Wardsworth conveys the picture of stars that shine and twinkle with their lights. Light deals with eyes and cannot be reached by ears, noses, or touches.
This poet tries to make his reader see what a beautiful object he is seeing. He wants the reader take part in watching such a view.
It is clear that what he conveys is not visual perception, but visual imagery, because the reader just imagine or put the stars images into their
minds, they are not in the middle of watching it. They just imagine.
2. Auditory Imagery
A poet influences his reader with auditory imagery when he conveys sound words in his poetry, and with his imagination, the reader may hear the
voice. The poet uses auditory imagery to give special effects to the readers ears.
As the contradiction of visual imagery to visual perception, the auditory imagery is also contrary to auditory perception. The auditory imagery needs
not the presence of an object as the auditory perception does.
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Just sound words are imagined in readers mind. For example, in the afternoon in
countryside, the wind blows and make branches on trees sound crack and the leaves roars.
A poet usually stresses auditory imagery by means of composing tone, rhymes, and its music. People like music, because music is a universal
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Ibid.
language. When a poetry is composed with parallel-ended-tone in the certain interval, the reader might enjoy it as if they are listening to a music.
Edgar Alan Poes The Bell is a good example of auditory imagery: Hear the sledges with bells—
With silver bells What a world of merriment their melody foretells
How they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle, In the icy air of night
While the stars that over sprinkle All the heavens seems to twinkle
With a crystalline delight; Keeping time, time, time
In a short of runic rhyme To the tintinnabulation that so musically wells,
From the bells, bells, bells Bells, bells, bells,
From the jingling and tinkling of the bells
When Poe writes The Bells, he presents an image that deals with ear as long as he conveys their sounds. In the famous poetry above, Poe attracts
readers ears with sound bell as the objects sound. Actually, here, he also uses visual imagery, that is when he described the color of the bells and how
stars twinkle. Then, he attracts the readers with melody and tinkle.
3. Olfactory Imagery
Olfactory imagery represents a smell sense in poetry.
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It means that a poet presents his readers words that relate to the degree of smell bad or smell
good, typical smell of plants, odor, etc. A hospital smells medicine, graveyard smells wet ground, and fish smells putrid. In short, every place has their
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John Holcombe, Imagery in Poetry accessed on December 14 2008 http:pages .cthome.netjtallwhatispoetry.htm
