The similitude of a “red-faced farmer” does not raise the subject to heights. It is entirely lacking in dignity, is commonplace, and suggests ludicrous associations. For instance, much beer and a hot game of skittles. When Browning does it he gets to work in a businesslike manner: The sun looked over the water’s brim And straight there was a path of gold for him And a world of souls for me. I quote from memory, but I believe I quote correctly. The image is expressed with brevity, clearness, and dignity. Keats’s way of expressing the experience is: I who still saw the universal sun Heave his broad shoulder o’er the edge of the world The similitude of “heaving the shoulder” is open to the same objection as that of a “red-faced farmer.” It is undignified. It calls up a vision of the sun shooting coals down the front cellar. Again, when John Gould Fletcher wants to describe umbrellas in a new way he refers to them as: Bending, recurved blossoms of the storm. And a special movement of rain is exactly described as: Uneven tinkling, the lazy rain Dripping from the eaves. The ingenuity of these comparisons takes away Miss Amy Lowell’s breath. Writing in _The New Republic_ she uses the term “absolutely original.” And she tells us how well the first figure “makes us see those round, shining umbrella-tops,” while the second is “a marvel of exact description.” I dare say Miss Lowell is right. And yet the description, “The news was a dagger to his heart,” was just as original when it was written long, long ago, and is certainly as vivid and intense in its way as anything by Mr. Fletcher praised by Miss Amy Lowell.