Of great effect at this stage of your progress will be the adroit and unstinted employment of such phrases as “I wis,” “I wot,” “I trow,” “In sooth,” “Methinks,” “Of yore,” “Erstwhile,” “Alack,” a plentiful sprinkling of which, like currants in a cake, will impart a quaint poetical flavour to your verses, making up for a total want of sense and sentiment. Observe their effect in the following admirable lines from Skott:—
“It were, I ween, a bootless task to tell
How here, of yore, in sooth, the foeman fell,
Erstwhile the Paynim sank with eerie yell,
Alack, in goodly guise, forsooth, to——.”
Of like value are words melodious in sound or poetical in suggestion, like “nightingale,” “moonlight,” “roundelay,” “trill,” “dreamy,” and so on, which, freely used, throw a glamour over the imagination and lull thought, the chiefest value of verse nowadays.
“There trills the nightingale his roundelay
In dreamy moonlight till the dawn of day.”
Note that in poetic diction you must by no means “call a spade a spade.” The statement of a plain fact is highly objectionable, and a roundabout expression has to be resorted to. For example, if a girl have red hair, describe it as
“Glowing with the glory of the golden God of Day,”