English Verse: Specimens Illustrating its Principles and HistoryAlden, Raymond MacDonald
General
English Verse: Specimens Illustrating its Principles and History
Alden, Raymond MacDonald
English language -- Versification; English poetry
This division includes the use made of the qualities of sound for the
purpose of adding to the melodiousness of verse, or of expressing in
some measure the ideas to be conveyed by means of the very sounds
employed. Sometimes this takes the form of alliteration, differing from
that of early English verse only in that it follows no regular
structural laws. On the other hand, it may take the form of
_onomatopœia_, the figure of speech in which sound and sense are
closely related,--as in descriptive words like _buzz_, _hiss_, _murmur_,
_splash_, and the like. The term Tone-color is formed by analogy with
the German _Klangfarbe_, an expression apparently due to the feeling
that the sound-qualities of speech have somewhat the same function as
the various colors in a picture. It is unquestionably true that the
selection of sounds, whether vowel or consonantal, has much to do with
the melodious effect of very much poetry. The poet may choose the
different sound-qualities (so far as the sense permits) just as the
musician may choose the varying qualities of the different instruments
in the orchestra or the different stops in the organ.
Strictly speaking, this matter of Tone-color is not a part of verse-form
in the same sense as matters of rhythm, rime, and the like; for it may
appear in prose as well as in verse, and is not in any case reducible to
formal principles or laws. Yet its use in actual verse is so important,
and it is so closely related to the use of sound-quality in the form of
rime and alliteration, that it seems well to include it here.[15]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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