ARTICULATE IMITATION OF INARTICULATE SOUNDS.
Soft is the strain when zephyr gently blows,
And the smooth stream in smoother numbers flows;
But when loud surges lash the sounding shore,
The hoarse, rough verse should like the torrent roar.
—Pope: Essay on Criticism.
On a sudden open fly,
With impetuous recoil and jarring sound,
Th’ infernal doors, and on their hinges grate
Harsh thunder.—Milton: Paradise Lost, ii.
Grate on their scrannel pipes of wretched straw.—Milton: Lycidas.
His bloody hand
Snatched two unhappy of my martial band,
And dashed like dogs against the stony floor.—Pope: Hom. Odys.
The Pilgrim oft
At dead of night, ’mid his orison, hears
Aghast the voice of time, disparting towers,
Tumbling all precipitous down-dashed,
Rattling around, loud thundering to the moon.
—Dyer: Ruins of Rome.
What! like Sir Richard, rumbling, rough, and fierce,
With arms, and George, and Brunswick, crowd the verse,
Rend with tremendous sounds your cars asunder,
With drum, gun, trumpet, blunderbuss, and thunder?
Then all your muse’s softer art display:
Let Carolina smooth the tuneful lay,
Lull with Amelia’s liquid name the nine,
And sweetly flow through all the royal line.—Pope: Sat. I.
Remarkable examples are afforded by Dryden’s Alexander’s Feast, and The Bells of Edgar A. Poe.