Literary notes about spume (AI summary)
Writers employ the term “spume” both to depict the physical froth of surging seas and as a metaphor for wild, unbridled energy. In many works, the word vividly captures the dramatic effect of waves crashing and hurling spray—whether illustrating the light falling on ship rafters amid a storm [1] or conveying the relentless, seething agitation along a vessel’s side [2]. Classical texts transform its literal meaning into a symbol of passionate and sometimes destructive force, as in the awe-inspiring imagery of Milton’s verse [3], while other narratives use “spume” to evoke the visceral, almost overwhelming expression of emotion seen in figures foaming at the mouth [4]. At times, its use extends to evoke an ethereal, almost otherworldly quality, suggesting a transient, mysterious essence rising from hidden depths [5].
- Count Hannibal could see her head but dimly, for the light shed upwards by the spume of the sea fell only on the rafters.
— from Count Hannibal: A Romance of the Court of France by Stanley John Weyman - The wind was dropping, and the spume seethed against the black side of the ship without force from the waves to throw it up to them in spray.
— from The Nest Builder: A Novel by Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale - Of spiritous and fierie spume, till toucht With Heav’ns ray, and temperd they shoot forth So beauteous, op’ning to the ambient light.
— from Paradise Lost by John Milton - The tiny, misshapen countenance writhed with convulsive fury, and from the mouth poured out a foaming spume.
— from The Magician by W. Somerset (William Somerset) Maugham - It was no better than the spume of sea-mists held between invisible crags of blackness, of mute eternity.
— from Tempest-Driven: A Romance (Vol. 3 of 3) by Richard Dowling
