28. Like future joys, etc. This passage, quoted by Ruskin above, also illustrates what is comparatively rare in figurative language--taking the immaterial to exemplify the material. The latter is constantly used to symbolize or elucidate the former; but one would have to search long in our modern poetry to find a dozen instances where, as here, the relation is reversed. Cf. 639 below. We have another example in the second passage quoted by Ruskin. Cf. also Tennyson's "thousand wreaths of dangling water-smoke, That like a broken purpose waste in air;" and Shelly's "Our boat is asleep on Serchio's stream; Its sails are folded like thoughts in a dream."
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