light, but indicates, like the French word "serein," an evening
dampness; as where Daniel says, "The fogs and the serene offend us."
Summing up the comparison, so far as this one example goes, it would
seem that the revised version of Longfellow has but ve