Poem from an 83 year old

We struggle to find a good example.

Her long-term memory remembers

Quadrupedante putrem sonitu quatit ungula campum.

She translates the line of Virgil’s Latin,

‘We hear the horses' hooves thumping the broken earth of the plain.’

“It combines sound with a galloping rhythm

mimicking in words the sound of horses he describes.”

This – our teacher tells us – is onomatopoeia.

© Sophia Roberts July 2011
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