However it may be with this...

However it may be with this, I am sure a complete Translation-even in Prose-would not have been a readable one-which, after all, is a useful property of most Books, even of Poetry. In studying the Original, you know, one gets contentedly carried over barren Ground in a new Land of Language-excited by chasing any new Game that will but show Sport; the most worthless to win asking perhaps all the sharper Energy to pursue, and so far yielding all the more Satisfaction when run down.

Especially, cheer’d on as I was by such a Huntsman as poor Dog of a Persian Scholar never hunted with before; and moreover-but that was rather in the Spanish Sierras-by the Presence of a Lady in the Field, silently brightening about us like Aurora's Self, or chiming in with musical Encouragement that all we started and ran down must be Royal Game! Ah, happy Days!

When shall we Three meet again-when dip in that unreturning Tide of Time and Circumstance!-In those Meadows far from the World, it seemed, as Salámán's Island-before an Iron Railway broke the Heart of that Happy Valley whose Gossip was the Millwheel, and Visitors the Summer Airs that momentarily ruffled the sleepy Stream that turned it as they chased one another over to lose themselves in Whispers in the Copse beyond.

Or returning-I suppose you remember whose Lines they are When Winter Skies were ting’d with Crimson still Where Thornbush nestles on the quiet hill, And the live Amber round the setting Sun, Lighting the Labourer home whose Work is done, Burn’d like a Golden Angel-ground above The solitary Home of Peace and Love- at such an hour drawing home together for a fireside Night of it with Aeschylus or Calderon in the Cottage, whose walls, modest almost as those of the Poor who cluster’d-and with good reason-round, make to my Eyes the Tower’d Crown of Oxford hanging in the Horizon, and with all Honour won, but a dingy Vapour in Comparison.

And now, should they beckon from the terrible Ganges, and this little Book begun as a happy Record of past, and pledge perhaps of Future, Fellowship in Study, darken already with the shadow of everlasting Farewell!