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IMITATIVE HARMONY. 277 |
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pictures the roaring of the seas by the reiteration of the letter r:
Those wild eyes that watch the wave, In roarings round the coral reef;
the sense ot chill cheerlessness by such harsh rhythm as:
And ghastly through the drizzling rain On the bald street breaks the bleak day.
The effect of varied sounds and movements is picturesquely given in two stanzas from the Dream of Fair Women :
Her slow full words sank thro' the silence drear,
As thunder drops fall on a sleeping sea ; Sudden I heard a voice that cried, " Come here,
That I may look on thee."
* • • • •
She locked her lips ; she left me where I stood : " Glory to God," she sang, and past afar,
Thridding the sombre boskage of the wood, Toward the morning star.
The description of Arthur leaving Guinevere presents a picture of such a masterly adaptation of word and figure to the sense as cannot be surpassed in the whole range of English poetry :
And more and more, The moony vapour rolling round the king Who seemed the phantom of a giant in it, Enwound him fold by fold, and made him gray And grayer, till himself became a mist Before her, moving ghostlike to his doom.
Tennyson. " Idylls of the King." |
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