And know not that I call'd and drew them thither, Which man's polluting sin with taint hath shed On what was pure! till, cramm'd and gorg'd, nigh burst Of thy victorious arm, well-pleasing Son, Both Sin and Death and yawning Grave, at last -Paradise Lost, 10: Milton. Fret till your proud heart breaks; Go show your slaves how choleric you are, And make your bondmen tremble. Must I budge? Under your testy humor? By the gods, You shall digest the venom of your spleen Tho' it do split you; for from this day forth I'll use you for my mirth-yea, for my laughter- -Julius Cæsar, iv., 3: Shakespear. So, too, the poetic pure and orotund naturally go together; for example: For though the giant ages heave the hill And break the shore, and evermore Make and break and work their will; Though worlds on worlds in myriad myriads roll And other forms of life than ours, What know we greater than the soul? On God and godlike men we build our trust. -Ode to Duke of Wellington: Tennyson. Much of the representative beauty of poetry depends on a judicious alternation of these different qualities of sound. Notice this fact as exemplified in the last three quotations, as well as in the fourth and fifth lines of the following, where the poetic orotund is introduced in the midst of an aspirate passage: The bright sun rises to his course, and lights But base ignoble slaves; slaves to a horde Strong in some hundred spearmen, only great -Rienzi's Address to Romans: Mitford. CHAPTER XII. EFFECTS OF POETIC QUALITY CONTINUED. Imitative Effects of Letter-Sounds corresponding to Aspirate Quality, representing Serpents, Sighing, Rapidity, Winds, Slumber, Conspiracy, Fear, Frightening, Checking-Guttural Quality, representing Grating, Forcing, Flowing Water, Kattling, Effort-Pectoral Quality, representing Groaning, Depth, Hollowness-Pure Quality, representing Thinness, Clearness, Sharpness, Cutting-Orotund Quality, representing Fulness, Roundness, Murmuring, Humming, Denying, etc.— These Effects as combined in Various Illustrations of Carving; Dashing, Rippling, and Lapping Water; Roaring; Clashing; Cursing; Shrieking; Fluttering; Crawling; Confusion; Horror; Spite; Scorn; etc. LET us turn now to poetic effects produced by quality corresponding to those of dramatic, as distinguished from discoursive, elocution; and first to the aspirate. In poetry, as in elocution, the repellant aspirate imitates any thing that hisses; for example : He would have spoke, But hiss for hiss returned with forkèd tongue To his bold riot: dreadful was the din Of hissing through the hall, thick swarming now And dipsas; not so thick swarmed once the soil -Paradise Lost, 10: Milton. The acquiescent aspirate imitates any thing that sighs; for example: She gave me for my pains a world of sighs; She swore. In faith 't was strange, 't was passing strange, 'T was pitiful, 't was wondrous pitiful; She wish'd she had not heard it; yet she wish'd -Othello, i., 3: Shakespear. But it is possible to go still more into detail than this. As Guest has pointed out in his "History of English Rhythms," developing for that purpose a suggestion made by Bacon, certain letters and combinations of them seem especially adapted for the imitation of certain specific operations. Things, for instance, that fly rapidly, make sounds resembling those of the sibilants. Hence the ap propriateness of the following: How quick they wheeled, and flying behind them shot So do nurses, fountains, and sea-waves, when lulling one to sleep: O Sleep, O gentle Sleep, Nature's soft nurse, how have I frightened thee And steep my senses in forgetfulness? Why rather, Sleep, liest thou in smoky cribs, Upon uneasy pallets stretching thee, And hushed with buzzing night-flies to thy slumber; And lulled with sounds of sweetest melody. -2 Henry IV., iii., 1: Shakespear. In the following we seem to hear the whisperings of conspirators: Who rather had, Though they themselves did suffer by it, behold -Cariolanus, iv., 6: Shakespear. And here the whisperings of fear : A hideous giant, horrible and high. -Faerie Queene, 1, 7, 8: Spenser. Fit vessel, fittest imp of fraud, in whom -Paradise Lost, 9: Milton. When we wish to frighten a bird or animal, we often make a prolonged sound of s, and then stop it suddenly with the sound of t. Now, look at the use of st in the following to indicate motion that is checked by being frightened: Stern were their looks like wild amazed steers, -Faerie Queene, 2, 9, 13: Spenser. |