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The short quick utterance of an order, as, Up, Out!Away! illustrates explosive force: so does the first syllable of a long word when the accent is on the first; as dés-picable, éx-piatory, lég-islature.

The manner of reading all the preceding examples will be better understood by turning to the pieces whence they are extracted.

LESSON XIV.

POETRY.-HOW TO READ AND SPEAK IT WELL,

The sense, in every instance, is to be taken as the only guide to expression; and that mode which brings out the sense the most clearly and forcibly, and affords at the same time the highest gratification to the ear, must be decidedly the best.

To this settled rule, poetry forms no exception. All the appliances therefore of pause, "division," inflection, emphasis and quantity, which would naturally be employed to exhibit the meaning in prose, must, with some slight modifications, be used to express the same in poetry. And this can generally be done with all needful regard to the metre and the rhyme. Even in cases where the meaning so closely unites different lines, as not to suffer a point between them, and the grouped division is formed of words taken from each; the ending of the line can be sufficiently indicated by dwelling a little upon the last syllable of it, as denoted by the half bar, without stopping the stream of sound, and so without detriment to the sense.

Still when lines occur so inharmonious in structure as to make it impossible to preserve the sense without neglect of the melody, it is ever the part of good taste to look well to the demands of sense, and never suffer it to be sacrificed to mere sound. Though a finished reader will oftentimes impart a metrical smoothness to lines which their author has left rough and imperfect; and so, in some degree, remedy the fault of their construction, without any apparent injury to the meaning: yet he is not permitted to go so far to effect this, as to alter the sound of a vowel, or to change the seat of an accent.

But some words, by common consent, are privileged to have a pronunciation different in poetry from what they have in prose. Wind, when it signifies air put in motion, and is made to rhyme with mind, is one; and wound, a hurt, made to rhyme with sound, is another; and there may be more. Comic humor and satire may also justify other changes.

In regard to the final pause; that is, a pause at the end of every poetic line, authors differ in opinion: some insisting that it should always be made; others that it should not, unless the sense require it. And some readers adopting the latter opinion, are careful never to suffer the slightest suspension of the voice at the end of a line, unless they see a point there; and, in their hurry to reach the next, they not unfrequently form a distinct rhythmus, or division of speech, from the parts of two lines; to the complete destruction of all that is musical either in the metre or the rhyme.

From previous remarks, it is clear that neither of these modes is to be exclusively followed. The true one lies between; and aims, by a judicious compromise, to secure the advantages of both. It guards, on the one hand, against the too general tendency to a distinct final pause; and on the other, against the vulgar, childish movement of scanning.

Sometimes the poetic feet, and the divisions of sense are nearly the same ; e. g.

I have found out a gift for my fair;
I have found where the wood pigeons breed;
But let me that plun'der forbear !
She will say, 'twas a bar'barous deed.

If the two first lines of this anapæstic stanza be read just as they are divided into metrical feet, the injury done to the sense will be but slightly perceptible; but if the same measured steps be continued through the last two, it becomes glaringly so. Now let the stanza be uttered in divisions such as the sense demands.

I have found out a gift for my faìr;

I have found where the wood pigeons breèd;
But | let me that plunder forbear !
She will say, 'twas a barbarous deèd.

When so read, the meaning and the melody are both preserved.

The following beautiful iambic lines are expressed in the proper divisions of sense.

Truth, crushed to earth, will rise again;
The eternal years of God | are hers;

But error, wounded, writhes with pain,
And dies | amid his worshippers.

In this stanza, again is, very properly, made to rhyme with pain; though the best speakers pronounce it so as to rhyme with pen; and so it should be pronounced here. In the second line, the metre requires that e in the should coalesce with the e in eternal; but it should be clearly pronounced. In the last line, the metrical foot requires the last syllable in worshippers to have an accent; but it should be read without any.

I observe farther, that when the poet has so formed his metre as to require the last vowel of a word to coalesce with the next, or a long word to drop one of its middle syllables, he does not apostrophise either of them as writers did formerly; nor should it be done in reading. Much may be done by the reader, however, to favor the metre without detriment to the pronunciation: but sometimes the poet makes a distinct syllable of ed where it would not be in prose; and in that case it must be made by the reader.

One cannot read the following stanza with due regard to sense, unless he break up the metre almost entirely; and read the lines very nearly as marked into divisions by the bars and half bars, thus:

What blessings | thy free bounty gives,
Let me not cast away:

For God is paid | when mán recèives;
To enjoy | is to obèy.

When a line ends without a point, and the last word is inseparably joined in sense with the following, the last syllable of the line needs to be suspended a little, as denoted by the half bars and bar, without stopping the stream of sound; e. g.

And I have loved thee, Océan, and my joy
Of youthful sports-was on thy breast to be
Bórne, like thy bubbles, onward: from a boy
I wantoned with thy breakers-they to me |
Were a delight ;

***

But, in reading the words "to be borne," in the second and third lines, unless the suspension can be made on be without any perceptible violence to the sense, it should not be attempted; and the rhyming word be suffered to merge entirely in the division of sense. Hence it may be seen how much is to be yielded to the demands of poetry for the sake of the metre and the rhyme. The same instruction, with the exception of the rhyme, applies to blank verse; unless it be of the dramatic kind; and then the reading and acting is better without any, or but very little regard, to the final pause.

To him | who in the love of nature holds
Communion with her visible forms, she speaks |
A various language; for his gayer hours |
She has a voice of gladness, and a smile 1
And eloquence of beauty, and she glides
Into his darker musings, with a mild
And healing sympathy, that steals away I
Their sharpness, ere he is aware. Bryant.

Of Man's first disobedience, and the fruit
Of that forbidden Tree, whose mortal taste |

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