Roared as when the rolling breakers boom and blanch on the precipices. -Boadicea: Idem. The murm'ring surge That on the unnumber'd idle pebbles chafes. -Lear, iv., 6: Shakespear. And the ice and rocks, resounding with the clanging of armor and footsteps in this: Dry clashed his harness in the icy caves And barren chasms, and all to left and right The bare black cliff clanged round him as he based His feet on juts of slipp'ry crag that rang Sharp smitten with the dint of armed heels. -Mort D'Arthur: Tennyson. And the roar and clash and speed of warriors and their chariots and weapons in this: -nor stood at gaze The adverse legions, nor less hideous joined Of fiery darts in flaming vollies flew, And flying vaulted either host with fire. -Paradise Lost, 6: Milton. And the smooth water, lapping the body of the swimmer in this: And softlier swimming with raised head -Epilogue: Swinburne. And the cursing and shrieking, fluttering, crawling, and generally appalling character of this: -and then again With curses cast them down upon the dust, And gnashed their teeth and howled; the wild birds shriek'd And flap their useless wings; the wildest brutes -Darkness: Byron. And the climax of confusion, overthrow, and horror in almost every form, in this: The overthrown he raised, and as a herd Struck them with horrow backward; but far worse Heaven ruining from heaven, and would have fled Yawning received them whole, and on them closed, Unquenchable, the house of woe and pain. -P. L., 6: Milton. In certain poems, as in fact in certain of the quotations already given, it is difficult to determine how far the effects correspond to those of dramatic or of discoursive elocution. We cannot clearly distinguish in them between that which is and is not strictly imitative. One of the finest examples of this kind which we have, is furnished by Robert Browning's Holy-Cross-Day, purporting to represent the feelings of the Jews in Rome, when forced, as was formerly the custom on that day, to attend church, and listen to an annual Christian sermon. Notice the concentrated spite and scorn represented in the qualities-mainly guttural and aspirate-of most of the sounds used. Only a part of the poem can be quoted; but the rest of it is almost equally effective: Higgledy piggledy, packed we lie, It began when a herd of us, picked and placed, To usher in worthily Christian Lent. It grew, when the hangman entered our bounds, Men I helped to their sins, help me to their God. -Holy-Cross-Day : R. Browning. In the following, too, we have similar effects, partly imitative and partly not. In the last two lines of each stanza, calling for the echo, we hear the resonant poetic orotund. Aside from these, the poem begins in the first stanza with the hush of the aspirate : The splendor falls on castle walls And snowy summits old in story; The long light shakes across the lakes, And the wild cataract leaps in glory. Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying. Blow, bugle; answer echoes, dying, dying, dying. Then we have mainly the thin, clear quality of the pure tone: O hark, O hear! how thin and clear, The horns of Elfland faintly blowing! Blow, bugle; answer echoes, dying, dying, dying. And, lastly, the deeper feeling indicated by the orotund: O love, they die in yon rich sky, They faint on hill or field or river; Our echoes roll from soul to soul, And grow forever and forever. Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying, And answer echoes, answer, dying, dying, dying. -The Bugle, from the Princess: Tennyson. CHAPTER XIII. THE SACRIFICE OF SENSE TO SOUND. Verse in which Attention to Sound prevents Representation of Thought— Violating Laws of Natural Expression or Grammatical ConstructionExcellences exaggerated, the Source of these Faults-Insertion of Words, Pleonasm, Superfluity; Transposition of Words, Inversion, Hyperbaton, tending to Obscurity-Style of the Age of DrydenAlteration of Words in Accent; or by Apheresis, Front-Cut; Syncope, Mid-Cut; or Apocope, End-Cut-All these often show Slovenly Workmanship. THE HE theory underlying all that has been said thus far is, that poetry is an artistic development of language; its versification, of the pauses of natural breathing; its rhythm and tune, of the accents and inflections of ordinary conversation; and the significance in its sounds, of ejaculatory and imitative methods actuating the very earliest efforts of our race at verbal expression. The inference suggested has been that these effects produced by sound are legitimate in poetry, because, like language, and as a part of it, and far more significantly than some forms of it, they represent thought. This inference necessarily carries with it another, which it seems important to emphasize before we leave this part of our subject. It is this, that no effects produced by sound are legitimate in poetry, which fail in any degree to represent thought. If a man's first impression on entering a picture-gallery comes from a suggestion of paint, he may know that he |