Walter gives us translations from Faust:

>Steve Schwartz seems partial to the Bayard Taylor translation:
>
>All things transitory
>But as symbols are sent:
>Earth's insufficiency
>Here grows to Event:
>The Indescribable,
>Here it is done:
>The Woman-soul leadeth us
>Upward and on!

Actually, not that passage.

>Here's my attempt:
>
>All that is fleeting
>Is but an example.
>What wants completing
>Now becomes ample.
>What speech cannot course
>Has turned into acts.
>Th' all womanly force
>Our striving attracts.

Here's Louis MacNeice:

  All that is past of us
  Was but reflected;
  All that was lost in us
  Here is corrected;
  All indescribables
  Here we descry;
  Eternal Womanhead
  Leads us on high.

"Eternal Womanhead?"  Anyway, Thomas Mann's favorite Faust translator,
George Madison Priest:

  All earth comprises
  Is symbol alone;
  What there ne'er suffices
  As fact here is known;
  All past the humanly
  Wrought here in love;
  The Eternal-Womanly
  Draws us above.

The variance of meaning among the examples drives me back to the original:

  Alles Vergaengliche
  ist nur ein Gleichnis;
  Das Unzulaengliche,
  hier wird's Ereignis;
  das Unbeschreibliche,
  hier ist getan;
  das Ewig-Weibliche
  zieht uns hinan.

Goethe's poetry here is both concentrated and vague, which plays merry hell
with translators.  To me the following is a close literal translation:

  Everything transitory
  is only an image;
  that potential (incomplete, yet-to-be-done)
  here becomes experience;
  the indescribable
  is here done;
  the Eternal-Feminine
  draws us on.

I would take a little something from each translator.

  All that is fleeting
  is symbol alone;
  what wants completing
  as fact here is known;
  all indescribables
  are here done;
  the Eternal-Feminine
  draws us on.

Steve Schwartz