I agree! Both versions are great: the former is poetic and grand and would fit right in in a fantasy text; the latter is dry and informative and requires much

I agree! Both versions are great: the former is poetic and grand and would fit right in in a fantasy text; the latter is dry and informative and requires much less mental effort to translate and extract meaning from (though still more than "normal" text. I could imagine a third version that's clearer than the second and still nearly as poetic as the first.