of the mower's arms as they work. But even without these connotations the passage would have its value as sheer tone color secured by alliteration. In the lines:

"The fair breeze blew, the white foam flew,
The furrow follow'd free,"

from The Ancient Mariner, the meter and the alliteration of f's and I's give the impression of speed, but the alliteration is also musical in itself. More often than not, alliteration is used without any particular suggestive value merely because it is pleasing to the ear. The alliteration in:

"Elaine the fair, Elaine the lovable,
Elaine the lily maid of Astolat;"

in:

"Silver sails all out of the West;"

in:

"The mild-eyed melancholy Lotos-eaters came;"

in:

"Pale, beyond porch and portal,

Crowned with calm leaves, she stands

Who gathers all things mortal

With cold immortal hands;

Her languid lips are sweeter

Than love's who fears to greet her

To men that mix and meet her

From many times and lands"

is beautiful sound, indeed, with more value in its music than in any meaning it suggests. An excellent example of alliteration that contributes tone color, onomatopoeia, and mood, all perfectly blended, can be found in Rossetti's poem Chimes, which suggests its idea by giving bell sounds which echo each other in haunting overtones.

Other devices for securing tone color are to be found in the use of certain vowel and consonant Tone color through effective vowel and sounds. The deeper toned vowels, as in: consonant sounds

"Break, break, break,

On thy cold gray stones, O Sea,"

always give a deep and melancholy music to verse, a music with "the eternal note of sadness." Other vowel sounds, such as the open ones in:

"Oh, sweet and far, from cliff and scar,"

are invaluable in suggesting a sweeter, more distant music. The liquid consonants, 1, m, n, and, r, invariably soften the whole tone of a line, as in:

and

and

"Lost love-labor and lullaby

And lowly let love lie.

Late love-longing and life-sorrow
And love's life lying low;"

"O mistress mine, where are you roaming?"

"I murmur under moon and stars

In brambly wildernesses;

I loiter round my shingly bars,

I linger round my cresses."

The sibilant consonants, s and soft c, also add soft, whispering sounds to tone color, and f and v sounds help to create lightness and swiftness as well as softness. Tennyson's song,

"O Swallow, Swallow, flying, flying south,
Fly to her, and fall upon her gilded eaves,
And tell her, tell her, what I tell to thee,"

illustrates the musical effect of liquids and sibilants as well as of f and v sounds.

In blank verse, which does not depend on rhyme for its

and run-on

tone color, the music is partly created by end-stopped and run-on lines and by cesuras. An end-stopped End-stopped line is a line with a pause at its end where the lines reading voice drops. A run-on line is a line which has no pause at the end, in which, therefore, the sense is carried on into the next line. A cesura is a definite pause within a line. These devices for shifting the melody occur also in poetry that is not blank verse, but their effect is most noticeable where there is no rhyme. In the following passage the first two lines are run-on, the third is followed by a pause, and the last is end-stopped.

"Till notice of a change in the dark world
Was lispt about the acacias, and a bird,
That early woke to feed her little ones,
Sent from a dewy breast a cry for light."

In the following stanza from one of the few successful lyrics in blank verse, the first three lines are run-on and the last two end-stopped. There are cesuras in the third and last

lines.

"Ah, sad and strange as in dark summer dawns
The earliest pipe of half-awakened birds

To dying ears, || when unto dying eyes

The casement slowly grows a glimmering square;
So sad, || so strange, || the days that are no more."

There is also an effective example of these devices in Matthew Arnold's Dover Beach:

"Listen! || You hear the grating roar

Cesura; run-on

Of pebbles which the waves draw back and fling Run-on

At their return, up the high strand,
Begin || and cease || and then again begin
With tremulous cadence slow || and bring
The eternal note of sadness in."

End-stopped Cesuras Cesura; run-on

Hear the effect of cesuras in the line:

"Begin, || and cease, || and then again begin.”

The cesuras suggest the pause, the silence, and then the crash of waves again with monotonous regularity. These three devices, of course, keep blank verse, or any verse, from being monotonous, and they also give what is known as paragraph rhythm to the poem. Paragraph rhythm is the rhythm which flows from line to line, pausing, gathering new force, and flowing on again.

Tone color

Another common device for securing tone color is the use of refrain. We often remember a poem because its musical and appropriate refrain lingers in haunting refrain our minds. All the songs in the Idylls of the King have refrains, from Lynette's:

secured by

"Shine sweetly, twice my love hath smiled on me,"

and Merlin's,

“Rain, rain, and sun, and rainbow in the sky,"

to the little novice's hauntingly sad and appropriate

'Late, late, so late! and dark the night and chill!
Late, late, so late! but we can enter still.

Too late, too late! Ye cannot enter now!"

The refrains in Tears Idle Tears with their subtle variations, in the Bugle Song, and in Sweet and Low are other notable examples. The whole effect of William Morris's The Gilliflower of Gold is secured by the refrain:

"Hah, hah! la belle jaune giroflée."

Sound is important in poetry, then, because it creates rhythm and feeling, and because it contributes onomatopoeia Summary and tone color.

sense of words by their sound.

Onomatopoeia suggests the

Tone color is music secured

by the arrangement of vowel and consonant sounds. Tone color is secured chiefly by rhyme, alliteration, effective use of vowels combined with musical consonants, by end-stopped and run-on lines and cesuras, and by musical refrain.

HOW THE POET EXPRESSES HIMSELF THROUGH

SYMBOLS AND IMAGES

IMAGES

Closely allied to figures of speech are symbols and images. By image we mean a word-picture that stands in the poet's mind for an idea. A picture may incidentally help to create a mood, but unless it stands for an idea in the poet's mind, we do not think of it as an image. In Tennyson's Crossing the Bar the lines:

and

"Sunset and evening star"

"Twlight and evening bell"

are pictures that stand for the idea of quiet consummation and lasting peace that death brings to us all. In Lowell's lyric:

"Violet! sweet violet!

Thine eyes are full of tears;

Are they wet

Even yet

With the thought of other years?"

it is difficult to attach any definite idea to the suggested picture of the violet, but in Wordsworth's:

"A violet by a mossy stone

Half hidden from the eye,”

the picture is felt clearly to stand for a trait of character, modesty, which is an idea. Shelley's reference to the violet,

"Odors, when sweet violets sicken,
Live within the sense they quicken,"