Hear the sledges with the bells, silver bells

What a world of merriment their melody fortells?

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.

-The Bells: Poe.

The vowels used in pure quality, especially e both short and long, and these especially when combined with the sibilants and the whispering consonants, p, t, and f, produce an effect which some recognized to be imitative of any thing sharp and cutting; for example:

What's this? a sleeve? 'T is like a demi-cannon;
What! up and down, carved like an apple-tart?

Here 's snip and nip, and cut and slish and slash.
Like to a censor in a barber's shop.

-Taming the Shrew, iv., 3: Shakespear.

And at the point two stings infixèd are,

Both deadly sharp, that sharpest steel exceeden far.
But stings and sharpest steel did far exceed

The sharpness of his cruel rending claws.

-F. Q., I, II, II: Spenser.

The poetic orotund imitates any thing that sounds full and round. It is admirably alternated with pure quality in the following:

The old song sounds hollower in mine ear

Than thin keen sounds of dead men's speech

A noise one hears and would not hear;

Too strong to die, too weak to reach
From wave to beach.

-Felise: Swinburne.

In connection mainly with the more orotund vowels, m, n, and ng always, and b, d, v, and 7, when their preliminary sounds are prolonged, produce tones resembling the low notes of musical instruments, or the murmur or hum of insects, men, or other objects moving at a dis tance; for example:

In his "Expression of the Emotions," Darwin taking

a suggestion from Wedgeworth's "Origin of Language," surmises that sounds of m and n found in negations like nay and no may be traced to the noises made by children when refusing food. In our own language, as in most others, the n especially seems to have this negative effect. To whom our Saviour sagely thus replied:

"Think not but that I know these things, or think

I know them not: nor therefore am I short
Of knowing what I ought; he who receives
Light from above, from the fountain of light,
No other doctrine needs, though granted true;
But these are false, or little else but dreams,
Conjectures, fancies built on nothing firm,
The first and wisest of them all professed
To know this only, that he nothing knew."

-Paradise Reg., 4: Milton.

By combining the sounds of consonants and vowels in fulfilment of the principles just mentioned, or of others like them, all of our best poets are constantly producing effects that are distinctively imitative. For instance, hear the knife carving the ivory in this:

Ancient rosaries,

Laborious orient ivory, sphere in sphere.

-The Princess: Tennyson.

And the loud dashing and soft rippling of the waves in

these:

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
The horrid shock. Now storming fury rose
And clamor, such as heard in heaven till now
Was never; arms on armor clashing bray'd
Horrible discord, and the madding wheels
Of brazen chariots raged; dire was the noise
Of conflict; overhead the dismal hiss

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
Feels the full flower of morning shed,
And fluent sunrise round him rolled,
That laps and laves his body bold
With fluctuant heaven in water's stead,
And urgent through the growing gold
Strikes, and sees all the spray flash red.

-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 terrified did flutter on the ground,

And flap their useless wings; the wildest brutes
Came tame and tremulous; and vipers crawled
And twined themselves among the multitude,
Hissing but stingless-they were slain for food;
And War which for a moment was no more,
Did glut himself again;—a meal was bought
With blood, and each sate sullenly apart
Gorging himself in gloom; no love was left.

-Darkness: Byron.

And the climax of confusion, overthrow, and horror in almost every form, in this:

The overthrown he raised, and as a herd
Of goats or timorous flock together thronged
Drove them before him thunderstruck, pursued
With terror and with furies to the bounds
And crystal wall of heaven, which opening wide
Rolled inward, and a spacious gap disclosed
Into the wasteful deep; the monstrous sight

Struck them with horrow backward; but far worse
Urged them behind; headlong themselves they threw
Down from the verge of heaven, eternal wrath

Burned after them to the bottomless pit.

Hell heard th' insufferable noise, hell saw

Heaven ruining from heaven, and would have fled
Affrighted, but strict fate had cast too deep
Her dark foundations, and too fast had bound.
Nine days they fell; confounded Chaos roared,
And felt tenfold confusion in their fall
Through his wild anarchy; so huge a rout
Incumber'd him with ruin; hell at last

Yawning received them whole, and on them closed,
Hell their fit habitation, fraught with fire

Unquenchable, the house of woe and pain.

—P. L., 6: Milton.