And strictly meditate the thankless Muse?
Were it not better done, as others use,
To sport with Amaryllis in the shade,
Or with the tangles of Neæra's hair?"
This most melodious passage has often been quoted, but the source of its melody has not been generally recognised by ordinary readers. The key which unlocks the secret has here been given. Let it be applied to our poetry at large, and it will be found to explain the effect of many of its grandest and sweetest passages.
The proper distribution of the vowels, then, so effective in the hands of Milton and Wordsworth, may be decisively viewed as a main help to harmony of versification generally. But when the poet desires to make his language express particular meanings by sounds, he studies more specially, in the first place, the right disposition of accent and pause, and so advances partly to his object. Thus Milton, in describing the fall of Mulciber or Vulcan from heaven, leaves him, as it were, tumbling and tumbling in the verse, by a beautiful pause:—
"From morn
To noon he fell, from noon to dewy eve,
A summer's day."
A similar and not less exquisite pause is made in the famed passage, otherwise beautiful from variety of vowels, where, after swelling allusions to