6. VARIED STATEMENT. Thou wast not born for death, immortal bird,—* Charmed magic casements,3 opening on the foam 1. Hasten. 2. Shore. 3. Money. (To p. 67.) KEATS. 69 1. With no centre for his thoughts and feelings but himself. 2. Lose. 3. In prose, Sir Walter Scott would have written sprang. 4. It would be. 5. Cry of pain. 6. Steward-a man of means who dispenses his wealth as being held by him in trust for God. (To p. 68.) 1. Agricultural labourer. 2. Alien-foreign. 3. Window casements in lands where magicians and magic are at home. 4. Deserted by ordinary human folk. (To p. 69.) * This stanza is from Keats's Ode to a Nightingale; and in the poem he imagines that the nightingale never dies, but has power-through her power of song-to live for ever. INTERJECTIONAL OR EXCLAMATORY STATEMENTS. THESE statements are still more impassioned, and in a more excited key, than the questions of appeal. The "rising inflection" is therefore predominant; and the main point to be observed the chief difficulty to be got over-is to settle on what word this inflection ought to culminate. An indiscriminate raising of the voice becomes mere "spouting," which destroys all right feeling in the listener, and therefore defeats its own object. The reader must try never to forget that he is addressing an object; but he must and ought at the same time to forget the presence of any listeners in the room-he must have his mind full of the object he is supposed to be speaking to. 1. 2. 3. 4. "Come back! come back!" he cried in grief, And I'll forgive your Highland chief, "Oh, by thy father's head! by thine own soul! Farewell, happy fields,2 Awake! arise! or be for ever fallen!4 5. How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him that bringeth good tidings! 5 Sweet pleasing sleep! of all the powers the best! *This is said by King Lear, when his madness is beginning. He thinks that under some roof or other, one of his undutiful daughters may be found. INTERJECTIONAL OR EXCLAMATORY STATEMENTS. O peace of mind! repairer of decay, Thou unassuming common place? Happy the man, and happy he alone, He who secure within3 can say, To-morrow, do thy worst, for I have lived to-day. DRYDEN. Eternal Hope! when yonder spheres9 sublime CAMPBELL. Beautiful objects1o of the wild bee's love! 71 14. TO THE RAINBOW. How glorious is thy girdle cast As fresh in yon horizon dark, A SUMMER EVENING. CAMPBELL. 15. How fine has the day been, how bright was the sun, 16. But now His rays the fair traveller's come to the west, RAIN IN SUMMER. How beautiful is the rain! How beautiful is the rain! How it clatters along the roofs, Like the tramp of hoofs! How it gushes and struggles out DR. WATTS. From the throat of the overflowing spout! Across the window-pane It pours and pours; And swift and wide, With a muddy tide, Like a river down the gutter roars The rain, the welcome rain! LONGFELLOW. 1. The loch, or arm of the sea which the two runaways were crossing. 2. Of heaven. 3. These lines are uttered by Satan, after he has been cast down. 4. This is the last line of Satan's address to the fallen angels. 5. News. 6. Anxiety produces sleeplessness. 7. Spoken to the daisy. 8. Secure-used here in the old sense of free from care. 9. The stars and planets, which were believed to make celestial music. 10. Spoken to the flowers. (To p. 70 and 71.) CHAPTER XIV. COMPARATIVE STATEMENTS, OR SIMILES. THIS kind of statement might have been classed under the head of Level Affirmative. But the books on "elocution" all agree in stating that a simile ought to be read in a lower tone, and at a quicker pace, than the rest of the statement. This direction, if mechanically and unthinkingly obeyed, might produce bad reading. The right direction to be given here is, that the pupil should have a due sense of the proportion which the simile bears to the chief statement; and, as the simile can never be equal to the chief statement, that proportion must be fractional or inferior. (No. 9 is an exception to this general view.) Before reading these sentences aloud, it would be well to have the similes explained and questioned upon. 1. Blue were her eyes as the fairy flax, Her cheeks like the dawn of day, And her bosom white as the hawthorn buds, 3. And thy heart as pure as they; One of God's holy messengers True ease in writing comes from art, not chance, As those move easiest who have learnt to dance. 4. The illusion3 that great men and great events came oftener in early times than now, is partly due to historical perspective. As in a range of equi-distant columns, the farthest off look the closest ; so the conspicuous objects of the past seem more thickly clustered the more remote they are. |