The article deals with the use of verbal iconic elements in an English poetic text and its translations into Russian. Similar phonosemantic strategies are shown to be applied by the authors for creating both the general atmosphere of the literary work and particular semantic categories and connotations. However, noticeable discrepancies are revealed in the “phonosemantic function” of English and Russian verbs of motion, which seems to be pointing to the differences in the phonosemantic world mapping specific for each of the languages in question