Note 112 — Chapter I · THE TREATMENT OF NATURE IN ENGLISH CLASSICAL POETRY

As illustrative of Dryden’s use of similitudes drawn from water note the following: Revenge and rage are sudden floods; joys are torrents that overflow all banks; contending passions are tides that flow against currents; fame is a swelling current; anger is a dammed up stream that gets new force by opposition; a ruined life, destroyed fortunes, are shipwrecks; love is like springtides, full and high, or like a flood that bursts through all dams, or like a stream that cannot return to its fountain, or like tides that do turn; the disappointed lover dies like an unfed stream; the mind of a capricious tyrant is like a vast sea open to every wind that blows; the army of the enemy comes like the wind broke loose upon the main; an obdurate foe is as deaf to supplication as seas and wind to sinking mariners; an open mind is a crystal brook; grief undermines the soul as banks are sapped away by streams; the voice of a mob is like winds that roar in pursuit of flying waves; unspeakable anger is like water choking up the narrow vent of the vessel from which it is poured; and so on through a long list.