the metre, and the words of which, apart from their signification, suggest so accurately the pattering of the leaves of the tree in a gentle breeze. This device like alliteration is a method of intensifying the expression of a passage, and is frequently adopted by the poets.
In another famous onomatopoeic line—
"Quadrupedante putrem sonitu quatit ungula campum"
—Virgil imitates the sound of a galloping horse, and the shaking of the ground beneath its hoofs.
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."