Now so long as we see that the feeling is true, we pardon, or are even pleased by, the confessed fallacy of sight which it induces:  we are pleased, for instance, with those lines of Kingsley’s above quoted, not because they fallaciously describe foam, but because they faithfully describe sorrow.  But the moment the mind of the speaker becomes cold, that moment every such expression becomes untrue, as being for ever untrue in the external facts.  And there is no greater baseness in literature than the habit of using these metaphorical expressions in cool blood.  An inspired writer, in full impetuosity of passion, may speak wisely and truly of “raging waves of the sea foaming out their own shame";[62] but it is only the basest writer who cannot speak of the sea without talking of “raging waves,” “remorseless floods,” “ravenous billows,” etc.; and it is one of the signs of the highest power in a writer to check all such habits of thought, and to keep his eyes fixed firmly on the pure fact, out of which if any feeling conies to him or his reader, he knows it must be a true one.

To keep to the waves, I forget who it is who represents a man in despair desiring that his body may be cast into the sea,

    Whose changing mound, and foam that passed away,
    Might mock the eye that questioned where I lay.

Observe, there is not a single false, or even overcharged, expression.  “Mound” of the sea wave is perfectly simple and true; “changing” is as familiar as may be; “foam that passed away,” strictly literal; and the whole line descriptive of the reality with a degree of accuracy which I know not any other verse, in the range of poetry, that altogether equals.  For most people have not a distinct idea of the clumsiness and massiveness of a large wave.  The word “wave” is used too generally of ripples and breakers, and bendings in light drapery or grass:  it does not by itself convey a perfect image.  But the word “mound” is heavy, large, dark, definite; there is no mistaking the kind of wave meant, nor missing the sight of it.  Then the term “changing” has a peculiar force also.  Most people think of waves as rising and falling.  But if they look at the sea carefully, they will perceive that the waves do not rise and fall.  They change.  Change both place and form, but they do not fall; one wave goes on, and on, and still on; now lower, now higher, now tossing its mane like a horse, now building itself together like a wall, now shaking, now steady, but still the same wave, till at last it seems struck by something, and changes, one knows not how,—­becomes another wave.

The close of the line insists on this image, and paints it still more perfectly,—­“foam that passed away.”  Not merely melting, disappearing, but passing on, out of sight, on the career of the wave.  Then, having put the absolute ocean fact as far as he may before our eyes, the poet leaves us to feel about it as we may, and to trace for ourselves the opposite fact,—­the image of the green mounds that do not change, and the white and written stones that do not pass away; and thence to follow out also the associated images of the calm life with the quiet grave, and the despairing life with the fading foam—­