Page:The nature and elements of poetry, Stedman, 1892.djvu/60

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ORACLES OLD AND NEW

placed the blind giant in the skies. The most superb of constellations represents even in modern poetry a mythical demigod. In science it was but the other day that the awful whirl of nebulæ developed by the Lick telescope revealed it to us almost as a distinct universe in itself.

But to show the distinction as directly affecting A modern instance.modes of expression, take the first of countless illustrations that come to hand; for instance, the methods applied to the treatment of one of our recurrent coast storms. The poet says:—

"When descends on the Atlantic
The gigantic
Storm-wind of the Equinox,
Landward in his wrath he scourges
The toiling surges
Laden with sea-weed from the rocks."

Or take this stanza by a later balladist:—

"The East Wind gathered, all unknown,
A thick sea-cloud his course before:
He left by night the frozen zone,
And smote the cliffs of Labrador;
He lashed the coasts on either hand,
And betwixt the Cape and Newfoundland
Into the bay his armies pour."

All this impersonation and fancy is translated by the Weather Bureau into something like the following:—

An area of extreme low pressure is rapidly moving up the Atlantic coast, with wind and rain. Storm-centre now