Sensory language can evoke a wide range of emotional responses, whereas abstract language tends to appeal to the intellect. In “A Prayer in Spring,” Robert Frost encourages readers to experience happiness by prompting them to associate the abstract idea of “happiness” with a clear visual: “And make us happy in the darting bird / That suddenly above the bees is heard, / The meteor that thrusts in with needle bill, / And off a blossom in mid air stands still.” The specificity of Frost’s language is the key to its success: Saying, “Make us happy in nature,” for example, might convey the same idea, but it wouldn’t control the image that the poem communicates.
“Buzz!” “Swoosh!” “Hiss!” Sound imagery can involve onomatopoetic words like these, which sound like the sounds to which they refer. But sound imagery can also be a description of sound. For example, in part 2 of “Howl,” American Beat poet Allen Ginsberg employs sound imagery to reinforce the abstract concepts he assigns to “Moloch,” his name for the force that destroys everything beautiful, creative and good. The poem cries, “Moloch! Solitude! Filth! Ugliness! Ashcans and unobtainable dollars! Children screaming under the stairways! Boys sobbing in armies! Old men weeping in the parks!” The ideas of “solitude,” “filth,” and “ugliness” can mean different things to different people. By evoking the sounds of screaming children, sobbing boys, and weeping men, “Howl” infuses its abstract ideas with the reader’s emotional response to those specific sounds.
Smell and taste are closely linked senses, and they are among the most powerful mood creators and memory triggers. Christina Rossetti’s poem “Goblin Market” uses both to describe a woman who, tempted again and again by the forbidden fruits sold by goblins, finally gives in and devours them: “Sweeter than honey from the rock, / Stronger than man-rejoicing wine, / Clearer than water flow’d that juice; / She never tasted such before, / How should it cloy with length of use? / She suck’d and suck’d and suck’d the more / Fruits which that unknown orchard bore; / She suck’d until her lips were sore.” This passage uses comparisons to establish the fruits’ incomparable taste -- for example, “sweeter than honey."
The sensory language of touch is frequently coupled with appeals to other senses. When it appears alone, it can indicate the narrator’s total focus on the moment at hand, as in this passage from John Keats’ “The Fall of Hyperion: A Dream.” The poet-narrator struggles to ascend the steps to poetic immortality: “Slow, heavy, deadly was my pace: the cold / Grew stifling, suffocating, at the heart; / And when I clasp'd my hands I felt them not. / One minute before death, my iced foot touch'd / The lowest stair; and as it touch'd, life seem'd / To pour in at the toes.” The tactile imagery here encourages readers to imagine the narrator’s agonizing process toward the stair, a journey that Keats uses as a metaphor for poetic creativity and production.