For we are all, like swimmers in the sea,
Poised on the top of a huge wave of fate.
We are not like swimmers in the sea, but poised on the top of a huge wave of fate, as swimmers in the sea are poised on waves of water.
To prove that grouping is independent of punctuation, let the student read aloud the following illustrations:
But, look you, Cassius,
The angry spot doth glow on Caesar’s brow.
I saw Mark Antony offer him a crown; and, as I told you, he put it by once; but, for all that, to my thinking he would have had it ... and, for mine own part, I dare not laugh.
In the two preceding extracts, the reader would hardly pause after “But,” “you,” and the “and’s.”
While we are on the subject of punctuation, it may be advisable to look at a few examples in which the understanding of the force of punctuation vitally affects the reading. In these lines from Tennyson’s Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington, students carelessly connect the phrase “sad and slow” with “Lead out the pageant.” As a matter of fact, a moment’s thought must show us that the opening sentence is complete in itself, and that “sad and slow” modifies “go.” A careful reading of the text would reveal this, but a mind that had been trained to observe these matters of punctuation would have observed at once that the colon separated the two ideas, and, further, that the word modified by “sad and slow” was to be sought further on. Here is the passage: