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TENDERNESS AND PATHOS.

Plant a young willow

Close by her grave;
Let its long branches
Soothingly wave;

Twine a sweet rose tree

Over the tomb;

Sprinkle fresh buds there;

Beauty and bloom.

PROFOUND REPOSE.

Heavy with heat and silence
Grew the afternoon of summer;
With a drowsy sound the forest
Whispered round the sultry wigwam,
With a sound of sleep the water
Rippled on the beach below it;

From the cornfields shrill and ceaseless
Sang the grasshopper Pah-puk-keena;
And the guests of Hiawatha,
Weary with the heat of summer,
Slumbered in the sultry wigwam.

SOFT.

GRIEF.

With fingers weary and worn,
With eyelids heavy and red,

A woman sat, in unwomanly rags,
Plying her needle and thread,-
Stitch! stitch! stitch!

In poverty, hunger, and dirt,

And still, with a voice of dolorous pitch,
She sang the "Song of the Shirt."

PATHOS.

As those we love decay, we die in part,

String after string is severed from the heart;
Till loosened life, at last, but breathing clay,

Without one pang is glad to fall away.

Unhappy he who latest feels the blow,

Whose eyes have wept o'er every friend laid low,

Dragged lingering on, from partial death to death,
Till, dying, all he can resign is breathi.

MODERATE.

UNIMPASSIONED.

One great end to which all knowledge ought to be employed is the welfare of humanity. Every science is the foundation of some art beneficial to man; while the study of it leads us to see the beneficence of the laws of nature, it calls upon us also to follow the great end of the Father of Nature, in their employment and occupation.

LOUD.

ANIMATION.

Oh, young Lochinvar is come out of the west,

Through all the wide border his steed was the best;
And save his good broadsword he weapon had none,-
He rode all unarmed, and he rode all alone.

So faithful in love, and so dauntless in war,

There never was knight like the young Lochinvar.

JOY.

Last came Joy's ecstatic trial:

He, with viny crown advancing,

First to the lively pipe his hand addressed:
But soon he saw the brisk-awakening viol,
Whose sweet entrancing voice he loved the best.
They would have thought, who heard the strain,
They saw in Tempe's vale her native maids,
Amid the festal sounding shades,

To some unwearied minstrel dancing;

While, as his flying fingers kissed the strings,
Love framed with Mirth a gay fantastic round,

(Loose were her tresses seen, her zone unbound,)
And he amidst his frolic play,

As if he would the charming air repay,

Shook thousand odors from his dewy wings.

VERY LOUD.

DISTRACTION, FRENZY, AND DESPAIR.

Me miserable;-which way shall I fly
Infinite wrath and infinite despair?
Which way I fly is hell; myself am hell;
And in the lowest deep a lower deep
Still threatening to devour me, opens wide,
To which the hell I suffer seems a heaven.

ANGER.

Next Anger rushed, his eyes on fire,

In lightnings owned his secret stings;

In one rude clash he struck the lyre,

And swept with hurried hand the strings.

PITCH.

Every feeling has its own appropriate key-note, which constitutes its recognised melody in reading. For instance, the excited utterance of fear, alarm, terror, anger, surprise, &c., are very high in pitch, while awe, gloom, melancholy, &c., are very low.

Pathos is high, and solemnity low, and between is found the unimpassioned level of the middle pitch of unexcited narrative or didactic readings.

5

VERY HIGH.

ANGRY CONTRADICTION.

"I've seen it, sir, as well as you,
And must again affirm it blue.
At leisure I the beast surveyed,
Extended in the cooling shade."

"'Tis green, 'tis green, sir, I assure ye”—
"Green!" cried the other in a fury-

"Why, sir,-d'ye think I've lost my eyes?"..
""Twere no great loss," the friend replies;
"For, if they always serve you thus,
You'll find 'em but of little use."

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If silent, why, a block moved with none.
So turns she every man the wrong side out;
And never gives to truth and virtue, that
Which simpleness and merit purchaseth.

MIDDLE.

UNIMPASSIONED.

A man that has been clothed in fine linen, and fared sumptuously every day, envies the peasant under a thatched hovel; who, in return, envies him as much his palace and his pleasure-grounds. Could they exchange situations, the fine gentleman would find his ceilings were too low, and that his casements admitted too much wind; that he had no cellar for his wine, and no wine to put in his cellar. These, with a thousand other mortifying deficiencies, would shatter his romantic project into innumerable fragments in a

moment.

LOW.

SUBLIMITY AND PATHOS.

Farewell, a long farewell, to all my greatness!
This is the state of man:-To-day he puts forth
The tender leaves of hope, to-morrow blossoms,
And bears his blushing honors thick upon him:
The third day comes a frost, a killing frost;
And,-when he thinks, good easy man, full surely
His greatness is a-ripening-nips his root;
And then he falls as I do.

MELANCHOLY.

Not a drum was heard, nor a funeral note,
As his corse to the rampart we hurried;
Not a soldier discharged his farewell shot
O'er the grave where our hero we buried.

We buried him darkly, at dead of night,
The sod with our bayonets turning,
By the struggling moonbeam's misty light,
And the lantern dimly burning.

VERY LOW.

AWE AND SOLEMNITY.

To be, or not to be, that is the question:-
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,

And by opposing, end them?-To die,-to sleep ;-
No more; and, by a sleep, to say we end

The heart-ache, and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to ;-'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wished. To die;-to sleep ;-

To sleep! perchance to dream;-ay, there's the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause.

PROFOUND SOLEMNITY.

It must be so-Plato, thou reasonest well!
Else whence this pleasing hope, this fond desire,
This longing after immortality?

Or whence this secret dread and inward horror,
Of falling into nought? Why shrinks the soul
Back on herself, and startles at destruction?
'Tis the divinity that stirs within us:

"Tis Heaven itself that points out an hereafter,
And intimates eternity to man.

Eternity!-thou pleasing,-dreadful thought!
Through what variety of untried being,

Through what new scenes and changes must we pass,
The wide, the unbounded prospect lies before me;
But shadows, clouds, and darkness, rest upon it.

STRESS.

This subject applies the force of voice to certain divisions of a sound.

These divisions may be the beginning, the middle, or the end, or a combination of these forms. Let us take the expression "Ah!” and`utter it with, 1. Terror, 2. Regret, 3. Impatience, 4. Surprise, 5. Denunciation, and we shall find that the force or chief power of the voice will fall in Terror, on the opening of the sound, called RADICAL Stress; in Regret, on the middle, called MEDIAN; in Impatience, on the close, called VANISHING; in Surprise, on the opening and the close, called COMPOUND; in Denunciation, on all parts, called THOROUGH. These five forms of Stress are thus further illustrated:

RADICAL.

FEAR.

Chained in the market-place he stood,

A man of giant frame,

Amid the gathering multitude

That shrunk to hear his name;-
All stern of look and strong of limb,
His dark eye on the ground;-
And silently they gazed on him,
As on a lion bound.

ANGER.

Talk not to me

Of odds or match!-When Comyn died,
Three daggers clashed within his side!
Talk not to me of sheltering hall!-
The Church of God saw Comyn fall!
On God's own altar streamed his blood;
While o'er my prostrate kinsman stood
The ruthless murderer even as now,-
With armed hand and scornful brow.-
Up, all who love me? blow on blow!
And lay the outlawed felons low!

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