How it tolls for the souls
Of the sailors on the sea;
In these passages and all similar ones, as, for instance, those already quoted from the Elegy in a Country Churchyard, our aim should be to manifest through the atmosphere the effect of the description upon ourselves.
Perhaps it will assist us to get a clearer conception of this important feature if we discuss a few typical examples, even repeating some of the selections already used in the discussion.
Example 1 (from Sohrab and Rustum). The atmosphere of the first simile is that of joy; not in imitation of the joy of the Tartars, but because we are moved to joy by our sympathy with Sohrab.
Example 2 (ibid.). We do not express the fear of the Persians or of the peddlers, but our contempt for the former—perhaps slightly tinged, through sympathy, with their fear.
Example 3 (from King Robert of Sicily). The atmosphere is that of simple narrative, which is in no wise changed by the words of the sexton.
Example 4. Eugene Field’s Little Boy Blue presents a father standing before the dust-covered toys of his dead child. The father speaks throughout, and yet there are those who actually imitate the voice and manner of the child in the opening lines of the second stanza:
“Now don’t you go till I come,” he said,