"The lilies and languors of virtue, For the raptures and roses of vice." —_Swinburne, Dolores_.
"Come up through the lair of the lion With love in her luminous eyes." —_Poe_, _Ulalume_.
The instance from the Poet Laureate is a strong one—the repetition of the "m" is to express the sound of the bees and the elms. The alternation in the others is only pleasing to the ear, and the artifice in the last instance certainly is too obvious. In the Poet Laureate's lines the alliteration is so ingeniously contrived that one scarcely would suppose there are as many as seven repetitions of the "m." In Poe's, one is surprised to find the apparent excess of alliteration is due to but four repetitions. But the "l's" are identical with the strongest beats in the line, whereas the "m's" in Tennyson's line are interspersed with other letters at the beats. He uses this artifice more frequently than those would suspect who have not closely examined his poems, for he thoroughly appreciates the truth of the maxim, _ars est celare artem_. A few lines from "The Princess" will illustrate this:—
"The baby that by us, Half-lapt in glowing gauze and golden brede, Lay like a new-fall'n meteor on the grass, Uncared-for, spied its mother and began A blind and babbling laughter, and to dance Its body, and reach its falling innocent arms And lazy ling'ring fingers."
Here a careful study will reveal alliteration within alliteration, and yet the effect is perfect, for there is no sign of labour.
Under this category may come, I think, a description of the Rondeau—a poem of which the first few words are repeated at the end. It was at one time ruled to be of a certain number of lines, but the restriction scarcely holds good now. The best rondeau in the language is Leigh Hunt's:—
"Jenny kiss'd me when we met, Jumping from the chair she sat in; Time, you thief, who love to get Sweets upon your list, put that in! Say I'm weary, say I'm sad; Say that health and wealth have miss'd me; Say I'm growing old, but add— Jenny kiss'd me!"
Elision must be used with a sparing hand. Generally speaking, a vowel that is so slightly pronounced that it can be elided, as in "temperance"—"temp'rance," may just as well be left in, and accounted for by managing to get the "quantity" to cover it. Where it is too strongly pronounced, to cut it out is to disfigure and injure the line, as in the substitution of "wall'wing" for "wallowing." That elision is often used unnecessarily may be seen in the frequency with which, in reading verse, we—according to most authorities—elide the "y" of "many"—