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The exercises began with a theme in Armenian a language which, but for its English abundance of sibilants, and a certain German rhythm, was wholly outlandish to our ears. Themes in Italian, German, and French succeeded, and then came one in English.
I left the cathedral tired out, dazed with weariness and sunlight, and fell asleep in a chair as soon as I got back to my room, on the fifth floor of the Albergo dell' Agnello. I had been asleep for about an hour, perhaps, when I thought I heard a voice near me repeating "Illustre Signore!" I did not wake. The voice continued with a murmur of sibilants: "Illustrissimo Signore!"
He was not so tall as his leanness made him look; he was of a national darkness of eyes and hair which as imparted to his tertian clean-shavenness was a deep blue. He spoke, with a certain hesitation, a beautiful Castilian, delicately lisping the sibilants and strongly throating the gutturals; and what he said you could believe.
"Not marble, nor the gilded monuments of princes shall outlive this powerful rhyme " "Dear, dear!" he said, in petulant vexation; "how horribly emotion botches verse. That clash of sibilants is both harsh and ungrammatical. Shall should be changed to will."
And now, as the celebrant bowed at the lowest step before the high altar, the voices of the innumerable congregation joined the harmony of the organ, ringing up to the groined roof in an ancient Slavonic melody, melancholy and beautiful, and rendered yet more unlike all other music by the undefinable character of the Bohemian language, in which tones softer than those of the softest southern tongue alternate so oddly with rough gutturals and strident sibilants.
The sounds regarded as capable of only one combination are the mediae, b, q, d; the aspirates kh, tj; and the sibilants ts and z. Such is the first and simplest syllabarium: but the Assyrian system does not stop here. It proceeds to combine with each simple vowel sound two consonants, one preceding the vowel and the other following it.
The opening lines seem to promise well and have much of mellow thought, in spite of five hissing sibilants in the very first verse 'Ti/s/ the warm /S/outh, where Europe /s/pread/s/ her land/s/. Like fretted leaflets, breathing on the deep: And then comes in the fourth line an awful cacophony of alliteration and an alliteration in "c." A /C/alm earth-goddess /c/rowned with /c/orn and vines.
I left the cathedral tired out, dazed with weariness and sunlight, and fell asleep in a chair as soon as I got back to my room, on the fifth floor of the Albergo dell' Agnello. I had been asleep for about an hour, perhaps, when I thought I heard a voice near me repeating "Illustre Signore!" I did not wake. The voice continued with a murmur of sibilants: "Illustrissimo Signore!"
He could see the King's great face interested and attentive as the secretary said something in his ear, and then suddenly light up with amusement again. "Not a word, not a word," whispered Henry harshly. "Very good, Michael." The secretary then whispered once more. Chris could hear the sharp sibilants, but no word. The King nodded once more, and the man stepped down off the dais.
He caught at the edges of things.... Spikes and wedges and swords run riot in his work.... He loved the grinding, clashing and rending sibilants and explosives as Tennyson the tender-hefted liquids.... He is the poet of sudden surprises, unforseen transformations.... The simple joy in abrupt changes of sensation which belonged to his riotous energy of nerve lent support to his peremptory way of imagining all change and especially all vital and significant becoming."
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