Barrett Browning describes this experience apocalyptically, merging cosmic time with the time of the individual, and her terms resonate with the later description of his experience before the altar of God: And he swooned backward to a dream Wherein he lay 'twixt gloom and gleam, With Death and Life at each extreme: And spiritual thunders, born of soul Not cloud, did leap from mystic pole And o'er him roll and counter-roll, Crushing their echoes
reboant With their own wheels.
mora tarda mente cedat; simul ite, sequimini Phrygia ad domum Cybelles, Phrygia ad nemora deae, 20 ubi cymbalum sonat vox, ubi tympana
reboant, tibicen ubi canit Phryx curvo grave calamo, ubi capita Maenades vi iaciunt ederigerae, ubi sacra sancta acutis ululatibus agitant, ubi suevit illa divae volitare vaga cohors: 25 quo nos decet citatis celerare tripudiis.
retonent, 82; sonat and
reboant, 21; remugit and recrepant, 29); the fierce lion is also told to toss violently its mane, much like the maenads' tossing of their ivy-crowned heads (rutilam ferox torosa cervice quate iubam, 83).
Unde Ennius sonum pedum, bombum pedum dixit: et boasai Graeci clamare; et Virgilius, "
Reboant silvae".
It may have been to call attention to these lines that Tennyson, a poet sparing in neologism, allowed himself the coinage "
reboant," that is, "re-bellowing," echoing but echoing harshly, like his own rhyme scheme.