Still more remarkable is the following passage, as expressive of slow and toilsome travel:—
"The fiend
O'er bog or steep, through straight, rough, dense, or rare,
With head, hands, wings, or feet, pursues his way,
And swims, or sinks, or wades, or creeps, or flies."
The chief mean of attaining general harmony in verse is a free and happy distribution of the vowel-sounds. For producing a special harmony, consonant with special signification, other rules require to be followed. But, in the first place, let us look particularly to the means of rendering verse simply and aggregately melodious. It must not be supposed, as many are apt to do, that even the most illustrious poets considered it beneath them to attend to such minutiæ as the distribution of the vowels in their verses. Look at the grand opening of "Paradise Lost." It is scarcely conceivable that the remarkable variation of the vowels there, on which the effect will be found largely to depend, can have been the result of chance. No one line almost, it will be seen, gives the same vowel-sound twice.
"Of man's first disobedience, and the fruit
Of that forbidden tree, whose mortal taste
Brought death into the world, and all our woe,
With loss of Eden, till one greater Man