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Poetic Imagery in Homer and Virgil

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 January 2009

Extract

It is the special function of the poet to create beauty. Loveliness may appear in many thousand forms, but among these one of the most satisfying is the ‘pen-picture’, the Homeric or Virgilian simile, complete and perfect in three or four lines. Pope speaks of

‘The Simile that solitary shines

In the dry desert of a thousand lines.’

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1932

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References

page 21 note 1 I am using for Homer the prose translation of Lang, Leaf, and Myers; and for Virgil the metrical version of Rhoades.