An Essay on 
 Metaphor in Poetry 
 
An Essay on 
 
 Metaphor in Poetry 
 
 WITH AN APPENDIX ON THE USE OF 
 
 METAPHOR IN TENNYSON'S 
 
 IN MEMORIAM 
 
 BY 
 
 J. G. JENNINGS, M.A.(Oxon.) 
 
 Indian Educational Service 
 
 BLACKIE AND SON LIMITED 
 
 50 OLD BAILEY LONDON 
 
 GLASGOW AND BOMBAY 
 
 1915 
 
Short swallow-flights of song, that dip 
 Their wings in tears, and skim away. 
 
 In Memoriam^ xlviii, iv. 
 
 The glory of the sum of things 
 Will flash along the chords and go. 
 
 In Memorianiy lxxxviii, iii. 
 
 347906 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 
 in 2007 with funding from 
 
 IVIicrosoft Corporation 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/essayonmetaphoriOOjennrich 
 
AN ESSAY ON METAPHOR 
 IN POETRY 
 
 §1 
 
 IN the 2 1 St chapter of his Poetic Aristotle 
 defines metaphor as " the transference of a 
 word to a sense different from its proper signi- 
 fication". Four kinds of metaphors are dis- 
 tinguished by him, namely, those in which the 
 transference is made (i) from the genus to the 
 species^ (2) from the species to the genuSy (3) 
 from species to species^ and (4) according to the 
 analogous (jcara to avoKoyov), So far as the first 
 three kinds are concerned the classification is 
 suflliciently simple. The nature of the last is 
 not so clear. In the Rhetoric (Book III, ch. x) 
 also Aristotle describes the fourth kind of meta- 
 phor as "those according to analogy (mr 
 avoKoylav) ", and in the Poetic (ch. xxi) he further 
 explains his meaning : " I call it the analogous, 
 
8 METAPHOR IN POETRY 
 
 when the relation of the second term to the 
 first is similar to that of the fourth to the 
 third ; for then the fourth is used instead of the 
 second, or the second instead of the fourth". 
 The distinction between this and the third kind 
 will need examination later. 
 
 As a specimen of the first kind of metaphor, 
 that is, transference from the genus to the species^ 
 Aristotle quotes from the Odyssey (I, 185) aline, 
 which translated runs thus : " (in yonder port) 
 my vessel stands'^ — "for to be moored", he 
 adds, "is a species of standing". The use of 
 the generic term "sea" for the specific or par- 
 ticular term " wave " may be adduced as afford- 
 ing a clearer example, as also "vessel" for 
 "ship", "iron" for "weapon", "dust" for 
 " body ". The figure is more commonly known 
 as that which substitutes the whole for the 
 part. 
 
 As a specimen of the second kind of meta- 
 phor, that is, transference of the species to the 
 genuSy Aristotle quotes from the Iliad (II, 272) 
 a line thus translated — " Odysseus has achieved 
 ten thousand valiant deeds" — "for", he adds, 
 " ten thousand is a great number, and is now 
 used instead of many"; in other words, a 
 specific number is used instead of a term in- 
 dicating a large number generally. The sub- 
 
ARISTOTLE 9 
 
 stitution of the word "sail" or "keel" for 
 "ship", of "roof" or "hearth" for "house", 
 or "wing" for "bird", may be clearer ex- 
 amples. This is the reverse of the first kind 
 of figure, and is generally known as the sub- 
 stitution of the part for the whole. 
 
 In a consideration of the nature and uses of 
 metaphor in poetry neither of these first two 
 of Aristotle's types need detain us long. Aris- 
 totle, we see, uses the term metaphor in a wider 
 sense than we do. For us now a metaphor is 
 a verbal change which is founded always upon 
 resemblance, and as such must come within 
 Aristotle's third and fourth kinds. As has 
 been pointed out by the critics, his first two 
 kinds of metaphors are now classed under the 
 head Synecdoche, a term which signifies the 
 taking of a part for the whole, or the reverse. 
 With figures of these two types the present 
 discussion is not concerned. They have their 
 value. The second type is in most frequent 
 use in poetry, and often adds delightfully to 
 vividness of description. The use of the first, 
 which is less frequent, reverses the process and 
 substitutes the vaguer for the more exact de- 
 scription, sometimes doubtless with ^a gain in 
 massiveness or dignity. But both are marked 
 off very clearly as belonging to another class 
 
10 METAPHOR IN POETRY 
 
 than metaphor in the modern sense, the meta- 
 phor proper. The movement of thought in 
 their case is one either of diminution or of 
 increase, and not a transfer as in the case of 
 metaphor proper. The movement in the one 
 case may perhaps be described as down or up, 
 whilst that in the other case is from side to 
 side ; the one vertical, the other horizontal. 
 
 We have then to deal only with Aristotle's 
 third and fourth classes — transference from 
 species to species, and transference according to 
 analogy. The distinction between these two 
 classes is not made clear by the philosopher. 
 One must doubt whether one species can be 
 used for another except on the principle of 
 analogy or resemblance, that is to say whether 
 Aristotle's third and fourth kinds of metaphors 
 are not ultimately one. Speaking of the third 
 kind he says {Poetic^ ch. xxi) — " (A transference) 
 from species to species is such as — 'Drawing 
 off his life with the brazen (sword) ', and, ' cut- 
 ting with unwearied sword'. For here", he 
 goes on, "to draw means to cut, and to cut 
 means to draw ; for each is a kind of taking 
 away." Perhaps what we are to understand is 
 that in the first quotation the action of a per- 
 son, namely " to draw off", is attributed to an 
 inanimate object, a weapon, the phrase being 
 
ARISTOTLE ii 
 
 used instead of the more logically appropriate 
 verb "to cut"; and, by the reverse process, in 
 the second quotation the action of an inanimate 
 object, namely "to cut", is attributed to the 
 personified "tireless sword", instead of some 
 such personal action as the drawing off of life 
 as though by the spirit of the weapon. 
 
 In the Rhetoric (III, xi) the philosopher says : 
 " Homer has in many places employed speaking 
 of inanimate things as animate by a metaphor", 
 and the examples of this use given, as follows, 
 are parallel with those above : " Back to the 
 plain still rolled the shameless stone" {Odyssey y 
 XI, 598); "the arrow /^w" {Iliad, XIII, 587); 
 ^^ Eager to wing its way" {Iliad, IV, 126); 
 " (spears) stood in the ground eager to taste of 
 flesh" {Iliad, XI, 574); and "through his breast 
 sped the impetuous spear" {Iliad, XV, 542). 
 These personifications, however, prove to be 
 examples of the fourth kind of metaphor 
 according to Aristotle, for he goes on imme- 
 diately to say — "These (Homer) has brought 
 in by the metaphor according to analogy ; for 
 as the stone is to Sisyphus, so is he who is in- 
 sensible of shame to the person in regard to 
 whom he is shameless". Of the fourth kind 
 of metaphor, it will be remembered, Aristotle 
 has written that "the relation of the second 
 
12 . METAPHOR IN POETRY 
 
 term to the first is similar to that of the fourth 
 to the third, for then the fourth is used instead 
 of the second, or the second instead of the 
 fourth". 
 
 In the personification of the " shameless 
 stone", however, as well as in the other per- 
 sonifications above, it would appear that two 
 of the four terms necessary in " metaphor 
 according to analogy" are not expressed or 
 directly implied, but merely indirectly implied 
 or involved. The two expressed or directly 
 implied are, in the first personification, the 
 stone and a shameless person ; the two remain- 
 ing terms involved are Sisyphus labouring 
 under the burden of the stone and anyone 
 suffering under insolence, but this second pair 
 is only indirectly implied by the personification 
 in Homer's text. In another example of the 
 third kind of metaphor it would appear that 
 only two of the four possible terms are ex- 
 pressed or directly implied. The example is 
 much commended by Aristotle (Rhetoric^ III, x) 
 — "for, when the poet calls old age 'stubble', 
 he produces in us learning and knowledge by 
 means of the (common) genus, for both are 
 past their prime"; that is both are species of 
 one genus. The second pair of terms here 
 remotely involved are perhaps life and the 
 
ARISTOTLE 13 
 
 harvest. As life is to old age, so is the harvest 
 to stubble ; so that one could, in Aristotle's 
 vein, not only speak of old age as the stubble of 
 life, but of stubble as the old age of the harvest, 
 thus using " either the fourth term instead of 
 the second, or the second term instead of the 
 fourth". But this example Aristotle distinctly 
 places in his third kind, as its effect is gained 
 " by means of the common genus ". Numerous 
 examples of metaphors of the fourth kind are 
 given both in the Poetic (ch. xxi) and in the 
 Rhetoric (Bk. Ill, chs. ii, iii, iv, x, xi), and the 
 differentiation between them and those of the 
 third kind would appear to be the direct or in- 
 direct implication of the second pair of terms, 
 as mentioned above. Perhaps the best of the 
 examples given are those in which evening is 
 described as " the old age of day " and old age 
 as " the evening of life, or, as Empedocles calls 
 it, the setting of life" {Poetic^ ^^I); ^^^ the 
 saying attributed to Pericles "that the youth 
 which had perished in the war had vanished 
 from the city as if one took the spring from 
 the year" {Rhetoric^ III, x). In each of these 
 cases the four terms stand out clearly, being 
 expressed or directly implied. 
 
 As regards these four terms and their rela- 
 tions Aristotle says (Rhetoric^ III, iv) : "The 
 
14 METAPHOR IN POETRY 
 
 metaphor from the analogous ought always to 
 admit of paying back (i.e. being inverted, as in 
 the comparisons of old age and evening above), 
 both in other cases, and in that (of species) of 
 the same genus " — thus expressly applying the 
 same rule to metaphors from species to species. 
 It does not appear that Aristotle would, if 
 pressed, have dwelt upon the mutual exclusive- 
 ness of his third and fourth classes. Indeed his 
 first three kinds — (i) from the genus to the 
 species, (2) from the species to the genus, and 
 (3) from species to species — are exhaustive ; 
 the only possible variety remaining being that 
 from genus to genus, which, since every genus 
 is itself a subdivision of a more comprehensive 
 aggregate, is merely nominally different from 
 the third kind. In strictness, therefore, Aris- 
 totle's fourth kind of metaphor does not differ 
 from the third as the first, second, and third 
 kinds differ from each other. It thus becomes 
 apparent that the fourth kind is a subdivision 
 or variety of the third. In the examples which 
 he gives of the third kind, it has been noticed, 
 only two terms are given or directly implied, 
 e.g. the drawing off and the cuttings though the 
 two remaining terms are indirectly involved and 
 easily supplied, e.g. the person who draws off 
 and the sword which cuts ; or take another 
 
ARISTOTLE 15 
 
 example, on which we have dwelt already, that 
 of stubble and old age^ in which the third and 
 fourth terms, viz. the harvest and life, are 
 readily suggested. In Aristotle's examples of 
 the fourth kind all four terms are plainly pre- 
 sented, e.g. in " the evening of life " and " the 
 old age of day ", " the youth of the city " and 
 " the spring of the year ". In it two pairs of 
 terms, each pair being capable of expression in 
 a possessive phrase, are clearly placed by com- 
 parison before the imagination. In the simpler 
 examples given to illustrate his third kind the 
 nouns in the possessive case, as it were, are 
 omitted, though it is possible to supply them 
 by an independent effort of the imagination. 
 The metaphor of the " shameless stone " (Odys- 
 sey^ XI, 598), for instance, implies the stone 
 and its burdensomeness, and the oppressor and 
 his shamelessness, and that of the " impetuous 
 spear " (Jliad^ XV, 542) implies the spear and 
 its flight, and the warrior and his zeal; the 
 second and fourth terms being in each case 
 interchangeable. If one examines, indeed, the 
 examples of Aristotle's first three kinds of meta- 
 phors one sees that they are all simple, and the 
 fourth kind alone is complex.^ A passage in 
 
 * Cf. RhetoriCf III, xi, n : " Similes also are in some way approved 
 metaphors j for they always are expressed in two terms, like the ana- 
 
i6 METAPHOR IN POETRY 
 
 Quintillan's Institutes of Oratory (Bk. VIII, ch. 
 vi) throws light on this distinction. " Tropes ", 
 he writes, " occur not only in single words, but 
 also in thoughts and in structure of composition: 
 those appear to me to have been in error who 
 have thought that there are no tropes but when 
 one word is put for another." The distinction 
 made here by Quintilian exactly corresponds to 
 the differentiation made above, and sufficiently 
 explains Aristotle's indifference to his first three 
 kinds of metaphor and his high commendation 
 of the fourth kind. " Of the four kinds of 
 metaphors," he says, " those kinds are the most 
 highly approved metaphors which are con- 
 structed according to analogy " {Rhetoric^ III, x) 
 — in other words, on similarity in complexity. 
 He does not analyse this superiority ; he states 
 it as self-evident and passes on. 
 
 Before turning from Aristotle let us glance 
 for one moment at his rules for the construction 
 and use of metaphors. Meagre as they are they 
 have not been much improved upon by his suc- 
 cessors, for though the world's literature is full 
 of the most consummate beauty introduced by 
 
 logical metaphor; so, the shield, we say, *i8 the cup of Ares'; the 
 bow, *a stringless lyre'. Thus one speaks complexly {\iyov(nv ovx 
 aTrKovp)-^ whereas calling a bow *a lyre' or a shield *a cup' is simple 
 (ttTrXoOj')." 
 
 (C802) 
 
ARISTOTLE 17 
 
 the agency of metaphors, theory and analysis 
 here seem to have lagged behind practice and 
 construction, and the nature and function of 
 metaphor retain much of their mystery still. 
 Metaphor is to be found everywhere and per- 
 meates all literature. It is not indeed the 
 spirit of poetry itself, but it is the very atmos- 
 phere of the land in which that spirit breathes 
 and roams. But that which is to be found every- 
 where is not necessarily that which is best 
 understood. Aristotle's rules {Rhetoric^ III, ii) 
 do not lay claim to any artistic subtlety, and it 
 must be remembered that they were expounded 
 primarily for orators, whose instrument, in- 
 tended for rapid use upon somewhat common- 
 place material, is necessarily less refined than 
 that of the poets. Firstly, he lays down, "It 
 is essential to use only such . . . metaphors as 
 are appropriate ; and this will depend on their 
 being constructed on analogy, otherwise they 
 will appear unsuitable". Secondly, " if you wish 
 to enhance the subject, it is necessary to fetch 
 the metaphor from such things in the same 
 genus as are better ; and if to disparage it, from 
 such things as are worse '\ Thirdly, " there 
 will be a fault in the syllables, unless there be 
 evidence of pleasant sound", that is unless they 
 be euphonious. Fourthly, " metaphors should 
 
 ( C 802 ) 2 
 
i8 METAPHOR IN POETRY 
 
 not be far-fetched ". And fifthly, " they should 
 have beauty '*, and beauty of words, he goes on 
 to show, lies either in sound, or force, or appeal 
 to the eye or other sense. Of these rules it 
 may be said that they carry us but a little dis- 
 tance — at best to points whence we may get, 
 afar oiF, glimpses of the land of poetry, its plains 
 and rivers, its sunshine and travelling storm, its 
 soaring mountains and embosomed vales. 
 
 In the Institutes of Oratory Quintilian dis- 
 tinguishes (Bk. VIII, ch. vi) synecdoche and 
 metaphor, and deals under the latter head only 
 with figures which Aristotle places in his third 
 and fourth classes, that is with metaphor in the 
 modern and contracted sense of the term. 
 "Metaphor has been invented", says the Ro- 
 man rhetorician, " for the purpose of exciting 
 the mind, giving a character to things, and set- 
 ting them before the eye ; synecdoche is adapted 
 to give variety to language, by letting us under- 
 stand the plural from the singular, the whole 
 from a part, a genus from a species, something 
 following from something preceding; and vice 
 versa.'* Having stated that tropes occur not 
 only in single words but also in complex notions, 
 he goes on to speak of " that species of trope 
 which is both the most common and by far the 
 most beautiful" — the metaphor. He distin- 
 
QUINTILIAN 19 
 
 guishes three kinds of uses of metaphor. "This 
 change we make", he says (VIII, vi), "either 
 because it is necessary^ or because it adds force 
 (significance), or because it is more ornamental^ 
 As illustrations of the above he adds : " From 
 necessity the rustics speak of the ' gemma ' (bud) 
 of the vines (for how else could they express 
 themselves ?), and say ' the corn thirsts ' and 
 * the crops suffer '; and so we say that a man is 
 ' hard ', or ' rough ', because there is no proper 
 term for us to give these dispositions of mind. 
 But we say that a man is 'inflamed with anger*,. 
 or * burning with desire ', and has ' fallen into 
 error ', with a view to force or significance of 
 expression. . . . The expressions ' luminous- 
 ness of language', * illustrious birth', * storms of 
 public assemblies', 'thunderbolts of eloquence ', 
 are used merely for ornament^ and it is thus that 
 Cicero calls Clodius in one place ' a source ' and 
 in another * a harvest and a foundation ' of 
 ' glory ' to Milo." In this threefold distinction 
 of the uses of metaphor, into the necessary, the 
 forcible, and the ornamental, we may recognize 
 an advance in the analysis of the subject ; and 
 in the unqualified isolation of metaphors used 
 for ornament or beauty only there is a decided 
 gain, as also in the distinction of the necessary 
 metaphors of common speech. 
 
20 METAPHOR IN POETRY 
 
 His analogies of the kinds of metaphors, as 
 distinguished from the uses, however, may with- 
 out injustice be characterized as little more than 
 mechanical. Of kinds of metaphors Quintilian 
 finds four. He is therefore apparently more 
 minute in his analysis than Aristotle, who sub- 
 divides metaphor proper, as we have seen, into 
 only two classes, his third and fourth kinds — 
 which on examination prove to be distinguished 
 only by simple and complex comparison respec- 
 tively. Quintilian's four kinds are as follows: 
 (i) When one sort of thing is put for another; 
 (2) when one inanimate thing is put for an- 
 other; (3) when inanimate things are put for 
 things having life; (4) when things having life 
 are put for things inanimate. These four, he 
 writes, may be distinguished into more 'species, 
 and words may be transferred — (i) from one 
 sort of rational animal to another; (2) from 
 one irrational animal to another; (3) from the 
 rational to the irrational; and (4) from the 
 irrational to the rational. And, he adds, words 
 may be transferred " from the whole of a thing 
 to a part, or from the part to a whole" — there- 
 with returning to synecdoche and the first two 
 classes of Aristotle. 
 
 In Quintilian's analysis of the uses of meta- 
 phor we may find, as has been said, special value 
 
MAX MULLER 21 
 
 in the distinction between the necessary and 
 ornamental uses of metaphors, the intermediate 
 use, namely, that which adds force or signifi- 
 cance, being not so clearly defined, or indeed 
 readily distinguishable from the ornamental. 
 These two outstanding uses correspond suffi- 
 ciently to the late Professor Max Mtlller's 
 " radical " and " poetical " metaphors. Max 
 Mailer {Science of Language^ 2nd Series, Ch. VIII, 
 "On Metaphor") points out that — "the fact 
 that all words expressive of immaterial concep- 
 tions are derived by metaphor from words 
 expressive of sensible ideas was for the first 
 time clearly and definitely put forward by 
 Locke,^ and is now fully confirmed by the 
 researches of comparative philologists '\ " Meta- 
 phor ", he adds, " is one of the most powerful 
 engines in the construction of human speech, 
 and without it we can hardly imagine how 
 any language could have progressed beyond 
 the simplest rudiments. . . . No advance was 
 
 1 Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding (III, i, 5) : "I doubt 
 not, but if we could trace these to their sources, we should find in all 
 languages the names which stand for things that fall not under our 
 senses, to have had their first rise from sensible ideas ". Similarly, 
 Victor Cousin, Lectures on the History of Philosophy during the l8th Cen- 
 tury (Paris, 1 841, Vol. II, p. 274), also quoted by Max Miiller — 
 "Analogy is the law of each growing or developed language. Hence 
 the metaphors to which our analysis traces back most of the signs and 
 names of the most abstract moral ideas." 
 
22 METAPHOR IN POETRY 
 
 possible in the intellectual life of man with- 
 out metaphor." And again — "Language has 
 been a very good housewife to her husband, the 
 human Mind; she has made very little go a 
 long way. With a very small share of such 
 material roots as we just mentioned, she has 
 furnished decent clothing for the numberless 
 offspring of the Mind, leaving no idea, no 
 sentiment, unprovided for, except, perhaps, the 
 few which, as we are told by some poets, are 
 inexpressible ". He then proceeds to distin- 
 guish between two kinds of metaphor, which 
 he calls radical and poetical^ and illustrates them 
 by examples. " I call it radical metaphor when 
 a root which means to shine is applied to form 
 the names, not only of the fire or the sun, but 
 of the spring of the year, the morning light, 
 the brightness of thought, or the joyous out- 
 burst of hymns of praise. Ancient languages 
 are brimful of such metaphors, and under the 
 microscope of the etymologist every word almost 
 discloses traces of its first metaphorical concep- 
 tion." In this we may find the equivalent of 
 Quintilian's "necessary'* use of metaphor. It is 
 here also that we may seek for elucidation of 
 the fact to which Jean Paul Richter refers, that 
 *' no nation called error light, or truth dark- 
 ness ". " From this ", continues Max Mailer, 
 
LONGINUS 23 
 
 *' we must distinguish /><?^//V^/ metaphor, namely, 
 when a noun or verb, ready made and assigned 
 to one definite object or action, is transferred 
 poetically to another object or action. For 
 instance, when the rays of the sun are called 
 the hands or fingers of the sun, the noun 
 which means hand or finger existed ready made, 
 and was, as such, transferred poetically to the 
 stretched-out rays of the sun ". Max Mailer's 
 two kinds of metaphors may then be said to 
 correspond respectively to Quintilian's first and 
 third uses (the necessary and the ornamental) ; 
 and if Quintilian's second use (the forcible) is 
 a legitimate subdivision it may also be included 
 under Max Mailer's second head. It is upon 
 the former of these that Max Mailer as a 
 philologist chiefly dwells; it is with the latter, 
 or metaphor in poetry, that this essay is con- 
 cerned. 
 
 Apart from the significant fact that Longinus 
 includes the subject of metaphor in his treatise 
 On the Sublime^ the actual remarks on the matter 
 by this great writer, as far as they have come 
 down to us, scarcely add to those of his pre- 
 decessors. It would appear indeed that the 
 gap in the text preceding the passage on meta- 
 phor (Sections 31-32) implies the loss of 
 Longinus* opening observations on the subject, 
 
24 METAPHOR IN POETRY 
 
 whilst the next gap deprives us of the remarks 
 on comparisons and similes. Professor Saints- 
 bury in his History of Criticism — to which mine 
 of learning I am greatly indebted — remarks 
 with characteristic vivacity that the latter lacuna 
 is " a gap where the demon has interfered with 
 less malice than usual"; but here it seems 
 allowable to disagree. " Neighbouring on meta- 
 phors," says Longinus (Section 37), "for we 
 must go back to these, are comparisons and 
 similes, differing from them only in the follow- 
 ing respect. . . ." The writer of the treatise 
 On the Sublime might have given us something 
 upon this portion of his subject worth our 
 meditation. It is to be noted, however, that 
 he associates metaphor with the sublime, and 
 this by itself may be taken as adding to the 
 analysis. There are five different sources, he 
 says (Section 8), of sublimity of style, and of 
 these the fourth is diction — " noble phraseology, 
 of which the subdivisions are choice of words, 
 and use of tropes and elaboration ". And after 
 adducing instances from Xenophon and Plato, 
 he says (Section 32) : " these suffice to show 
 how grand in their nature tropical expressions 
 are, and how metaphors produce sublimity ". 
 
 Later systematic writers on figures of rhe- 
 toric during the scholastic ages, and their 
 
LORD KAMES 25 
 
 spiritual descendants, from the days of the 
 Frankish empire onwards, add little or nothing 
 to the analysis of the subject by the great clas- 
 sical authorities, whom for the most part they 
 follow. Those who are curious may find a 
 characteristic survey of the subject from this 
 point of view in the Elements of Criticism by the 
 Scots critic, Henry Home, Lord Kames, first 
 published in 1761, and still appealing to the 
 public in 1839 at least, when the eleventh 
 edition was issued. So far as they touch the 
 subject of metaphor, they deal, like their pre- 
 decessors, with verbal rather than constructive 
 metaphor, that is, with metaphors in isolation 
 rather than in constructive relationship with 
 their contexts. The old reproach may be 
 levelled against them. They seem to teach 
 nothing but how to name their tools. In other 
 words, their work in this matter is analytic, but 
 without synthetic or constructive force. None 
 would judge from them that in proportion as 
 you eliminated metaphor from poetry you would 
 take away, as has been said above, not indeed 
 the spirit of poetry but the atmosphere of 
 poetry, its power to move and breathe with 
 joy, and ultimately perhaps to live. The scope 
 of this essay does not admit of mention of any 
 but positive contributions to the subject. 
 
26 METAPHOR IN POETRY 
 
 A remark of Samuel Johnson on metaphor 
 justifying his own style against an objection of 
 Lord Monboddo, brought to his notice by the 
 faithful Boswellj is full of suggestion — "as to 
 metaphorical expression, that is a great excel- 
 lence in style, when it is used with propriety, for 
 it gives you two ideas for one" (Boswell, Ch. 
 XLI, a. 1777). This is a decided contribution 
 to the subject, but the Doctor himself did not 
 develop the remark, and it fell apparently upon 
 somewhat stony ground. Its truth is self- 
 evident^when the attention has once been drawn 
 to it. f Metaphor whilst conveying one idea 
 raises another simultaneously before the mindJ 
 The place and function of the added idea are, 
 however, not so evident. Some luminous and 
 suggestive remarks bearing on this point may 
 be found, as might be expected, in Coleridge's 
 critical writings, though they were not written 
 directly upon the subject of metaphor, but upon 
 that of imagination. Describing the Shake- 
 speare of the Venus and Adonis^ he says {Lectures 
 of 18 1 8, Section I): "He had as unequivo- 
 cally proved the indwelling in his mind of 
 imagination, or the power by which one image 
 or feeling is made to modify many others, and 
 by a sort of fusion to force many into one; — that 
 which afterwards showed itself in such might 
 
COLERIDGE 27 
 
 and energy in Lear^ where the deep anguish 
 of a father spreads the feeling of ingratitude 
 and cruelty over the very elements of heaven; — 
 and which, combining many circumstances into 
 one moment of consciousness, tends to produce 
 that ultimate end of all human thought and 
 human feeling, unity, and thereby the reduc- 
 tion of the spirit to its principle and fountain, 
 who is alone truly one. Various are the work- 
 ings of this the greatest faculty of the human 
 mind, both passionate and tranquil. In its 
 tranquil and purely pleasurable operation, it acts 
 chiefly by creating out of many things, as they 
 would have appeared in the description of an 
 ordinary mind, detailed in unimpassioned suc- 
 cession, a oneness, even as nature, the greatest 
 of poets, acts upon us, when we open our eyes 
 upon an extended prospect. Thus the flight of 
 Adonis in the dusk of the evening: 
 
 Look! how a bright star shooteth from the sky; 
 So glides he in the night from Venus' eye! 
 
 How many images and feelings are here brought 
 together without effbrt and without discord, in 
 the beauty of Adonis, the rapidity of his flight, 
 the yearning, yet hopelessness, of the enamoured 
 gazer, while a shadowy ideal character is thrown 
 over the whole! Or this power acts by im- 
 
28 METAPHOR IN POETRY 
 
 pressing the stamp of humanity, and of human 
 feelings, on inanimate or mere natural objects: 
 
 Lo! here the gentle lark, weary of rest, 
 
 From his moist cabinet mounts up on high. 
 
 And wakes the morning, from whose silver breast 
 
 The sun ariseth in his majesty, 
 
 Who doth the world so gloriously behold. 
 
 The cedar-tops and hills seem burnish'd gold. 
 
 Or again, it acts by so carrying on the eye of 
 the reader as to make him almost lose the con- 
 sciousness of words, — to make him see every- 
 thing flashed, as Wordsworth has grandly and 
 appropriately said, — 
 
 Flashed ^ upon that inward eye. 
 Which is the bliss of solitude; — 
 
 and this without exciting any painful or labori- 
 ous attention, without any anatomy of descrip- 
 tion, (a fault not uncommon in descriptive 
 poetry) — but with the sweetness and easy move- 
 ment of nature. This energy is an absolute 
 essential of poetry, and of itself would consti- 
 tute a poet, though not one of the highest 
 class." And again referring to the Venus and 
 Adonis (in Lectures and Notes on Shakespeare and 
 
 1 This is inaccurately quoted, for " They flashed ", from the poem of 
 1804 on the Daffodils. 
 
COLERIDGE 29 
 
 Other English Poets, ed. 1897, App. I), Coleridge 
 says: "Scarcely less sure, or if a less valuable, 
 not less indispensable mark 
 
 VoVljJLOV jJiiv YLoitJTOV ... 
 
 . . . oarTi9 prjjuLa yevvaiov XaKOiy 
 
 will the imagery supply, when, with more than 
 the power of the painter, the poet gives us the 
 liveliest image of succession with the feeling of 
 simultaneousness ! 
 
 With this he breaketh from the sweet embrace 
 Of those fair arms, that bound him to her breast. 
 And homeward through the dark laund runs apace: 
 
 Look! how a bright star shoot eth from the sky ; 
 So glides he in the night from Fenus* eye. 
 
 Venus and Adonis, 1. 8 1 1." 
 
 The poet-critic is writing of the faculty of 
 imagination and not directly of metaphor or 
 simile, but his poetic examples of the exercise 
 of the faculty are similes and metaphors, and 
 his luminous suggestions may serve as a point 
 of departure for the theory developed in the 
 following pages. 
 
LET us turn from the critics to the uncon- 
 scious practice of the poets themselves. 
 And first let us dwell on the fact that all meta- 
 phor, that is metaphor in the modern sense, 
 implies analogy or resemblance — a resemblance 
 or analogy in which the poets obviously delight; 
 and let us ask ourselves why they delight in 
 resemblance and why we delight in it with them. 
 The secret of this pleasure is not at all open or 
 obvious. The perception that two or more 
 things are alike does as a rule, indeed, give 
 pleasure ; but it does not in the least follow that 
 this pleasure has usually anything whatever to 
 do with poetic feeling. It is connected usually 
 with a certain logical satisfaction, the satisfaction 
 that arises in the mind from the perception of 
 system and order, the satisfaction that comes 
 from classification, from the sense of an exten- 
 sion or confirmation of the realm of knowledge 
 and a corresponding diminution of or conquest 
 of the realm of the unknown. It is for the 
 
32 METAPHOR IN POETRY 
 
 most part — that is, so far as the use of com- 
 parison is analytic and classifying rather than 
 constructive and unifying, which latter side of 
 the subject will be dealt with later (p. 63) — 
 purely logical, rationalistic, or scientific, and as 
 such has nothing to do with poetry, the essen- 
 tial characteristic of which is its emotion, as 
 opposed to logic and reasoning. Clearness, 
 vividness, illumination, it may be said, are 
 gained by comparisons such as those with which 
 we are dealing, and these, it may be maintained, 
 are poetical requisites. Clearness of illustration, 
 it should be replied, is essentially logical in its 
 nature ; and therefore, though no one wishes to 
 exclude it from poetry any more than one wishes 
 to debar the poets from the use of correct 
 grammar and rational thought, such clearness 
 of illustration is not the secret of the poets' 
 pleasure in and need of those metaphors with- 
 out which apparently they can hardly give ex- 
 pression to any of the varied emotions strug- 
 gling within them to find form and utterance. 
 It is this same distinction perhaps that Quin- 
 tilian points out in the differentiation between 
 his second and third uses of metaphor — the 
 difference between its use as adding " force (sig- 
 nificance)" and its use "because it is more 
 ornamental". It is with that which primarily 
 
CLEARNESS AND DELIGHT 33 
 
 brings delight that we are concerned in poetry, 
 not with that which brings primarily clearness ; 
 and though clearness and delight may often 
 "mix in one another's arms to one pure image" 
 of poetic pleasure, the distinction yet remains 
 and must be insisted on, the one being logical 
 in its nature and the other emotional. The 
 marked preference of at least the modern poets 
 for metaphor rather than for simile perhaps 
 illustrates this contention. Metaphor and simile 
 are equally comparisons, " for the simile ", as 
 Aristotle says, " is metaphor with the addition 
 (of a word denoting comparison), on account of 
 which it is less pleasing, because more at length " 
 {^hetoriCy III, x).^ But in the case of the simile 
 the introducing word "like" or "as" emphasizes 
 and enforces the similarity and puts the illustra- 
 tion in the clearest light, whereas in the metaphor 
 the illustration is decidedly if not deliberately 
 obscured. There is a certain pause, a certain 
 coldness, introduced by the formal introductory 
 word ; clearness comes in with it, but something 
 of warmth goes out. Hence doubtless the poetic 
 preference for the metaphor, at least in modern 
 times, a preference shared by the acute intellect 
 of Aristotle and recommended by him to orators 
 in the passage above, though the philosopher 
 
 1 Cf. also Rhetoric^ III, xi, ii. 
 ( C 802 ) 3 
 
34 METAPHOR IN POETRY 
 
 says elsewhere that "the simile is useful also 
 in speaking, though seldom, for it is poetical " 
 {^hetoriCy III, iv) — a remark doubtless influenced 
 by the long and beautiful similes of Homer. 
 The elaborate similes that beautify the pages 
 more especially of the epic poets have, however, 
 been largely displaced in poetic favour by the 
 metaphor, which heightens the mood whilst the 
 simile too often checks it — a difficulty which, 
 speaking generally, is partly obviated by the use 
 of simile as introductory and leading up to the 
 warmer mood, when it could not with any 
 maintenance of the emotion follow it. 
 
 Clearness of illustration, then, is a logical, that 
 is a prosaic, beauty, and is not the aim of the 
 poet. To test further the truth of this conclu- 
 sion let us choose a metaphorical passage from 
 the poets for examination. In the following 
 passage from Shelley's Skylark^ beginning — 
 
 All the earth and air 
 
 With thy voice is loud, 
 As, when night is bare, 
 From one lonely cloud 
 The moon rains out her beams, and heaven is over- 
 flowed — 
 
 metaphors and similes are mingled, but the very 
 similes, despite the apparent definiteness of 
 
SHELLEY 35 
 
 comparison implied in their necessary form^ 
 appear to denounce any intention of clear illus- 
 tration. The famous succession of comparisons 
 which follows must be specially examined. 
 
 What thou art we know not ; 
 
 What is most like thee ? 
 From rainbow clouds there flow not 
 Drops so bright to see 
 As from thy presence showers a rain of melody : — 
 
 Like a poet hidden 
 
 In the light of thought, 
 Singing hymns unbidden, 
 
 Till the world is wrought 
 To sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded not : 
 
 Like a high-born maiden 
 
 In a palace tower. 
 Soothing her love-laden 
 
 Soul in secret hour 
 With music sweet as love, which overflows her bower: 
 
 Like a glow-worm golden 
 
 In a dell of dew. 
 Scattering unbeholden 
 Its aerial hue 
 Among the flowers and grass, which screen it from the 
 view; 
 
 Like a rose embowerM 
 In its own green leaves, 
 
36 METAPHOR IN POETRY 
 
 By warm winds deflower'd, 
 Till the scent it gives 
 Makes faint with too much sweet these heavy-winged 
 thieves. 
 
 Sound of vernal showers 
 
 On the twinkling grass, 
 Rain-awaken'd flowers, 
 All that ever was 
 Joyous, and clear, and fresh — thy music doth surpass. 
 
 Simile after simile, and metaphor after meta- 
 phor 1 Why does Shelley pour forth before us 
 such a wealth of comparisons ? Is it in order 
 to make quite clear to us by means of illustra- 
 tion what the song of a skylark actually sounds 
 like ? If so, do the illustrations draw us in the 
 least nearer to the point.'' It is surely self- 
 evident that those who have never heard the 
 skylark will never know what its triumphant 
 paean is like from any number of comparisons 
 whether with moonlight, or poets, or high-born 
 maidens, glow-worms, roses, or rain ; and that 
 for anyone who has heard the bird of a spring- 
 day, at " Home ", in our sea-girt islands, the 
 comparisons are totally unnecessary to bring 
 back the memory of the little creature's melo- 
 dious cries. Shelley knew all this as well as any- 
 one else, and clearness of illustration had evi- 
 
EMOTIONAL USE 37 
 
 dently nothing whatever to do with his pur- ^ 
 pose. 
 
 Poetry is in its essence emotional, not logical. 
 There is as yet no satisfactory definition of 
 poetry. But the true definition of poetry when 
 at last it is made will have to include the state- 
 ment that poetry is an expression of emotion 
 through words. Much will still be left to be 
 said after that; for all verbal expression of 
 emotion is not necessarily poetic — much of it, 
 indeed, is essentially unpoetic and vile. The 
 whole relation of poetry to beauty, of thought 
 and sight and sound, and to truth, remains un- 
 defined. *But this, however, stands forth clearly 
 — that words without emotion, whatever else 
 they are, are not poetry. The use of metaphor 
 similarly is not poetic, unless it be an emotional 
 use. A logical use, for the purpose of appeal- 
 ing to the understanding, to bring out points 
 of likeness clearly, to classify, to illustrate, 
 excellent as this may be in its proper place, is 
 altogether remote and alien from poetic usage. 
 
 It would indeed be difficult to find clear 
 examples in English poetry of what may be 
 called the illustrative or explanatory use of 
 metaphor, or even of simile.^ No good pas- 
 sage, I think I may venture to say, will afford 
 
 ^ Prose examples are given below, pp. 60, 69. 
 
38 METAPHOR IN POETRY 
 
 such an example. Those who cannot accept 
 this statement will at least agree that the purely 
 illustrative use, that is the use of metaphor 
 which does not contribute some element of 
 beauty as well as that of clearness, is rare in 
 poetry. They will probably admit that beauty 
 in metaphor is essential, whereas clearness of 
 illustration is not. And indeed the statements 
 of poetry are perhaps never so abstract and 
 recondite as to require clear illustration by 
 example, such as is frequently necessary or at 
 least advantageous in prose. 
 
 If then the logical value of comparison in 
 poetry is little or nothing, what is its emotional 
 value.? Poetry is, as has been said already, a 
 verbal expression of emotion, based upon truth 
 and beauty. The emotion is caused by the con- 
 templation of this manifold universe in which 
 we live, and beyond which we cannot even in 
 thought for a single moment go. Emotion so 
 caused in certain gifted natures finds its fit 
 expression in poetry. With the exact relations 
 of poetry to truth and beauty we need not here 
 concern ourselves. That there is some such 
 relationship all will acknowledge, and to truth 
 as well as to beauty the poet is in some measure 
 bound. Now what is the first and most striking 
 characteristic of this universe in which we live, 
 
THE COMPLEX WORLD 39 
 
 and from which we cannot escape even in thought 
 for a moment, and the contemplation of which 
 arouses in the poet's mind the emotions ex- 
 pressed in the poet's versfe? Surely, its over- 
 whelming complexity — its manifoldness, its 
 variety, its awful ranges of height and depth, 
 its endless vistas of space and time, defeating 
 thought alike in its immeasurable totals and 
 in the infinite smallness of its factors — behind 
 which lies ever unrevealed the One, that unity 
 which shows itself to us only in endless com- 
 plexity. And to a clear vision this complexity 
 is as patent in the part as in the whole, in a 
 single scene as in the whole survey of the 
 heavens, in a single mind as in the whole of 
 humanity, in a tree or flower as in a human 
 being. Whatever the degree of truth necessary 
 in poetry, it seems clear that this complexity of 
 the universe and of all that is in it must find 
 some representation in poetry. The complex 
 world can be truly depicted only by a complex 
 portraiture. This is the case not only with so- 
 called descriptive poetry — and indeed it may be 
 doubted whether anything approaching formal 
 or minute description can be poetry — not only 
 with the poetry of the outer and visible world, 
 but with the poetry of the inner world of the 
 feelings also, for the inner world depends upon. 
 
40 METAPHOR IN POETRY 
 
 and is inextricably involved with, the outer. 
 Now it is obvious that the metaphorical is not 
 only a pictorial but a complex method of speech ; 
 and as such it is peculiarly fitted to enable the 
 poet to express adequately the emotions aroused 
 in him by the contemplation of this our various 
 universe.^ 
 
 Metaphor is indeed a double language, giving 
 you, in Samuel Johnson's words, " two ideas for 
 one", and by means of metaphor the poet can 
 bring up delightfully, without a suspicion of 
 philosophical pedantry, scene after scene to com- 
 plete and to correct the partial nature of the 
 action or theme which has his main attention. 
 Thus, to use the words of Coleridge in the 
 passage to which reference has been made above, 
 metaphor "gives us the liveliest image of suc- 
 cession with the feeling of simultaneousness". 
 While retaining the unity of the subject and of 
 the moment, it presents us simultaneously with 
 other and connected thoughts, " creating out of 
 many things, as they would have appeared in 
 
 ^ Cf. Carlyle, On Heroes : " On this point many things have been 
 written, especially by late German critics, some of which are not very 
 intelligible at first. They say, for example, that the poet has an in- 
 Jinitude in him ; communicates an Unendlichkeit, a certain character of 
 * infinitude', to whatsoever he delineates. This, though not very pre- 
 cise, yet on so vague a matter is worth remembering." {The Hero as 
 Poet.) 
 
UNITY AND DIVERSITY 41 
 
 the description of an ordinary mind, detailed in 
 unimpassioned succession, a oneness, even as 
 nature, the greatest of poets, acts upon us, when 
 we open our eyes upon an extended prospect". 
 As by a landscape all things are presented to 
 the consciousness together in one sweep, so by 
 poetic metaphor the complexity of the world 
 is borne in upon us whilst the attention is not 
 diverted from the main theme. As the world 
 is one and manifold, so metaphor presents unity 
 and diversity simultaneously, pointing out simi- 
 larity and at the same time adding diversity. 
 Difference in unity is the characteristic of the 
 universe, and this the double nature of meta- 
 phor renders it peculiarly fitted to represent. 
 Metaphor may be compared to a background, 
 ever shifting, ever varied, before which the 
 visions of the poets pause or move. It may 
 be said also to stand to the main theme of a 
 poem as does the harmony to the air in music, 
 enriching and enhancing it inexpressibly. And 
 as in the history of music the former has de- 
 veloped during the course of the ages, so 
 apparently it may be said, in the history of 
 literature, has the use of poetic metaphor de 
 veloped. 
 
 The meaning and use of all those metaphors 
 and similes in Shelley's Skylark seem to me 
 
42 METAPHOR IN POETRY 
 
 now to stand unveiled. It was not to make 
 clear to us what the song of the skylark actually 
 sounded like that Shelley heaped comparison 
 on comparison. Nothing whatever can make 
 that clear to us except the song of the little 
 being itself. But as the poet listened to the 
 English bird^s sweet cries, or as he dwelt upon 
 them afterwards in recollection — to use Words- 
 worth's distinction — fair thoughts of other 
 things, surrounding and allied with these, 
 poured in upon his mind. Whilst the bird 
 sings over some fresh inland field or hill-side 
 in England, the waves still lap or thunder round 
 our white island shores, which the green seas 
 keep inviolate ; night pursues day ; good and 
 evil, joy and pain, beauty and horror, wage 
 their eternal warfare; and the world still surges 
 forward on its voyage through the unfathomable 
 to the unknown. And so the poet's changing 
 metaphors bring up before us, in sweep after 
 sweep, around the enraptured bird and the sun- 
 shine of English fields, clear night with the 
 lonely moon ; spring day with rain-clouds and 
 the bow; the dull low world of men amidst 
 whom and for whom the poet-prophet strives 
 and suffers and haply perishes ; fair palaces and 
 music and the love of women; dim night and 
 glow-worms and the dewy grass; the languor 
 
THE BACKGROUND 43 
 
 of summer and its roses ; and once again fresh 
 spring, and its showers and wet herbage. Of 
 such is the world in which we dwell. Shelley 
 does not say this in philosophical terms. He 
 merely depicts the world as he sees it, and I 
 cannot imagine how he could have brought 
 together all this variety of thought and scene 
 undidactically otherwise than by the marvellous 
 agency of metaphor and simile. So also with 
 the passage instanced by Coleridge from the 
 Venus and Adonis : — 
 
 Look ! how a bright star shooteth from the sky ; 
 So glides he in the night from Venus' eye ! 
 
 Coleridge points out how " images and feelings 
 are here brought together without effort and 
 without discord ", but strangely enough omits 
 from the enumeration of these the splendour 
 of the nightly heavens which the comparison 
 brings in, to the immeasurable enhancement of 
 the truth and beauty of the scene. The starry 
 universe is the background of the stage on 
 which we play our several parts, and here by 
 the force of the metaphor alone the vision is 
 strengthened and pierces beyond the puppets 
 to the divine frame of things. The " -/Eonian 
 music measuring out the steps of Time " comes 
 to us softly here through the accompaniment 
 
\ 
 
 44 METAPHOR IN POETRY 
 
 of metaphor, whilst the air which is the main 
 theme is heard, rising simple and clear. 
 
 We may take other instances. The follow- 
 ing, from the Iliad^ IV, 422 foil., is the simile 
 preceding the description of Diomedes' attack 
 upon the Trojans. "As when on the loud- 
 sounding shore a wave of the sea, followed fast 
 by others, rushes beneath the impulse of the 
 West Wind; and first it crests itself upon the 
 sea, but then breaking on the land it roars 
 aloud, and surging high round the rocks over- 
 hangs, and spews forth its salt foam; so then 
 the Greeks" rushed on the foe. Here, in spite 
 of the precision of comparison which the simile 
 necessarily brings, the gusto with which the 
 poet describes the waste of rushing waters, 
 cresting themselves far out at sea in long suc- 
 cession and breaking in foam and fury away, 
 shows that he loved these things for themselves 
 and not for any likeness to the ranks of battle 
 array. To the narrow plain of Troy they add 
 the wide spaces of the Western sea, the thoughts 
 of ships and still other struggles of men besides 
 those that they wage with one another. The 
 comparison enriches the scene with a noble 
 background ; it does not illustrate the picture 
 of the ranks of charging men. 
 
 Let us take the following passage, from the 
 
EURIPIDES 45 
 
 beautiful chorus of Bacchantes commencing 
 with 1. 862 of the Bacchae of Euripides, thus 
 translated by Professor Gilbert Murray: — 
 
 Will they ever come to me, ever again. 
 
 The long long dances, 
 On through the dark till the dim stars wane} 
 Shall I feel the dew on my throat, and the stream 
 Of wind in my hair} Shall our white feet gleam 
 
 In the dim expanses ? 
 O^feet of2i fawn to the greenwood fled, 
 
 Alone in the grass and lovehness; 
 Leap of the hunted^ no more in dread. 
 
 Beyond the snares and the deadly press: 
 Yet a voice still in the distance sounds, 
 A voice and a fear and a haste of hounds; 
 O, wildly Xdhonr'xng^ fiercely fleety 
 
 Onward yet by river and glen. . . . 
 Is it joy or terror^ ye storm-swift feet? . . . 
 To the dear lone lands untroubled of men. 
 Where no voice sounds^ and amid the shadowy green 
 The Httle things of the woodland live unseen. 
 
 I have ventured to italicize the words repre- 
 senting ideas brought in by the English rhyme 
 or metre, because though they illustrate still 
 further our subject, they are the work of the 
 poet-translator not of Euripides. The English 
 additions indeed are brought in with much 
 skill and beauty, but I cannot refrain from re- 
 marking, en passant., that if metaphor and simile 
 
46 METAPHOR IN POETRY 
 
 supply, as I maintain, the poet's background to 
 his main subject, the very greatest caution must 
 be used in reproducing that background upon 
 the new stage afforded by a foreign language. 
 Thus in the translation above, the " stars *' are 
 an added touch — delightful as nearly all men- 
 tion of the stars must be, but not made here by 
 Euripides, who calls up only the "dark" or 
 "night"; whilst the "stream of wind" is a less 
 legitimate addition, as neither wind nor stream, 
 lovely as both are, is in the Greek poet's pic- 
 ture; and finally (not to pursue a side issue too 
 earnestly) the " feet " are apostrophized, that is, 
 personified, by the English poet alone, with a 
 mystical effect which seems to me opposed in 
 spirit to the lovely precision of outline in the 
 original Greek. In the Greek the latter part 
 of the passage (1. 7 onward) is not an apos- 
 trophe but a simile, and the simile seems to 
 me to be brought in entirely for its own sake, 
 for delight in its successive pictures of fawn and 
 green meadow, the snares and the hunters and 
 the baying of hounds, flight swift as wind, the 
 river and plain, and then solitude, and the 
 shady branches of trees. These we owe to the 
 simile; and the resemblance of a Bacchic woman 
 to a fawn is as nought compared with them, is 
 merely the justification for the mention of that 
 
VIRGIL 47 
 
 wider and lovelier Greece that surrounded 
 Thebes, where the tragic story of Pentheus 
 found its scene, and Athens, where the as- 
 sembled city watched the theatre enact his fall. 
 
 Take the following passage from the Mneid 
 (XII, 473 seq?)^ in which the nymph Juturna is 
 described as driving her brother Turnus through 
 the pursuing host of ^neas: "As when some 
 black swallow flies through the mansion of some 
 rich man and brushes the high walls with her 
 wings, gathering her small food for the noisy 
 nest to eat, and now screams in the empty 
 colonnades, and now around watery pools; so 
 Juturna is borne in the car through the midst 
 of the foe ". Here the very remoteness of the 
 likeness emphasizes the fact that the Mantuan 
 poet was dreaming amidst Rome of country 
 scenes rather than endeavouring to illustrate 
 his martial subject, and wisely did not forbear 
 to speak of peace amidst war. War is not all. 
 Even though thousands die, the swallows build, 
 and Nature pursues her ways. 
 
 Again from Virgil take the following com- 
 parison of the souls of the dead to leaves in 
 autumn [Mneid^ VI, 309 seq^\ — 
 
 Quam multa in silvis autumni frigore primo 
 Lapsa cadunt folia — 
 
48 METAPHOR IN POETRY 
 
 a simile which neither Dante nor Milton nor 
 many another true poet has been able to resist 
 adapting, and which certainly was not new when 
 Virgil used it, with all the love of the woods in 
 his heart. The late Professor Palgrave, to 
 whose delightful Landscape in Poetry I am much 
 indebted, comparing Virgil and Dante in their 
 treatment of this picture, writes: "Vergil's com- 
 parison is simply between the numbers of the 
 leaves and of the souls preparing to enter 
 Charon's boat. Dante adds to this a larger, 
 a more picturesque, an almost subjective treat- 
 ment : As in autumn the leaves lift themselves off 
 one after the other^ until the branch sees on the earth 
 all its spoiUy^ Yet those who love nature as 
 it is, rather than as it might be, will probably 
 prefer the earlier poet's picture here. "As 
 many as the leaves in the woods that at the' 
 first cold of autumn fall and lie." The heart 
 is borne away by the words, back from all 
 fancied realms of the dead, back from all fears 
 of hell, back from all imaginings of the poets, 
 from all books and subtle refinements, straight 
 to the mother breast of Nature, where we may 
 lie at rest, filled full with her love and with 
 
 ^ Come d'autunno si levan le foglie 
 L'una appresso dell'altra, infin che il ramo 
 Vcdu alia terra tutte Ic sue spoglie. — Inferno^ III, 112. 
 
DANTE 49 
 
 peace and the sense of ease, while the leaves 
 fall around us, and the year draws to its close, 
 and we with our mother fare on towards what- 
 ever end be ours. The woods in autumn ; if 
 metaphor or simile bears us back to these and 
 to the natural world, divinely strange and 
 moving, that surround us whilst we forget, 
 then it has served a sufficient and necessary 
 purpose. Those who have slept in the open 
 air through nights in a southern climate will 
 know how the universe expands to the view 
 during the minutes before sleep falls. During 
 those minutes one has poised upon the hand of 
 infinitude; infinite space above, and infinite 
 space below, and all the worlds rushing silently 
 upon their courses. Shut up in a chamber, 
 the mind is limited by its walls and roof and 
 floor. Poetry by the aid of metaphor widens 
 the vision and brings us back to reality and 
 truth, as do those moments preceding sleep 
 under the warm and open sky. Dante's meta- 
 phorical additions to the simile here perhaps 
 rather defeat than aid this end, by some over- 
 crowding of the canvas. The leaves " lift them- 
 selves", whether as birds or spirits, and the 
 branch " sees " the fallen leaves, both being 
 thus personified.^ And finally the leaves are 
 
 ^ Aristotle has pointed out that personification is a form of metaphor — 
 (C802) 4 
 
50 METAPHOR IN POETRY 
 
 described as the spoils of the branch, with the 
 further addition of pictures of war, defeat and 
 rapine, and the grief of the vanquished. 
 
 The following from the Paradiso (XX, 73), 
 rendered in Dean Plumptre's translation, is a 
 simpler and truer example from Dante ; de- 
 scribing souls in heaven at peace : 
 
 As is a lark that cleaves at will the sky, 
 
 First singing loud, then silent and content 
 With that last sweetness, that doth satisfy.-^ 
 
 The poetic purpose stands out clear. It is here 
 the lark, not the content of heaven, that claims 
 the mortal heart of the poet, and the resem- 
 blance is his excuse for turning his eyes back to 
 the warm earth that bore him. 
 
 In the preceding examples taken from the 
 
 older poets I have chosen similes rather than 
 
 metaphors, partly because the simile was more 
 
 favoured by ancient poets than the metaphor 
 
 ^^^^>5^^ (cf. Aristotle, Rhetoric^ III, iv), and still more 
 
 ** 4^>^ because in the case of a simile there can be no 
 
 see Rhetoric^ III, xi, where he writes: "Homer thus has often employed 
 the speaking of inanimate things as animate, by way of metaphor ", add- 
 ing the following examples — " Back to the plain still rolled the shame- 
 less stone" [Od. XI, 598); "the arrow flew" (//. XIII, 587) j "eager to 
 wing its way" (//. IV, 126). Cf. p. 58 below. 
 
 1 Qual lodoletta, che in aere si spazia 
 Prima cantando, e poi tace contenta 
 Deir ultima dolcezza, che la sazia. 
 
 ^ 
 
 ^r; 
 
PATER 51 
 
 dispute that a picture is intended, and that it 
 assists in the formation of a background, whereas 
 the degree of insistence intended to be laid upon 
 a metaphor may be doubted, especially when 
 the language used is a foreign or an extinct one. 
 Moreover, metaphor would appear to have been 
 used with less conscious artistic purpose by the 
 ancients than the more formal simile. A survey 
 of the Greek and Roman literatures is beyond 
 my scope, yet I venture to suggest that it will 
 be found that metaphor abounds more in Greek 
 poetry than in Latin, and that this abundance is 
 one of the causes of superiority in the former. 
 Among the moderns metaphor is not only fre- 
 quent but, at least in the better writers, fully 
 conscious. 
 
 In his essay on Coleridge, prefixed to the selec- 
 tion of his poems in Ward's English Toets^ Walter 
 Pater quotes from Shakespeare's Henry VI^ Part 
 II, a supreme instance of metaphor. The pas- 
 sage is from a speech of the King. Pater writes: 
 " Of what is understood by both [Coleridge and 
 Wordsworth] as the imaginative quality in the 
 use of mere poetic figures, we may take some 
 words of Shakespeare as an example : — 
 
 My cousin Suffolk, 
 My soul shall thine keep company to heaven : 
 Tarry, sweet soul, for mine, then fly abreast. 
 
52 METAPHOR IN POETRY 
 
 The complete infusion here, of the figure into 
 the thought, so vividly realized that though the 
 birds are not actually mentioned yet the sense of 
 their flight, conveyed to us by the single word 
 * abreast *, comes to be more than half of the 
 thought itself; — this, as the expression of exalted 
 feeling, is an instance of what Coleridge meant 
 by Imagination." "This sort of identification", 
 continues Pater, "of the poet's thought, of 
 himself, with the image or figure which serves 
 him, is the secret, sometimes, of a singularly 
 entire realization of that image, which makes 
 this figure of Coleridge's, for instance, ' imagina- 
 tive' : — 
 
 Amid the howl of more than wintry storms, 
 The halcyon hears the voice of vernal hours 
 Already on the wing." 
 
 Spring and the rush of wings, not the halcyon 
 amid conventional storms ; wide heaven and 
 the flight of birds, not any journey to heaven, 
 filled here the poets' minds. The metaphor is 
 not only, in Pater's words, " more than half 
 of the thought itself", it raises the thought in 
 each case into the wide and ethereal spaces of 
 poetry. 
 
 From the modern English poets metaphors 
 may be culled on all sides. They are like our 
 
TENNYSON 53 
 
 delightful fields, profusely full of flowers that 
 spring out of the natural bounty of the soil. 
 These, however, I must now in haste pass by. 
 Few more delightful examples could be found 
 than the two from Tennyson's In Memoriam 
 placed at the head of this Essay. The first may 
 be compared with Virgil's simile, quoted above 
 from Mneid^ XII. The impulse of the East 
 Anglian poet to describe the swallow is the same 
 as that of the Mantuan. It is plainly sheer 
 delight in our tiny fellow-creature and the 
 scenes she haunts, rather than any real resem- 
 blance between her swiftly turning flight over 
 summer pools and the numerous short collec- 
 tions of stanzas into which In Memoriam is 
 divided that moved the English poet to these 
 lovely words. The resemblance is sufficient to 
 justify the delightful picture of the metaphor, 
 no more. The other example from the same 
 poem placed before this Essay is more complex. 
 The whole Section (lxxxviii) from which it is 
 taken is one elaborate metaphor bound up with 
 the simple statement that into the midst of the 
 poet's grief the sense of God's good universe 
 will come. 
 
 Wild bird, whose warble, liquid sweet, 
 Rings Eden thro' the budded quicks, 
 
54 METAPHOR IN POETRY 
 
 tell me where the senses mix, 
 O tell me where the passions meet, 
 
 Whence radiate : fierce extremes employ 
 Thy spirits in the darkening leaf, 
 And in the midmost heart of grief 
 
 Thy passion clasps a secret joy : 
 
 And I — my harp would prelude woe — 
 
 1 cannot all command the strings ; 
 The glory of the sum of things 
 
 Will flash along the chords and go. 
 
 The nightingale, the Garden of our first parents, 
 spring, the woods and night, music, and the 
 gleam of moon or meteor or stars — of such is 
 that world, the sense of whose divine beauty 
 bursts into his sorrow and scatters it with light. 
 The comparison of the grieving poet to the 
 nightingale is hackneyed and by itself brings no 
 pleasure; the picture of beauty that it introduces 
 is here doubly pleasing, both by reason of its 
 own loveliness and because of its exemplifying 
 that force which breaks the poet's sorrow down. 
 How the metaphor grows to excel in impor- 
 tance in the poet's mind the theme which it is 
 supposed to illustrate may be seen from another 
 -example from In Memoriam (cxxi): — 
 
 Sad Hesper o'er the buried sun 
 
 And ready, thou, to die with him, 
 
TENNYSON 55 
 
 Thou watch est all things ever dim 
 And dimmer, and a glory done : 
 
 The team is loosen'd from the wain, 
 The boat is drawn upon the shore ; 
 Thou listenest to the closing door, 
 
 And life is darken'd in the brain. 
 
 Bright Phosphor, fresher for the night, 
 
 By thee the world's great work is heard 
 Beginning, and the wakeful bird ; 
 
 Behind thee comes the greater light : 
 
 The market boat is on the stream. 
 
 And voices hail it from the brink ; 
 Thou hear'st the village hammer clink. 
 
 And see'st the moving of the team. 
 
 Sweet Hesper-Phosphor, double name 
 For what is one, the first, the last. 
 Thou, like my present and my past. 
 
 Thy place is changed ; thou art the same. 
 
 He who was sad is glad, but yet is faithful to 
 his lost friend — this statement occupies only 
 one line out of the twenty lines of the section, 
 and the rest speak through metaphor of the 
 beauty of the world which abides around us. 
 One more example of this type I wish to 
 take, as it illustrates the thesis particularly 
 clearly. It is from Matthew Arnold's poem 
 called The Future, The metaphor is one of the 
 
56 METAPHOR IN POETRY 
 
 oldest in the world, and is the property of all 
 poets. 
 
 This tract which the river of Time 
 
 Now flows through with us, is the plain. 
 
 Gone is the calm of its earlier shore. 
 
 Border'd by cities and hoarse 
 
 With a thousand cries is its stream. 
 
 And we on its breast, our minds 
 
 Are confused as the cries which we hear, 
 
 Changing and shot as the sights which we see. 
 
 And we say that repose has fled 
 
 For ever the course of the river of Time. 
 
 That cities will crowd to its edge 
 
 In a blacker, incessanter line; 
 
 That the din will be more on its banks. 
 
 Denser the trade on its stream. 
 
 Flatter the plain where it flows, 
 
 Fiercer the sun overhead. 
 That never will those on its breast 
 See an ennobling sight. 
 Drink of the feeling of quiet again. 
 
 But what was before us we know not, 
 And we know not what shall succeed. 
 
 Haply, the river of Time — 
 
 As it grows, as the towns on its marge 
 
 Fling their wavering lights 
 
 On a wider, statelier stream — 
 
ARNOLD 57 
 
 May acquire, if not the calm 
 Of its early mountainous shore, 
 Yet a solemn peace of its own. 
 
 And the width of the waters, the hush 
 Of the gray expanse where he floats. 
 Freshening its current and spotted with foam 
 As it draws to the Ocean, may strike 
 Peace to the soul of the man on its breast : 
 
 As the pale waste widens around him, 
 As the banks fade dimmer away. 
 As the stars come out, and the night wind 
 Brings up the stream 
 Murmurs and scents of the infinite sea. 
 
 That is to say, in prose, the thoughts and 
 nature of each generation of men are limited 
 by environment. The freshness and simplicity 
 of early ages are gone, we ourselves live in an 
 era of increasing stress and commercialism, and 
 some think that the lot of future generations 
 will be even more unenviable, while some still 
 hope for the best. The long succession of pic- 
 tures in the poem, whilst it immeasurably beauti- 
 fies, by no means renders clearer its thought ; 
 although indeed by its very complexity the 
 poem with its metaphors of river and sea traffic, 
 of mountain, shore, and sky, is truer to the 
 world which is the subject-matter of our fears 
 and hopes, than the prose equivalent which dis- 
 
58 METAPHOR IN POETRY 
 
 cards all but the main thought and presents this 
 in isolation. 
 
 Though most of the metaphors and similes 
 cited above have brought in nature as the back- 
 ground to human lives, this is not necessarily 
 the order of the relationship. Personification 
 is a species of metaphor, and in its more cursory 
 form — to be distinguished carefully from that 
 deliberate personification which is mythopoeic 
 or pantheistic in its nature, and which differs 
 from the cursory form in some respects as 
 simile does from metaphor^ — the human ele- 
 ment is used, if not exactly as a background, 
 yet as a complement to the forces of nature 
 described, thus often greatly heightening the 
 scene. The passage quoted above from the 
 Inferno (III, 112) — "As in autumn the leaves 
 lift themselves off one after the other, until the 
 branch sees on the earth all its spoils" — may be 
 cited as an example; as also the following from 
 In Memoriam (xv), in which the poet, awaiting 
 the arrival of the ship bearing his dead friend, 
 describes the rising storm, and speaks of his 
 own wild unrest that dotes and pours "on 
 yonder cloud " — 
 
 That rises upward always higher, 
 
 And onward drags a labouring breast, 
 
 ^ Cf. p. 49 above, and Appendix, p. 8S. 
 
TYPICAL PROSE 59 
 
 And topples round the dreary west, 
 A looming bastion fringed with fire — 
 
 thus bringing in by a succession of momentary 
 personifications pictures of human labour, misery, 
 and war, and heightening the horror of the 
 coming storm by the sense of men's sorrows and 
 crimes. 
 
 Prose, as a type, is logical and, in its purity, 
 takes everything abstractedly. It is the language 
 of reason, and places its subject in a dry white 
 light. It eliminates the irrelevant, and makes 
 cautious statements about the subject actually 
 under discussion, setting steadily aside every- 
 thing that is not directly to the point. The 
 poetic method is emotional and is the direct 
 contrary of this. The world as it is felt is 
 its subject. The world analysed and reasoned 
 on is the subject of typical prose. Each por- 
 tion of the subject is as far as possible isolated 
 by the prose writer, and so the realm of thought 
 is mastered piecemeal. In poetry all things are 
 brought together again, as in the world itself, 
 where unison and not isolation is the rule, and 
 complexity not simplicity prevails. Logical, 
 or what I have called typical, prose cools the 
 mind to the temperature of pure reason; poetry 
 fires all the emotions as does life itself. Where 
 
6o METAPHOR IN POETRY 
 
 both processes are so necessary it is useless to 
 speculate which is the finer, but one may ven- 
 ture to point out that the synthetic process of 
 poetry sometimes attains, it would seem natu- 
 rally, to a fuller statement of the truth than the 
 analytic method of prose. Examples may make 
 clearer what I mean. Let me take a modern 
 example, from John Stuart Mill's treatise On 
 Liberty. The passage is from the introductory 
 chapter. I have purposely chosen a passage 
 in which metaphor is used, as the very figures 
 illustrate the analytical nature of the prose 
 writer : — 
 
 " In old times . . . the rulers were con- 
 ceived (except in some of the popular govern- 
 ments of Greece) as in a necessarily antagonistic 
 position to the people whom they ruled. . . . 
 Their power was regarded as necessary, but also 
 as highly dangerous; as a weapon which they 
 would attempt to use against their subjects, no 
 less than against external enemies. To prevent 
 the weaker members of the community from 
 being preyed upon by innumerable vultures, 
 it was needful that there should be an animal 
 of prey stronger than the rest, commissioned 
 to keep them down. But as the King of the 
 vultures would be no less bent upon preying 
 on the flock than any of the minor harpies, it 
 
MILL AND WORDSWORTH 6i 
 
 was indispensable to be in a perpetual attitude 
 of defence against his beak and claws." 
 
 We have here vultures, harpies, and the 
 flock, as well as a King of vultures, against 
 whose beak and claws the flock takes up a per- 
 petual attitude of defence. These figures of 
 speech can, surely, only have been introduced 
 as illustrative and explanatory, and even if they 
 were brought in for beauty it is obvious that 
 the whole passage is analytical, and its purpose 
 is to extricate the main idea from all extraneous 
 matter, and to set it before the reader for obser- " 
 vation in a clear dry light. With this may be ^ 
 compared the method of Wordsworth's famous 
 sonnet on a kindred subject: 
 
 Two voices are there; one is of the sea, 
 One of the mountains; each a mighty voice: 
 In both from age to age thou didst rejoice, 
 They were thy chosen music. Liberty ! 
 
 — which is another way of saying that insular 
 and mountainous positions have always been 
 favourable to the political independence of 
 small States. These are the first four lines 
 of the octave, and the poet has in them already 
 drawn-in a spirit world of awful power, the roar 
 of the sea, and the cry of the winds among the 
 mountains. Of such is our world, and not as 
 
62 METAPHOR IN POETRY 
 
 represented in the abstractions, useful and ne- 
 cessary as they are, of the prose writers. Let 
 us take one more sonnet of Wordsworth's to 
 illustrate the point. It is on Mutability^ or in 
 other words that dissolution to which every- 
 thing, high or low, must sooner or later come, 
 a subject sufficiently abstract and philosophical: 
 
 From low to high doth dissolution climb, 
 
 And sink from high to low, along a scale 
 
 Of awful notes, whose concord shall not fail; 
 
 A musical but melancholy chime, 
 
 Which they can hear who meddle not with crime, 
 
 Nor avarice, nor over-anxious care. 
 
 Truth fails not; but her outward forms that bear 
 
 The longest date do melt like frosty rime, 
 
 That in the morning whitened hill and plain 
 And is no more; drop like the tower sublime 
 Of yesterday, which royally did wear 
 His crown of weeds, but could not even sustain 
 Some casual shout that broke the silent air, 
 Or the unimaginable touch of Time. 
 
 A picture of all earth and the heavens, the 
 whole gamut of the same and the awful har- 
 monies thereof; the hills covered with hoar 
 frost of a morning beneath the rising sun; the 
 weed-crowned ruins of the ancient town; and 
 the unseen world of mysterious forces — these 
 
SENSE OF UNIFORMITY 63 
 
 are ideas contributed by metaphor to the main 
 theme and greatly enriching it; and the method 
 which permits of them is synthetic. 
 
 It has been pointed out in an earlier part of 
 this Essay (p. 32), that the use of comparison 
 is properly for the most part analytical, classi- 
 ficatory, and logical, rather than constructive, 
 unifying, and emotional. Yet, as suggested at 
 the time, there is also the constructive side to 
 its use. In perceiving clearly the relations of 
 things one comes to see something of the whole, 
 and here emotion is apt to supervene. And it 
 is possible that in the more elaborate analogies 
 upon which metaphor dwells at times, such as 
 that between Time and a river in Matthew 
 Arnold's poem quoted above, or that of Section 
 cm of In Memoriam, the artistic mind may 
 find a further satisfaction than that of the in- 
 creased fulness and variety of presentation, 
 which has been insisted upon above, namely 
 satisfaction in the feeling of order and uni- 
 formity underlying the variety and complexity 
 of the world, the sense of uniformity working 
 within multiplicity. The idea of such under- 
 lying uniformity or unity can scarcely be con- 
 templated without some degree of emotion, and 
 metaphor in arousing such emotion may be 
 still further enhancing its chief effect, which is 
 
64 METAPHOR IN POETRY 
 
 a full and varied presentation of the world. 
 Take the closing lines of Shelley's wonderful 
 Ode to the West Wind beginning, " Make me 
 thy lyre, even as the forest is". These seem 
 to illustrate both aspects of the power of meta- 
 phor, corresponding the one to the complexity 
 of our universe, and the other to the unity 
 which underlies this multiplicity. The poet 
 cries out to the wind — 
 
 Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is : 
 What if my leaves are falling like its own ? 
 
 The tumult of thy mighty harmonies 
 
 Will take from both a deep autumnal tone, 
 
 Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, Spirit fierce. 
 My spirit ! Be thou me, impetuous one ! 
 
 Drive my dead thoughts over the universe. 
 Like withered leaves, to quicken a new birth ; 
 
 And by the incantation of this verse. 
 
 Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth 
 
 Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind ! 
 Be through my lips to unawakened earth 
 
 The trumpet of a prophecy ! O Wind, 
 If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind ? 
 
 Here the sense of uniform processes of which 
 we are commonly unconscious — the likeness of 
 the movements of the wind and of poetic in- 
 
SHELLEY 65 
 
 spiration, of forest sounds and music, of autumn 
 and the decay of human powers, of fallen leaves 
 and seeds and the thoughts and words of dead 
 thinkers, the resemblance of these last again to 
 fire, and again to the call of trumpets, and of 
 the resurgence of our hopes for the future that 
 we idealize to the awakening of the earth in 
 spring — the sense that Nature is moving to- 
 wards her purposes along ordered lines, occa- 
 sionally revealed to us by the lifting of a curtain, 
 as it were, is clearly to be found here and con- 
 tributes to the passion of the lines. Yet it is 
 not upon the resemblances, suggestive as they 
 are, that the effect of the metaphors really de- 
 pends. After all, an analogy has a disagreeably 
 inartistic habit of calling up the logical faculty 
 as well as the emotional nature, to appreciate 
 it — a habit which often makes one wonder 
 whether a fine simile in verse is really an appeal 
 to one's poetic or one's prose side. The main 
 effect of the metaphor here, as always, is in the 
 enrichment and enhancement of the main theme 
 with something of that profuse variety which 
 adorns the world in which we live and from 
 which we gather all our ideas, poetic or other- 
 wise. The main theme is simple, almost jejune 
 — the poet approaching death, as he believes, 
 prays that hereafter his thoughts may spread 
 
 ( C 802 ) 5 
 
66 METAPHOR IN POETRY 
 
 over the world, and that the dull and evil period 
 in which he has lived may give place to an age 
 of glorious freedom, which his efforts may have 
 helped forward. That is how one sees the 
 matter, looking at it abstractly or prosaically, 
 carefully excluding the complexity of extraneous 
 thoughts. The manner of Shelley and of poetry 
 is different ; extraneous thoughts are not only 
 admitted but welcomed, and the means by which 
 they are admitted is metaphor. And so to the 
 original theme are added music and the forest 
 beneath the wind, autumnal leaves and the seeds 
 that seek the womb of the earth, the altars of 
 an ancient priesthood flaming heavenward, the 
 drowsing of earth through winter, the shrill 
 trumpet blasts of the great leaders of men, and 
 the awakening of the world in Spring. 
 
 That the methods of poetry are concrete or 
 pictorial is universally acknowledged. What I 
 wish to lay stress on is that the concrete style 
 necessitates variety of pictures, and that poetry 
 depends for this variety chiefly upon metaphor. 
 Metaphor finds its real raison d'etre in the per- 
 fect ease and grace with which it introduces 
 and unifies the variety required by poetry, 
 not merely for its pleasing effect but for its 
 essential truthfulness. Take these scattered 
 lines from George Meredith's Love in the 
 
MEREDITH 67 
 
 Valley^ perhaps the sweetest love-poem ever 
 written : 
 
 When at dawn she wakens, and her fair face gazes 
 Out on the weather thro' the window panes, 
 
 Beauteous she looks ! like a white water-lily 
 Bursting out of bud on the rippled river plains ! 
 
 and — 
 
 Heartless she is as the shadow in the meadows 
 Flying to the hills on a blue and breezy noon ; 
 
 and — 
 
 Brooding o'er the gloom, spins the brown evejar. 
 Darker grows the valley, more and more forgetting ; 
 
 and — 
 
 Love that so desires would fain keep her changeless ; 
 Fain would fling the net, and fain would have her 
 free. 
 
 How could these fair thoughts have been 
 brought in without spoiling, except by meta- 
 phor ; and what further function does metaphor 
 need than to bring such in 1 Without meta- 
 phor they could but have been patched on. 
 But metaphor assures some degree of likeness 
 or affinity, implying to this extent appropriate- 
 ness in the mention of beautiful extraneous 
 ideas. 
 
68 METAPHOR IN POETRY 
 
 And if this is so the greatest care obviously 
 must be exercised in controlling and ordering 
 the variety thus secured. The variety must be 
 not merely varied but really appropriate. As in 
 music variety of sound is dominated by har- 
 monics, and as in painting variety of colour is 
 dominated by the laws of aesthetics, less exactly 
 understood indeed than those of harmony yet 
 equally potent, so a similar dominion prevails 
 in metaphor. As in the case of colours, the 
 laws may not be clearly understood, but the 
 breach of them is punishable and is sooner or 
 later fatal to the offender. Metaphor raises its 
 pictures before the mind, and picture must blend 
 with picture, as note with note, and colour with 
 colour. The great German, Goethe, has said 
 that architectonics, the power of building in due 
 proportion, distinguishes the author from the 
 amateur. The remark applies perhaps more to 
 the province of metaphor than to any other part 
 of literature. I do not for a moment imply 
 that great metaphor must necessarily be long 
 and elaborate ; it may obviously on the con- 
 trary be brief and fleeting. What I do say is 
 that metaphors brought into contiguity should be 
 in some further relationship than that of mere 
 juxtaposition, and that in the lesser writers this 
 further relationship is often wanting. In Quin- 
 
QUINTILIAN 69 
 
 tilian's Institutes of Oratory occurs the following 
 brilliant passage (Bk. VIII, ch. v) upon a closel)^ 
 allied subject, the use of sententi^e or striking 
 phrases. The translation used is that of Pro- 
 fessor Saintsbury, and is taken from his History 
 of Criticism. " If sentences [striking thoughts] 
 are too crowded they get in each other's way, 
 just as, with all crops and trees, nothing can 
 grow to a proper size if it lacks room. Nor 
 does anything stand out in a picture where 
 there is no shading ; so that artists, when they 
 deal with many things in one canvas, leave 
 spaces between them lest shade and object fall 
 together. Moreover, this same profusion cuts 
 the style too short ; for each stands by itself (or, 
 comes to a halt), as there is, as it were, a fresh 
 beginning after it. Whence the composition be- 
 comes too disjointed, consisting not of integral 
 members, but of separate scraps, inasmuch as 
 these things, each rounded and cut off from 
 the rest, refuse conjunction (or, are unable 
 to lean upon each other). Besides, the colour 
 of the speech becomes, as it were, spotty with 
 blotches, bright indeed, but too many and too 
 different. For though a selvage and fringes of 
 purple, in their proper place, light up the gown, 
 a garment speckled with patches of colour is 
 certainly unbecoming. Wherefore, though these 
 
70 METAPHOR IN POETRY 
 
 sentences may seem to flash and to strike in 
 some sense, yet there are lights which may be 
 likened, not to flame but to sparks amid smoke; 
 they are not even seen when the whole speech 
 is luminous, as the stars themselves cease to be 
 visible in sunshine. And, rising only with fitful 
 and feeble effort, they are but unequal, and, as 
 it were, broken, so as to attain neither the ad- 
 miration due to things eminent nor the grace of 
 a close uniformity." In this passage, scintillat- 
 ing with wit, the Roman critic was probably 
 illustrating the very faults he censured, and the 
 figures are overcrowded and inharmonious to 
 distraction, though it must be borne in mind 
 that their purpose is prosaic and strictly illustra- 
 tive. X 
 
 As an example of architectonic power Keats's 
 famous sonnet On first looking into Chapman s 
 Homer can scarcely be excelled in its kind. The 
 imagery is varied delightfully, and is yet com- 
 pletely harmonious. The chief comparisons 
 liken the works of the great poets to the opulent 
 coasts and islands of the older world, to the rich 
 new world discovered by Columbus, Pizarro, 
 and Cortes, and to the starry heavens; and in 
 these pictures the minor pictures find delightful 
 place. And meanwhile both hemispheres, and 
 all the heavens, are brought within our view. 
 
KEATS AND MEREDITH 71 
 
 Much have I travelled in the realms of gold, 
 And many goodly states and kingdoms seen; 
 Round many western islands have I been 
 Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold. 
 Oft of one wide expanse had I been told 
 That deep-browed Homer ruled as his demesne: 
 Yet did I never breathe its pure serene 
 Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold: 
 Then felt I like some watcher of the skies 
 When a new planet swims into his ken; 
 Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes 
 He stared at the Pacific — and all his men 
 Looked at each other with a wild surmise — 
 Silent, upon a peak in Darien. 
 
 One may contrast with the delightful instinctive 
 
 skill displayed by Keats the style of the famous v^^ 
 
 closing section of George Meredith's Modern -* ■ 
 
 Love\ 
 
 Thus piteously Love closed what he begat: 
 The union of this ever-diverse pair! 
 These two were rapid falcons in a snare. 
 Condemned to do the flitting of the bat. 
 Lovers beneath the singing sky of May, 
 They wandered once, clear as the dew on flowers: 
 But they fed not on the advancing hours; 
 Their hearts held craving for the buried day. 
 Then each applied to each that fatal knife. 
 Deep questioning, which probes to endless dole. 
 Ah, what a dusty answer gets the soul 
 When hot for certainties in this our life! — 
 
72 METAPHOR IN POETRY 
 
 In tragic hints here see what evermore 
 Moves dark as yonder midnight ocean's force, 
 Thundering hke ramping hosts of warrior horse, 
 To throw that faint thin line upon the shore! 
 
 This is a highly characteristic and most imagin- 
 ative passage ; yet it may be safely said that 
 there is here practically no architectonic power 
 displayed. Let us leave aside minor confusions 
 of figure, such as the picture of Love "closing" 
 what he has " begotten ", that of falcons in a 
 snare flitting, and that of feeding on the hours as 
 they advance. There seems to have been practi- 
 cally no consideration on the part of the poet 
 of the relationship of the several pictures to 
 each other. It would be altogether arbitrary to 
 maintain that this relationship should be obvious 
 or even close. The world is multiform and 
 various, and, as has been repeatedly said, meta- 
 phor is especially an aid to the presentation of 
 this very variety; and yet the notes struck 
 upon this great instrument should not be struck 
 by chance, and, however novel or even weird in 
 their succession, must dwell sufficiently long in 
 one key, and moving from that should move 
 only among keys sufficiently akin. Take these 
 in their order, and we have in immediate suc- 
 cession pictures of closing, begetting, snared 
 falcons, flitting bats, the sky singing, dew, feed- 
 
ARCHITECTONIC POWER 73 
 
 ing, the advance of the hours, buried days, 
 probing knives, hot pursuit with dusty result, 
 and waves thundering like hosts of warrior 
 horse. With what relief one comes to the last 
 four lines with their nobly developed figure of 
 the midnight ocean charging for ever to the 
 shore ; a figure, by the way, which returns 
 agreeably to the scene of the preceding section, 
 in which the husband finds the dying wife and 
 is reconciled with her at last — 
 
 He found her by the ocean's moaning verge, 
 Nor any wicked change in her discerned. 
 
 The satisfaction that arises from this trace of 
 architectonic power in the passage is itself a 
 testimony to the necessity of this power in 
 poetic as in all other art. 
 
 Propriety of metaphor, then, should be 
 judged quite as much by the relationship of the 
 several figures to the tout ensemble of the back- 
 ground before which appears the main idea of 
 any particular passage of a poem, as by the close 
 resemblance of the figurative object to the thing 
 described. Such resemblance is indeed the justi- 
 fication for the introduction of the figure and 
 the bond which unites the complex parts of an 
 imaginative passage into one satisfying whole. 
 I do not wish in any way to decry the necessity 
 
74 METAPHOR IN POETRY 
 
 for such resemblance, and indeed without a high 
 degree of resemblance a metaphor must ob- 
 viously be worse than futile. Yet the forma- 
 tion of a background, suitable, varied, delight- 
 ful or awe-inspiring, as is the background before 
 which we all move and have our being, is not 
 one whit less important, and the relation of each 
 metaphor to the whole background must be con- 
 sidered, just as much as the relation of each 
 note in music to all other notes in the phrase in 
 which it occurs. 
 
 In its simplest form this precept might take 
 shape as the rule against mixed metaphors. 
 But it is really more, for its unit, within which 
 the relations of metaphorical expressions to each 
 other are to be considered, is not the single 
 clause, or even the sentence, but the whole 
 passage or section, however the limits of that 
 may be decided. 
 
 Some of the greatest poets of the world have 
 indeed broken even the rule against mixed meta- 
 phors. Take perhaps the best-known instance 
 of Shakespeare's sins in this respect: 
 
 To be, or not to be: that is the question: 
 Whether 't is nobler in the mind to suffer 
 The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, 
 Or to take arms against a sea of troubles, 
 And by opposing end them? 
 
A CHANGING BACKGROUND 75 
 
 "To take arms against a sea of troubles!" 
 And yet all the shafts of ridicule aimed against 
 this famous passage have glanced aside or 
 broken. And I take it that its survival is due 
 at least partly to the magnificence of the figura- 
 tive picture as a whole. Fortune outrageous 
 with her slings and arrows, the suffering man 
 as rebel daring her in arms, and the stormy sea 
 as background to the mortal conflict — that is 
 a combination which the world deems worth 
 keeping, even though some weakness in the 
 verbal links may be revealed by criticism. 
 
 In the use of metaphor it is, first and fore- ] 
 most, the tout ensemble that matters. Propriety ! 
 or resemblance in the case of each comparison 
 is indeed requisite, but a figure to be poetic 
 needs something beyond this ; it must blend 
 with all other figures in its neighbourhood to 
 form a changing background representative as 
 far as may be of the variety, the beauty, and 
 the majesty of our world. Want of space pre- 
 cludes me from examining the usages of the 
 poets in this respect historically, but it would be 
 interesting to watch the degrees by which the 
 harmonics or architectonics of metaphor have 
 been developed. Here the cases of the meta- 
 phor and simile are different, for simile is by 
 its nature formal and deliberate, and so com- 
 
76 METAPHOR IN POETRY 
 
 paratively infrequent, whilst metaphor is by 
 nature rapid and evanescent, and it is the very 
 manner in which one metaphor flashes forth 
 and blends with or fades into another that is 
 the point in question. 
 
 But not only must the tout ensemble of the 
 figures be considered, the artistic relations of 
 the whole figurative background with the main 
 picture are plainly of equal importance. Of such 
 relationship no finer example perhaps could be 
 found than the famous passage, in Book VIII of 
 the ///W, lines ^^^ to ^6^^ describing how the 
 Trojans, pressing on their besiegers, awaited 
 morning, before the attack upon the Greek lines. 
 Tennyson's well-known translation is here used: 
 
 And these all night upon the ridge of war 
 Sat glorying; many a fire before them blazed: 
 As when in heaven the stars about the moon 
 Look beautiful, when all the winds are laid, 
 And every height comes out, and jutting peak 
 And valley, and the immeasurable heavens 
 Break open to their highest, and all the stars 
 Shine, and the shepherd gladdens in his heart: 
 So many a fire between the ships and stream 
 Of Xanthus blazed before the towers of Troy, 
 A thousand on the plain; and close by each 
 Sit fifty in the blaze of burning fire; 
 And eating hoary grain and pulse the steeds, 
 Fixt by their cars, waited the golden dawn. 
 
HOMER 77 
 
 The stars, the moon, the hills, the shepherd, 
 nature at peace in wide regions far beyond the 
 sounds of war — these blend with and immeasur- 
 ably ennoble the pictures of the camp-fires on 
 the Trojan plain. Remove the figure, and the 
 scene closes in, narrows itself to meagre pro- 
 portions, and loses that romantic beauty which 
 never fails in the actual world or in the poet's 
 mind, and whose abiding place in the world 
 is as much our surroundings as ourselves, and 
 in the world of poetry as much the meta- 
 phorical background as the subject proper of 
 the poem. 
 
With weary steps I loiter on, 
 Tho' always under alter'd skies 
 The purple from the distance dies, 
 
 My prospect and horizon gone. — xxxviii, i. 
 
 Oh, wast thou with me, dearest, then. 
 While I rose up against my doom. 
 And yearned to burst the folded gloom, 
 
 To bare the eternal Heavens again ! — cxxii. 
 
APPENDIX 
 
 A NOTE ON THE USE OF METAPHOR 
 
 IN TENNYSON'S IN MEMORIAM 
 
 THE tendency of poets towards the con- 
 crete is well-known and is one of their 
 most marked characteristics. Life becomes a 
 journey to them, and sorrow after joy presents 
 itself as the altered sky, the future is the dis- 
 tance before the traveller, and grief the gather- 
 ing clouds that obscure the horizon. Again, 
 the reaction of a brave man's heart against con- 
 tinuous sorrow is spoken of as the rising of 
 a bird upon strong wings, and the soul's re- 
 newed serenity appears as the bright heavens 
 above the low clouds possessing the plains. 
 These are figures common to innumerable 
 poets, and their frequency is testimony to the 
 common impulse in poetic natures. Thus in 
 reading poetry one of the first necessities is 
 to visualize, to see clearly every picture as it 
 
 (C802) 81 6 
 
82 METAPHOR IN POETRY 
 
 is presented by the poet. Without visualizing 
 the poet's words the reader in no sense has 
 before him that which the poet had at the time 
 of writing, nor can in any full sense share his 
 emotions. Yet this visualizing is, in the case 
 of modern poetry at least, with its innumerable 
 metaphors, by no means always a simple matter. 
 Glimpses of the poet's visions are seen by the 
 ordinary reader at a first reading, but as a rule 
 much remains at first if not for ever unrevealed. 
 And the truer the artist the more his work 
 rewards repeated perusal by the revelation of 
 beauties that the senses were at first too busy 
 or too blunt to detect. 
 
 Another peculiarity of the poets, and closely 
 allied to the former, is their preference for the 
 emotional forms of expression, or, to put it 
 another way, their instinctive avoidance of the 
 chill that settles on the mind along with the 
 process of reasoning and logical statement. 
 Metaphor is itself a gravely illogical form of 
 expression. Life is not a journey, and joy and 
 sorrow are not clear and cloudy weather, nor 
 are hopes great or small our horizon, wide or 
 narrow; but then these pictures warm the heart, 
 and exact definitions and scrupulously logical 
 statements, whilst very necessary for certain 
 purposes, exclude the emotions in exact pro- 
 
APPENDIX 83 
 
 portion to their accuracy. The brave man's 
 heart is not a bird, but the picture of the water- 
 fowl or the eagle, cleaving with bold strokes its 
 passage to clear skies beyond or above the 
 clouds, conveys a sense of the value of reso- 
 lute struggle against sorrow, however illogical 
 itself as a description. Similarly, in personi- 
 fication, which is so inveterate a poetic habit, 
 the poet chooses an emotional and concrete for 
 a logical and abstract form of expression. 
 
 To Sleep I give my powers away; 
 
 My will is bondsman to the dark; 
 
 I sit within a helmless bark, 
 And with my heart I muse and say.... — iv, i. 
 
 Sleep and the Will and Night have become 
 persons, and the poet's will is chained in bond- 
 age, and his heart drives upon a starless sea. 
 These are emotional ways of speech, and convey 
 along with that which logic would express a 
 something further. But although a logical ren- 
 dering of such passages must necessarily omit 
 that additional meaning, yet a logical rendering 
 is quite possible, and is in some sense an equiva- 
 lent; and a comparison of the poetic phrase 
 with its logical " equivalent " seems to me often 
 as fruitful as a comparison of the earlier and 
 later drafts of a poem by a great artist in 
 
84 METAPHOR IN POETRY 
 
 words. Other ways of conveying emotion be- 
 sides the indirect methods of metaphor, simile, 
 and personification need not be analysed here. 
 
 Some grasp of the meaning and function of 
 metaphor is essential, if not for the understand- 
 ing, at least for anything approaching a real 
 appreciation of poetic art. The detailed exam- 
 ination of a famous and beautiful poem such as 
 Tennyson's In Memoriam would test and, I 
 believe, illustrate the thesis set forth in the pre- 
 ceding Essay, namely that metaphor, being a 
 double language, supplies a ready means where- 
 by the poet can bring up delightfully and natu- 
 rally scene after scene to complete and correct 
 the partial nature of the action or theme which 
 has his main attention, and so aids in affording, 
 simultaneously with the main theme, a back- 
 ground as it were, ever shifting, ever varied, 
 before which the nearer visions of the poet 
 pause or move, as does life itself before the 
 ever-varied universe that is its stage. 
 
 Take, for instance, the following passage : 
 
 When summer's hourly-mellowing change 
 May breathe, with many roses sweet, 
 Upon the thousand waves of wheat, 
 
 That ripple round the lonely grange (xci, iii); 
 
 where (omitting any consideration of the effects 
 
APPENDIX 85 
 
 of the personification in the first two lines) the 
 last two lines by the use of a metaphor not only 
 present to the reader the main picture, delight- 
 ful in itself, of the fields of wheat stirring under 
 the breeze, but also flash upon the mind the 
 sense of the unreaped " ocean-plains " beyond 
 our shores (ix, i), of the aXog aTpvyeroio of 
 Homer, the sounding furrows of Tennyson's 
 Ulysses, The lovely line " Long sleeps the 
 summer in the seed " (cv, vii) is even more 
 suggestive. Some instances of the poet's use 
 of metaphor that seem to tell against the theory 
 may doubtless be found in so long a poem. 
 Take for instance the following : 
 
 Something it is which thou hast lost, 
 Some pleasure from thine early years. 
 Break, thou deep vase of chilling tears, 
 
 That grief hath shaken into frost ! (iv, iii); 
 
 where the metaphor is primarily illustrative of 
 the main statement, that is explanatory and 
 topical, though even here, after contemplation, 
 the sense of winter's power over our English 
 parks and fields rises in the background and 
 deepens the scene. If these lines tell in some 
 manner against the contention of the Essay, the 
 lines following immediately after them strongly 
 support it : 
 
^6 METAPHOR IN POETRY 
 
 Such clouds of nameless trouble cross 
 
 All night below the darkened eyes (iv, iv), 
 
 in which the endless journeys of the clouds 
 through the spacious regions above our narrow 
 mansions are added to the scene. Again some 
 metaphors seem to serve no special purpose, 
 •either as supplementing or deepening the scene 
 or as illuminating the argument. Take for in- 
 stance the whole of Section III, and especially 
 the whispered speech of Sorrow concluding — 
 
 "And all the phantom, Nature, stands — 
 
 With all the music in her tone, 
 
 A hollow echo of my own, — 
 A hollow form with empty hands " — 
 
 and the stanza immediately following the 
 same — 
 
 And shall I take a thing so blind, 
 
 Embrace her as my natural good; 
 
 Or crush her, like a vice of blood, 
 Upon the threshold of the mind ? — 
 
 where it would seem that the metaphors must 
 not be pressed. Without being explanatory 
 they appeal but vaguely to the emotions. They 
 do not seem to supply a background, and if 
 pressed they confuse the scene. They would 
 appear to belong to the order of rhetorical 
 
APPENDIX 87 
 
 figures, those fleeting phrases of pictorial poten- 
 tiality that find place in ordinary speech as 
 practically decayed metaphors, and in the de- 
 velopment of which orators so frequently raise 
 eff^ects unexpected and undesired. Nature is 
 transient and so a " phantom " ; but brings 
 sweet thoughts and so is " musical ", or perhaps 
 merely returns them to the thinker and so is 
 but an "echo"; is perhaps illusory and so 
 "hollow", and brings no reality and so has 
 " empty hands " ; and Sorrow misleads us and 
 so as a guide is " blind ", and we should not 
 accept such leadership and so not " embrace 
 her ", but reject it and so "crush her", feeling 
 the weakness of despair to be comparable to 
 *' vice " such as cowardice or lust — tendencies 
 which should be checked before they enter the 
 mind fully, and so upon its " threshold ". It 
 cannot indeed be said that no pictures are raised 
 here ; on the contrary there are many. It must, 
 however, be admitted that they have no unity, 
 and that if the several metaphors are pressed 
 the result is kaleidoscopic to a degree which the 
 poet is not likely to have intended. Such in- 
 stances may be adduced as telling against the 
 theory that metaphor aids in supplying the 
 background before which the main thoughts 
 appear, as the universe we live in stands ever 
 
88 METAPHOR IN POETRY 
 
 behind each individual who frets or struts his 
 hour upon the stage. Yet instances in favour 
 of the theory seem to me to outnumber and 
 overwhelm those to the contrary ; and of the 
 latter one may be permitted to remark that 
 sometimes even " bonus dormitat Homerus ". 
 How great is the force of this metaphor — 
 
 Thou, dear spirit, happy star, 
 O'erlook'st the tumult from afar (cxxvii, v), 
 
 where all the nightly heavens are opened by a 
 word! 
 
 In close accord with the use of metaphor as 
 background representing the universe behind us 
 all, is the habit of personification which is so 
 spontaneous and ineradicable in poets of all 
 ages and countries. Personification is a form 
 of metaphor, representing the impersonal as 
 personal and the inanimate as animate (see 
 p. 58). The effect of the innumerable per- 
 sonifications of poetry is to leave the mind with 
 the sense that the poets in some way, so far as 
 personification is not a mere trick and conven- 
 tion, feel themselves constantly confronted with 
 a spirit world unseen by man but none the less 
 real. Wordsworth may be cited as affording 
 perhaps the clearest examples of such a con- 
 viction. The sense of personality everywhere 
 
APPENDIX 89 
 
 in nature is strongly expressed in his delightful 
 Lines written in Early Spring — 
 
 Through primrose tufts, in that green bower, 
 The periwinkle trailed its wreaths; 
 
 And 't is my faith that every flower 
 Enjoys the air it breathes. 
 
 The budding twigs spread out their fan. 
 
 To catch the breezy air ; 
 And I must think, do all I can, 
 
 That there was pleasure there. 
 
 His longing for a sense of divinity immanent 
 in the world is clearly shown in the sestet to the 
 sonnet The World is too much with Us: 
 
 — Great God ! I M rather be 
 A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn : 
 So might I, standing on this pleasant lea. 
 Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn; 
 Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea, 
 Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn. 
 
 Not paganism, not Proteus, not Triton, are the 
 objects of the poet's longing, but rather these 
 than the sense of a world not interfused with 
 divinity. The innumerable personifications and 
 animations of poetry seem, however obscurely, 
 to present to the reader as a background to 
 everything the divineness in the universe, that 
 divinity which underlies and transfuses the 
 
90 METAPHOR IN POETRY 
 
 world and all that therein is, and in which it 
 would almost seem that all poets of every age 
 and clime have consciously or unconsciously 
 believed. Instances might be multiplied with- 
 out limit, but the lovely section in In Memoriam 
 beginning with the apostrophe " Sweet after 
 showers, ambrosial air!" and closing — 
 
 — till Doubt and Death, 
 111 brethren, let the fancy fly 
 
 From belt to belt of crimson seas 
 On leagues of odour streaming far. 
 To where in yonder orient star 
 
 A hundred spirits whisper " Peace " 
 
 (lxxxvi, iii-iv) — 
 
 is as typical as any. The address to the ship, 
 " Fair ship, that from the Italian shore ", may 
 be added, including the apostrophe to the heavens 
 and winds — 
 
 Sphere all your lights around, above ; 
 
 Sleep, gentle heavens, before the prow; 
 
 Sleep, gentle winds, as he sleeps now, 
 My friend, the brother of my love (ix, iv) — 
 
 where we have not only the attribution of super- 
 human personality to the phenomena of nature, 
 but that of a semi-human spirit to that which 
 man has himself created. In such passages as 
 
APPENDIX 91 
 
 these we may perceive the ancient mythopoeic 
 faculty strongly at work as of old. And as the 
 ancient world was able, as is the Hindu world 
 to-day, to accept the Many as manifestations in 
 no way conflicting with the One, so through 
 the endless personifications of the poets comes 
 the sense that each of these fair shapes is but 
 the representation of the one divine power suf- 
 fusing all things for the poet. It is this divinity 
 which makes him glad, and this that makes him 
 sing. 
 
 Personification is thus one of the poetic 
 agencies for adding background to the scene, 
 deepening it by the introduction of the sense 
 of all -pervading spirit, as metaphor proper 
 deepens it by vistas of far -distant material 
 beauty. It is thus that personifications of 
 abstractions and qualities, of " Sorrow in the 
 vaults of Death", of "Knowledge", of 
 "Wisdom", of "Science", of "Thought", of 
 " Speech", of what one may call the Latinistic, 
 abstract or qualitative type, as distinguished 
 from the Grecian, naturalistic or animistic type, 
 seem to fall so far short of the latter, for the 
 former conflict somewhat, while the latter blend 
 imperceptibly, with the unity which is revealed 
 to us in nature. The former are somewhat 
 cold and deliberate, as was the mythopoeic 
 
92 METAPHOR IN POETRY 
 
 faculty of developed Rome, deifying moral 
 qualities useful to the state and naming them 
 baldly without disguise ; the latter warmer and 
 more spontaneous, seeing Gods with the early 
 Greeks in sky and sea, in hill and stream and 
 plain. The personifications of the Augustan 
 school of English poetry and of the eighteenth 
 century generally, of which Gray's 
 
 Smiles on past Misfortune's brow 
 Soft Reflection's hand can trace — 
 
 may be taken as an example, represent the 
 deathlike tenuity of which the qualitative type 
 is capable. 
 
 The world among which the figures, whether 
 personifications or metaphors, of In Memoriam 
 place the reader is a world of awe-inspiring 
 spiritualized forces, presenting partly or wholly 
 the Divine, as Love and Death, Chance and 
 Time (Prologue, i, i, and iii, i, 2), with lesser 
 animated natural powers, filling with the In- 
 visible earth and sea and sky (11, i, i, and x, 
 iv, 2) ; of heavenly phenomena, light and dark- 
 ness, dawn and eventide, sun and moon and 
 the revolving stars, lightning, cloud and storm 
 (Prologue, vi, 4, li, iv, 2, lxxxiv, i, 4) ; and of 
 earthly beauty in sea, lake, and stream, in moun- 
 tain, chasm, and plain (xxxiii, i, 2), in spring 
 
APPENDIX 93 
 
 (xxii, ii, 3), harvest-tide (xlii, iii, 3), and winter 
 (iv, iii, 3), in bud and flower and fruit (viii, 
 V, 3) ; of man's daily life and toil and joys, his 
 earning (xlvi, iii, 3), building (iii, iv, 4), mould- 
 ing (vi, V, 2), fighting (xcv, viii, 2), ruling (xxix, 
 h 3)> singing (i, i, i), worshipping (lv, iv, 3), 
 wedding (xxiii, iv, 3), begetting (xxvii, iii, 4), 
 burying (iii, i, 2), and 'dying (lxxiii, iv, i). The 
 cumulative force of all these pictures, and their 
 value in the poem, can hardly be overestimated. 
 A metaphor in a single passage here, or a per- 
 sonification in another there, may seem of small 
 relative importance, and its omission might 
 scarcely be noticeable or in some cases re- 
 gretted ; but whether the poet wills it or not 
 the figures that arise within his brain and inter- 
 fuse themselves with his speech group them- 
 selves into a representation of his universe — 
 all the most lovely scenes, all the most tender 
 and moving thoughts, all the most august and 
 awe-inspiring features of this world, rising 
 spontaneously before his eyes and gleaming 
 through his words wherever the main theme is 
 not too insistent and too crowded to let the 
 mind catch glimpses of the long vistas behind. 
 Because these things are important, because 
 indeed they are life, they are introduced ; not 
 primarily because they resemble other things 
 
94 METAPHOR IN POETRY 
 
 more or less in some particular. The resem- 
 blance permits their introduction and prevents 
 any appearance of intrusion ; that is all. For 
 any purpose save for that of raising a back- 
 ground, and placing the main theme in a just 
 milieu^ the oft -repeated comparisons of In 
 Memoriam are frankly of small value. For that 
 supreme artistic purpose, however, they are on 
 the whole consummate. These give the true 
 world of the poet, the world of nature ; what 
 he places before them is often of minor im- 
 portance, and indeed not seldom acquires its 
 beauty only because it is so justly placed amid 
 this milieu. The depreciation of Tennyson that 
 one now so frequently encounters is largely due 
 to the common inability to see again in his 
 poems the visions amidst which he wrote them. 
 
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