up some image. Poetry will therefore often eschew generic terms, such as tree, flower, and will prefer to mention some particular tree or flower, as, And every shepherd tells his tale where "under some tree's shade" would have been less picturesque, and therefore less fitted for poetry. In the same way, "Go, lovely rose," is far more picturesque than “Go, lovely flower." So far, however, poetry agrees with impassioned prose, which, like poetry, often selects the more vivid and particular, in preference to that which is vague and general. Prose often prefers "the lilies of the field" to "the flowers," and "Solomon in all his glory" to "a glorious monarch." But poetry goes further than this. This is a characteristic of thought the next paragraph describes a characteristic, not of thought, but of diction, which is peculiar to poetry, and inadmissible in prose. : 42 a. Poetic Diction substitutes an Epithet for the thing denoted. Thus the sky can be mentioned in poetry 66 as the azure," or "the blue;" as in — Below the chestnuts when their buds Were glistening to the breezy blue. TENNYSON. So the silent and as it were vacant midnight can be described as 66 the dead vast (waste) of the night." In the same way Milton uses 66 the dank" for water, and "the dry" for land as distinguished from water. We are allowed in prose to use adjectives for nouns, as "the dead," "the past," and perhaps "the right;" but it is only in the hands of a very skilful writer that such adjective-nouns may be used in prose preceded by another adjective. They are used frequently and with great effect by the author of "Adam Bede":: "Yet these commonplace people, many of them, bear a conscience, and have felt the sublime prompting to do the painful right ; they have their unspoken sorrows and their sacred joys, their hearts have perhaps gone out towards their first-born, and they have mourned over the unreclaimable dead." Even where so bold a 42 6. Ornamental Epithets. course as the above is not adopted, epithets occupy a more important place in poetry than prose. They are often added to give color and life to a picture, and in such cases they may be called ornamental epithets. Take the following examples: His dog attends him . . . and now with many a frisk With ivory teeth. COWPER. Here ivory seems intended to bring out the contrast between the yellowish whiteness of the dog's teeth and the perfect whiteness of the snow. And the thunder Wing'd with red lightning and impetuous rage. MILTON. Here the epithet red, connected in our minds partly with blood, partly with light obscured by fog, heightens the turbid and horrific effect. The swan, with arched neck, Her state with oary feet. MILTON. "1 "his brinded mane," Such epithets Of the same kind are "the tawny lion," "the swift stag,"1 "his branching head." 1 would not be allowed in ordinary prose unless it were necessary to call attention to the tawny color of the lion, or to the horns of the stag; as, for example, " the tawny lion was almost invisible as he couched on the dry and leafless sand, while the branching head of the stag stood out in clear relief against the sky." Here the epithets are really not epithets, but essential parts of the subject. We are speaking not of the lion or the stag, but of the "tawny-color-of-the-lion," and the "branching-horns-of-the-stag." These latter may be called essential epithets, as distinguished from the former, which may be called ornamental. "Yellow" in "yellow harvest is often ornamental, at least in English poetry, where "harvest" only applies to corn; but in Twin'd with the wreaths Parnassian laurels yield, POPE, Essay on Man, iv. 11. "iron" is essential, for without this epithet the meaning of "harvests of iron-clad warriors mown down in the battlefield" would not be conveyed. Of course where the poet is describing any thing (as Milton is describing, in the passage just quoted, the first creation of the swan), epithets that would otherwise be ornamental become descriptive, and almost essential. In the poetry of Homer, epithets are often used almost like names, without any special reference to the thing described. Thus, "swiftfooted" is an epithet applied to Achilles not merely when running, but when speaking. This, though not uncommon 1 Milton, P. L., vii. in our ballad-poetry, is rare in our best poets, except where the old simplicity of the ballad style is intentionally imitated: And answer made the bold1 Sir Bedivere, Sir King, I closed mine eyelids lest the gems TENNYSON, Morte d'Arthur. 42 c. Essential Epithets. -The following are good examples of essential epithets, some of which are necessary for the picturesque effect, and others are necessary for the meaning. The former belong properly to the subject we are now considering, — namely, the picturesqueness of poetry,and the latter come more fitly under the next head, the terseness of poetry; but very often epithets occur which are almost necessary for the sense as well as for the picturesqueness, and these fall under both heads. Thus, in What shook the stage and made the people stare? POPE. "long wig" really means "the length of Cato's wig," and "long" is essential for the sense. So in 66 Exact Racine and Corneille's noble fire Showed us that France had something to admire, POPE. "exact Racine" is merely a terse poetical equivalent for "Racine's exactness." These two examples, therefore, are rather examples of poetic terseness than of picturesqueness. 1 This epithet is several times repeated. But in the following the epithet"green" seems to approximate more closely to a picturesque epithet: A breath of unadulterate air, The glimpse of a green pasture, how they cheer! COWPER. And in the following description of a winter sunrise, the epithets are not merely ornamental. The first epithet prepares the way for the second, and both these and the third are essential. On the whole, however, they are rather essential for the picturesqueness than for the bare conveying of the meaning: His slanting ray Slides ineffectual down the snowy vale, Stretches a length of shadow o'er the field. COWPER. Here the epithet "slanting" indicates that the sun is as yet low in the horizon, and explains why his ray is "ineffectual," and why the hue with which he tinges the landscape is rosy. The sun being low makes a distinct shadow of every herb, and even of some of the blades of grass, but only of those which shoot straight and spire-like up from the snow. In the following examples the epithet prepares the way for what follows: The horse That skims the spacious meadow at full speed. Innocence, it seems, COWPER. From courts dismissed, found shelter in the groves. The footsteps of simplicity impressed Upon the yielding herbage (so they say) COWPER. |