h on his pilgrimage;
And so by many winding nooks he strays
With willing sport to the wild ocean.
Then let me go, and hinder not my course.
(_Two Gentlemen of Verona._)

Faster than spring-time showers comes thought on thought.
You are the fount that makes small brooks to flow.
And what is Edward but a ruthless sea?
(_Henry VI._)

If there were reason for these miseries,
Then into limits could I bind my woes;
When heaven doth weep, doth not the earth o'er-flow?
If the winds rage, doth not the sea wax mad,
Threatening the welkin with his big-swoln face?
And wilt thou have a reason for this coil?
I am the sea: hark, how her sighs do blow!
She is the weeping welkin, I the earth;
Then must my sea be moved with her sighs;
Then must my earth with her continual tears
Become a deluge, overflow'd and drowned.
(_Titus Andronicus._)

This battle fares like to the morning's war
When dying clouds contend with growing light,
What time the shepherd blowing of his nails
Can neither call it perfect day nor night.
Now sways it this way, like a mighty sea
Forced by the tide to combat with the wind;
Now sways it that way, like the self-same sea
Forced to retire by fury of the wind.
Sometime the flood prevails and then the wind:
Now one the better, then another best;
Both tugging to be victors, breast to breast,
Yet neither conqueror nor conquered.
So is the equal poise of this fell war.
(_Henry VI._)

In the last five examples the epic treatment and the personifications
are noteworthy.

Comparisons from animal life are forcible and striking:

How like a deer, stricken by many princes,
Dost thou lie here! (_Julius Caesar._)

Richard III. is called:

The wretched bloody and usurping boar
That spoil'd your summer fields and fruitful vines,
Swills your warm blood like wash and makes his trough
In your embowell'd bosoms; this foul swine
Lies now even in the centre of this isle.
The tiger now hath seized the gentle hind.
(_Richard III._)

The smallest objects are noted:

As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods;
They kill us for their sport. (_King Lear._)

_Marcus_: Alas! my lord, I have but kill'd a fly.

_Titus_: But how if that fly had a father