What is your most-admired slice of sonantal calisthenics? Mine is in line's six to eight of Robert Frost's Never Again Would Birds' Song Be The Same:
He would declare and could himself believe
That the birds there in all the garden round
From having heard the daylong voice of Eve
Had added to their own an oversound,
Her tone of meaning but without the words.
Admittedly an eloquence so soft
Could only have had an influence on birds
When call or laughter carried it aloft.
Be that as may be, she was in their song.
Moreover her voice upon their voices crossed
Had now persisted in the woods so long
That probably it never would be lost.
Never again would birds' song be the same.
And to do that to birds was why she came.
Notwithstanding the lovely chime of eloquence / influence, line eight has what I consider the foremost example of Frost's sonic hallmark, what you might call echoed consonantal refrain:
When <u>c</u>all or <u>l</u>au<u>ght</u>er <u>c</u>arried it a<u>l</u>o<u>ft</u>.
A word seems to hover behind the echoed c-l-ft refrain: cleft. But probably I'm reading too much into things...
[This message has been edited by Mike Todd (edited February 27, 2008).]
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