Besides the characteristics already exemplified, one or two passages may be appealed to, as implying the more special gifts of a poet—force of imagination, and some sense of natural beauty. There is considerable descriptive power in the following lines, for instance, in which a shepherd, who had never before seen a ship, announces the first appearance of the Argo—
Tanta moles labitur
Fremebunda ex alto, ingenti sonitu et spiritu:
Prae se undas volvit, vortices vi suscitat:
Ruit prolapsa, pelagus respergit, reflat.[167]
There is an imaginative apprehension of the active forces of nature in this fragment—
Sub axe posita ad stellas septem, unde horrifer
Aquilonis stridor gelidas molitur nives.[168]
There is a fresh breath of the early morning in the lines from the Oenomaus—