ABSTRACT
Transplanting does not mean "free" translation in the slovenly sense; it means rigorously faithful translation plus something else: context. A free-verse translation of rhyme is not a living transplanting. English, having shed its noun and verb endings, has very few such feminine rhymes; to keep using the same few is not sonorous but soporific. The total effect in English depends on keeping, throughout, as many as feasible of the feminine rhymes, always a challenge in monosyllabic English. German seasons are more directly symbolic of man's life than in English. Historical context and psychological context are the roots and the soil of a poem. Goethe wrote these stanzas July 31, 1814, during his flight toward inwardness from that time's outward wars and politics. The poem was included in his Westöstlicher Divan. Only later did he append the last quatrain, with the unexpected irregularity of its two trimeter lines.
