le, provoke a
great or slight characteristic emotional reaction. Likewise,
a staccato or a fluent rhythm in music, a march, or a dance
movement, have, even apart from their unconscious or intentional
expressiveness, specific emotional values. In literature,
also, where the value of the words themselves might
be expected to give place entirely to the emotions or ideas of
which they are the expressive instruments, poems may themselves,
by their form and music, be provocative of specific
emotional effects.

"...And over them the sea wind sang,
Shrill, chill, with flakes of foam. He, stepping down
By zigzag paths and juts of pointed rock,
Came on the shining levels of the lake.

Dry clashed his harness in the icy caves,
And barren chasms, and all to left and right,
The bare black cliff clanged round him, as he based
His feet on juts of slippery crag that rang,
Sharp-smitten with the dint of armed heels--
And on a sudden, lo! the level lake,
And the long glories of the winter moon."[1]

[Footnote 1: From Tennyson's _Morte d'Arthur_.]

Here the effect lies partly in the form, but more especially in
the _timbre_ and reverberation of the words themselves. In
other cases, it is the form that is the chief ingredient in the
effect produced. In Alfred Noyes's "The Barrel Organ,"
apart from the meaning, it is the rhythmic form that is of chief
aesthetic value:

"Come down to Kew in lilac time, in lilac time, in lilac time,
Come down to Kew in lilac time, it is n't far from London,
And you shall wander hand-in-hand with love in summer's wonderland.
Come down to Kew in lilac time; it is n't far from London.

"The cherry trees are seas of bloom and soft perfume and sweet perfume.
The cherry trees are seas of bloom (and oh, so near to London!)
And there they say, when dawn is high, and all the world's a blaze of sky,
The cuckoo, though he's very shy, will sing a song for London."

Apart from all considerations of meaning, set the easy fluent
grace of this lyric over against the march and majesty of the
"Battle Hymn of the Republic."

"Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord;
He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored;
He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword;
His truth is marching on.

"He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat;
He is sifting out the hearts of me