Note 3 — TAINES ENGLISH LITERATURE.[1]
Reading edition
We have here substituted for M. Taine’s translation one that we consider better, and we add the following poetical paraphrase of the passage by Wordsworth:
“Man’s life is like a sparrow, mighty king. That, while at banquet with your chiefs you sit, Housed near a blazing fire, is seen to flit, Safe from the wintry tempest. Fluttering, Here did it enter, there, on hasty wing, Flies out, and passes on from cold to cold: But whence it came we know not, nor behold Whither it goes. Even such, that transient thing, The human soul, not utterly unknown, While in the body lodged, the warm abode; But from what world she came, what woe or weal On her departure waits, no tongue hath shown.”