Imitative effects are easily recognized, and need no comment:
"Brushed with the hiss of rustling wings"
"The mellow ouzel fluting in the elm"
"The wind that'll wail like a child and the sea that'll moan like a man."
Suggestive effects are more subtle. Sometimes they are due primarily to those rhythmical arrangements of words which we shall discuss in the next chapter, but poetry often employs the sound of single words to awaken dim or bright associations. Robert Bridges's catalogue of the Greek nymphs in "Eros and Psyche" is an extreme example of risking the total effect of a stanza upon the mere beautiful sounds of proper names.
"Swift to her wish came swimming on the waves
His lovely ocean nymphs, her guides to be,
The Nereids all, who live among the caves
And valleys of the deep, Cymodocè,
Agavè, blue-eyed Hallia and Nesaea,
Speio, and Thoë, Glaucè and Actaea,
Iaira, Melitè and Amphinomè,
Apseudès and Nemertès, Callianassa,
Cymothoë, Thaleia, Limnorrhea,
Clymenè, Ianeira and Ianassa,
Doris and Panopè and Galatea,
Dynamenè, Dexamenè and Maira,
Ferusa, Doto, Proto, Callianeira,
Amphithoë, Oreithuia and Amathea."
Names of objects like "bobolink" and "raven" may affect us emotionally by the quality of their tone. Through association with the sounds of the human voice, heard under stress of various emotions, we attribute joyous or foreboding qualities to the bird's tone, and then transfer these associations to the bare name of the bird.
Names of places are notoriously rich in their evocation of emotion.
"He caught a chill in the lagoons of Venice,
And died in Padua."
Here the fact of illness and death may be prosaic enough, but the very names of "Venice" and "Padua" are poetry—like "Rome," "Ireland," "Arabia," "California."