Tennyson renders very naturally the action of the northern farmer's
nag and the sound of its movement, by--
"Proputty, proputty sticks an' proputty, proputty graws."
And an excellent example of the effect of well-chosen words, to
express the sound produced by the subject referred to, occurs in the
_Morte d'Arthur_:
"The many-knotted waterflags,
That whistled stiff and dry about the marge."
Blackmore's passage in _Lorna Doone_, describing the superlative ease
and speed of Tom Faggus's mare, when John Ridd as a boy was allowed to
ride her--after a rough experience at the beginning of the
venture--is, though printed as prose, perhaps better poetry than most
similar efforts. To emphasize its full force it may be allowable to
divide the phrases as follows:
"I never had dreamed of such delicate motion,
Fluent, and graceful, and ambient,
Soft as the breeze flitting over the flowers,
But swift as the summer lightning.
I sat up again, but my strength was all spent,
And no time left to recover it,
And though she rose at our gate like a bird,
I tumbled off into the mixen."
The last line is a delightful bathos, adding immensely to the
completeness of the catastrophe.
In spring the beech is the most beautiful of forest trees, putting
forth individual horizontal sprays of tender green from the lower
branches about the end of April as heralds of the later full glory of
the tree.
Pages:
258
259
260
261
262
263
264
265
266
267
268
269
270
271
272
273
274
275
276
277
278
279
280
281
282