—Swinburne, Dolores.
"Come up through the lair of the lion
With love in her luminous eyes."
—Poe, Ulalume.
The instance from the Poet Laureate is a strong one—the repetition of the "m" is to express the sound of the bees and the elms. The alternation in the others is only pleasing to the ear, and the artifice in the last instance certainly is too obvious. In the Poet Laureate's lines the alliteration is so ingeniously contrived that one scarcely would suppose there are as many as seven repetitions of the "m." In Poe's, one is surprised to find the apparent excess of alliteration is due to but four repetitions. But the "l's" are identical with the strongest beats in the line, whereas the "m's" in Tennyson's line are interspersed with other letters at the beats. He uses this artifice more frequently than those would suspect who have not closely examined his poems, for he thoroughly appreciates the truth of the maxim, ars est celare artem. A few lines from "The Princess" will illustrate this:—
"The baby that by us,
Half-lapt in glowing gauze and golden brede,
Lay like a new-fall'n meteor on the grass,
Uncared-for, spied its mother and began
A blind and babbling laughter, and to dance