g knit
together in a balanced and rounded whole. Here is an instance of what
I mean, from _Paradise Lost_, i.:

"As when the potent rod
Of Amram's son, in Egypt's evil day,
Wav'd round the coast, up call'd a pitchy cloud
Of locusts, warping on the eastern wind,
That o'er the realm of impious Pharaoh hung
Like night, and darken'd all the land of Nile;
So numberless where those bad angels seen
Hovering on wing under the cope of Hell,
'Twixt upper, nether, and surrounding fires."

This may be fitly taken as a model specimen of the thing; it is
severely classical in style, and is well worthy of the great hand that
made it. Here is another, somewhat different in structure, and not
easy to beat, from Wordsworth's _Miscellaneous Sonnets_, Part ii.:

"Desponding Father! mark this alter'd bough,
So beautiful of late, with sunshine warm'd,
Or moist with dews; what more unsightly now,
Its blossoms shrivell'd, and its fruit, if form'd,
Invisible? yet Spring her genial brow
Knits not o'er that discolouring and decay
As false to expectation. Nor fret thou
At like unlovely process in the May
Of human life: a Stripling's graces blow,
Fade, and are shed, that from their timely fall
(Misdeem it not a cankerous change) may grow
Rich mellow bearings, that for thanks shall call."

It may be worth noting, that the first member of this no less
beautiful than instructive passage contains one metaphor,--"Spring her
genial brow knits not"; and the second two,--"in the May of human
life," and, "a Stripling's graces blow, fade, and are shed." Herein it
differs from the preceding instance; but I take it to be none the
worse for that.

Shakespeare occasionally builds a simile on the same plan; as in the
following from _Measure for Measure_, i. 3:

"Now, as fond fathers,
Having bound up the threatening twigs of birch,
Only to stick it in their children's sight
For terror, not to use, in time the rod
Becomes more mock'd than fear'd; so our decrees,
Dead to infliction, to themselves are dead;
And liberty plucks justice by the nose;
The baby beats the nurse, and quite athwart
Goes all decorum."

But the Poet does not much affect this formal mode of the thing: he
has comparatively few instances of it; while his pages abound in
similes of the informal mode, like those quoted before. And his