O winds in seedy hollows for my coming pipe a song;

I'm April; all the promise of the youthful year is mine.

O earth, smile out in violets; poor earth, you've waited long
Till I should stir your pulses as man's heart is stirred with wine,
See, I sow the seed with laughter,

Though the swift, light tears fall after,

And my young heart's overflowing with a joy that's half divine! - E. P. DICKINS: The Port o' Dreams.

April,

Dead, forgotten days

Tremble in your dim blue haze;

All the glories of the race

Flicker on your mobile face.

Heroes panoplied for fight
Glimmer in your golden light;
Martyrs, sanctified by pain,
Murmur in your silver rain.
All your smiles and all your tears
Voicing now our hopes and fears,
April, Irish through and through,
Here's my caubeen off to you!

- T. A. DALY.

110. The poet, also, like the forceful writer, deals in emotions, but in emotions of a different kind, or, if the emotions should be of the same kind, the poet handles them differently.

To desire a ripe apple, to hope for it, to fear its loss, to joy in its possession, these constitute one kind of emotions; to imagine, to contemplate, to dwell with pleasure on the apple's shape, color, and other beauties, these are different feelings. Hope, fear, joy, sadness, are emotions tending to good or avoiding evil and are self-seeking emotions, entirely distinct in origin, nature, and faculty from the feelings awakened by beauty. These latter belong, not to man's appetites as do the former, but to man's faculties of knowing, to senses, imagination, and mind. Interest, taste, wonder, mental delight, awe, inspiration, enthusiasm, and the like are the

feelings which the poet awakens through beauty. The poet, therefore, may have good and evil as the subjects and materials of his verses, just as he writes of clouds and flowers, but he does not use hope and fear and other self-seeking emotions, as the speaker uses them, for force and persuasion. He simply presents them in their beauty for our charmed contemplation, as an artist might picture for us the good of an apple or the evil of a storm.

Beauty of Language

111. In addition to meter and rime, poetry makes use of many other means for musical expression, repeating the same consonants at the beginning of words or syllables (alliteration), suggesting pictures by the sound of words (imitative harmony, onomatopeia), varying the place of pauses and the length of phrases (cadence), avoiding the monotony of a too regular meter by occasionally changing a foot and by variously distributing light and heavy words (shifting of stress).

Alliteration and imitative harmony must be used with taste and not distract attention from the thought. The usage of good writers is the best guide. Musical cadences have the largest scope in blank verse, especially in that of drama.

Alliteration

Beside the mere I watched the golden day
Creep slow into the pine trees' purple rim;
And all the strange, sweet scents of evening rose
Within the woodlands dim.

The tall reeds quivered like a trembling heart;
Pale lines of foam in silver silence curled;
A lonely heron sailed with wide, still wings
Across the blessed world.

-E. P. DICKINS: The Port o' Dreams.

The change of meter in the second line helps the thought, and the remote alliteration, "sailed with wide, still wings" and immediate alliteration, "silver silence," give a delicate music that adds grace to the few choice details in this finely etched picture of evening. Note other alliterations.

Onomatopeia

Tennyson in his Memoirs mentions the following

lines of his as good instances of imitative harmony:

The mellow ouzel fluted in the elm.

- Gardener's Daughter.

By the long wash of Australasian seas.

The Brook.

The league-long roller thundering on the beach.

Myriads of rivulets hurrying thro' the lawn,
The moan of doves in immemorial elms,
And murmuring of innumerable bees.

Cadences/and shifting of stress.

Long lines of cliff | breaking | have left a chasm ; ||

And in the chasm are foam and yellow sands; ||

Beyond, red roofs about a narrow wharf

In cluster; || then a mouldered church; || and higher |

A long street climbs to one tall-towered mill; ||
And high in heaven behind it | a gray down
With Danish barrows; || and a hazelwood, |

By autumn nutters haunted, | flourishes
Green | in a cuplike hollow of the down.

TENNYSON: Enoch Arden.

99 66

6

4

5

4

7

5.

3

4.

4

The lesser and greater pauses (I, II); the groups of heavy -) and light (....) words; the prominent beats in the line, indicated by the numbers; the substituted feet ("breaking,' green in "), with the regular meter pulsing throughout, all serve to render each line different and to make the whole paragraph melodious. Parenthetic phrases, as "By autumn nutters haunted," furnish another source of variety in

verse.

In the first and fifth lines there would seem to be a suggestion of onomatopeia. This opening description has been much admired for its clear-cut details, for its restraint of color, suggesting other colors by contrast, and for its full appropriateness to the story both in matter and style. A reading of the poem will show why each detail was chosen.

EXERCISE 54

1. Hear the sledges with the bells,

Silver bells!

What a world of merriment their melody foretells!
How they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle,

In the icy air of night!
While the stars that oversprinkle
All the heavens, seem to twinkle
With a crystalline delight;
Keeping time, time, time,

In a sort of Runic rime,

To the tintinnabulation that so musically wells
From the jingling and the tinkling of the bells.

- POE: The Bells.

Picture the sounds of: winds; waters; orchestral instruments; discords of a city street; transportation noises (elevated, surface, subway); bird songs; human voices.

2.

I remember the bulwarks of the shore,
And the fort upon the hill,

The sunrise gun with its hollow roar,
The drum-beat repeated o'er and o'er.

LONGFELLOW: My Lost Youth.

I remember, I remember the roses, red and white,
The violets and the lily-cups - those flowers made of light;
The lilacs where the robin built, and where my brother set
The laburnum on his birth-day,

the tree is living yet! HOOD: Past and Present.

Recall pictures or sounds of your own past life: the school, the first circus, a day on the shore, fishing, the soldiers on parade, etc.

3. Comes a vapor from the margin, blackening over heath and

holt,

Cramming all the blast before it; in its breast a thunder

bolt.

TENNYSON: Locksley Hall.

Describe with like comprehensive brevity: a snow storm, an explosion, a fire, an oncoming train, a vessel leaving the dock, the growth of flower, grain, or fruit from sowing to harvesting.

4.

O velvet bee, you're a dusty fellow;
You have powdered your legs with gold;
O brave marsh Marybuds rich and yellow,
Give me your money to hold.

- INGELOW: Seven Times One.

The buttercup is like a golden cup,
The marigold is like a golden frill,
The daisy with a golden eye looks up,
And golden spreads the flag beside the rill,
And gay and golden nods the daffodil.

- C. ROSSETTI: Golden Glories.

Gather silver and blue and red and other colors; silver sounds; bitter tastes; martial sounds; sounds of peace.

5.

The team is loosened from the wain,

The boat is drawn upon the shore;
Thou listenest to the closing door,

And life is darkened in the brain. (Night.)

The market boat is on the stream,
And voices hail it from the brink;

Thou hear'st the village hammer clink
And see'st the moving of the team.

(Morning.)

·TENNYSON: In Memoriam.

Describe by their characteristic signs: May, September, December, noon-hour in the city, morning and evening in a factory, school, recreation. Omit "thou" and the address found in the model.

6. The rarest of honeysuckle is on the hedgetop high;

The reddest of rose-red apples swings on the good tree's crest;
The gladdest of songs and singers are lost in the heart of the
sky;

Hark to the lark and his anthem, soaring away from the nest.
Go higher and higher and higher, the highest is ever the best!
-KATHERINE TYNAN: Aspiration.

Imagine: other high things; the glad things, ever swift; the sad things, abiding; the lowly things, ever in security; the far-off things, attracting; the home things, always true.