the leaves of the tree in a
gentle breeze. This device like alliteration is a method of
intensifying the expression of a passage, and is frequently adopted by
the poets.

In another famous onomatopoeic line--

"_Quadrupedante putrem sonitu quatit ungula campum_"

--Virgil imitates the sound of a galloping horse, and the shaking of
the ground beneath its hoofs.

Tennyson renders very naturally the action of the northern farmer's
nag and the sound of its movement, by--

"Proputty, proputty sticks an' proputty, proputty graws."

And an excellent example of the effect of well-chosen words, to
express the sound produced by the subject referred to, occurs in the
_Morte d'Arthur_:

"The many-knotted waterflags,
That whistled stiff and dry about the marge."

Blackmore's passage in _Lorna Doone_, describing the superlative ease
and speed of Tom Faggus's mare, when John Ridd as a boy was allowed to
ride her--after a rough experience at the beginning of the
venture--is, though printed as prose, perhaps better poetry than most
similar efforts. To emphasize its full force it may be allowable to
divide the phrases as follows:

"I never had dreamed of such delicate motion,
Fluent, and graceful, and ambient,
Soft as the breeze flitting over the flowers,
But swift as the summer lightning.
I sat up again, but my strength was all spent,
And no time left to recover it,
And though she rose at our gate like a bird,
I tumbled off into the mixen."

The last line is a delightful bathos, adding immensely to the
completeness of the catastrophe.

In spring the beech is the most beautiful of forest trees, putting
forth individual horizontal sprays of tender green from the lower
branches about the end of April as heralds of the later full glory of
the tree. These increase day by day upwards in verdant clouds, until
the whole unites into a complete bower of dense greenery. The beech is
known as the "groaning tree," because the branches often cross each
other, and where the tree is exposed to the wind sometimes groan as
they rub together. The rubbing often causes a wound where one of the
branches will eventually break off, or occasionally automatic grafting
takes place, and they unite. In the Verderer's Hall at Lyndhurst
specimens are to be seen which have crossed and joined a second time,
so that a complete hollow oval, or irregular circle of the wood cou