> And the sad thing is, Bjarne, that many a 'proper'
> translation is every bit as clunky as your joke version.

That, dear giles earle, was my point when I wrote

>> of somewhat equal quality

Of course I am not a good judge of translations, none of the two languages being my mother tongue. Your version reduces the number of rhymes, and by rhyming "move" to "love", you apply a wonderful archaism as (quite wrongly) ridiculed in Gilbert's lines:

In that case unprecedented,
Single I must live and die —
I shall have to be contented
With a tulip or lily!

Rellstab has no archaisms as far as I see, but then, his topic is as conventional as can be.

Bjarne