Bare as a wild wave in the wide North Sea,
is at least modelled on the simile in Iliad, xv., 381-4, with reminiscences of the same similes in Iliad, xv., 624, and Iliad, iv., 42-56. The simile in the first section of the Princess,
As when a field of corn
Bows all its ears before the roaring East,
reminds us of Homer’s
ὡς δ’ ὅτε κινήση Ζέφυρος βαθυλήϊον, ἐλθὼν
λάβρος, ἐπαιγίζων, ἐπὶ τ’ ἠμύει ἀσταχύεσσιν.
(As when the west wind tosses a deep cornfield rushing down with furious blast, and it bows with all its ears.)
Nothing could be more happy than such an adaptation as the following—
Ever fail’d to draw
The quiet night into her blood,
from Virgil, Æn., iv., 530:—
Neque unquam Solvitur in somnos oculisve aut pectore noctem
Accipit.
(And she never relaxes into sleep, or receives the night in eyes or bosom),
or than the following (in Enid) from Theocritus:—