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DIAMONDS IN LITERATURE 393
That he may start at his reflected face, His wanton deeds and ornaments survey."
Another
recognition by the same poet, of the hardness of the diamond, in which
he overlooked its cleav-able quality, appears in the description of
Sweno's valor in assaulting the barbarians:
"
Not the plate they wore, Although 'twere thrice refined, nor cap of
steel, Though into diamond charmed by wizard lore, Might stand the
strokes, his fire and fury deal."
Spenser, in " An Hymme of Heavenly Beautie," describes the throne of heaven as:
" More firme and durable than Steele or brasse, Or the hard diamond, which them both doth passe."
It
is noticeable that poets do not vary much in their figurative use of a
thing. Each places it in similar connections throughout his poems. One
illustrates hardness in some form, by the diamond, another brilliancy.
With it, one engraves a human quality, the 6ther bedews the fields, or
sprinkles water. Each, when it recurs to him, reproduces his former
simile with little variation. Spenser almost always employs it to
heighten the splendor of some building to which he would lift
imagination. In "The Visions of Bellay" he says of the temple:
" On high hill top I saw a stately frame,
An hundred cubits high by just assize,
With hundreth pillours fronting faire the same,
All wrought with Diamond after Dorick wize;"
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