Obrázky stránek
PDF
ePub

Call me their traitor! - Thou injurious tribune'
Within thine eyes sat twenty thousand deaths,
In thine hands clutched as many millions, in
Thy lying tongue both numbers, I would say,
Thou liest, unto thee, with a voice as free
As I do pray the gods."-CORIOLANUS.

"He called so loud, that all the hollow deep
Of Hell resounded. Princes, Potentates,
Warriors, the flow'r of heav'n, once yours, now lost,
Is such astonishment as this can seize

Eternal spirits; or have ye chos'n this place
After the toil of battle to repose

Your wearied virtue, for the ease you find
To slumber here, as in the vales of Heaven?
Or in this abject posture have ye sworn
To adore the conqueror? who now beholds
Cherub and Seraph rolling in the flood
With scatter'd arms and ensigns, till anon
His swift pursuers from heav'n gates discern
Th' advantage, and descending tread us down
Thus drooping, or with linked thunderbolts
Transfix us to the bottom of this gulf.
Awake, arise, or be for ever fall'n."

Satan's Speech to his Legions.- PARADISE LOST.

The following plan, suggested by Prof. Russell, for teachers who are instructing classes, who will find great aid in the use of the blackboard, is for the purpose of visible illustration, in regard to the character and effect of the different species of stress.

[merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small]

Let represent the radical stress on the sound of a in the word all, in the following example of authoritative command: "Attend ALL!" 2 the vanishing stress on the same element of impatience and

displeasure: "I said ALL, not one or two."-on the same element, in reverence and adoration.

[blocks in formation]

3

the median stress

"Join ALL ye crea

the thorough

the compound stress in astonishment

and surprise: "What ALL! did they ALL fail? ”stress in defiance: "Come one-come ALL!".

... the tremor

of sorrow: "Oh! I have lost you ALL!" The practice of the examples and the elements should extend to the utmost excitement of emotion and force of voice.

"Ocular references may seem at first sight to have little value in a subject which relates to the ear. But notes and characters, as used in music, serve to show how exactly the ear may be taught through the eye; and even if we admit the comparative indefinite nature of all such relations when transferred to forms of speech, and of reading, the suggestive power of visible forms has a great influence on the faculty of association, and aids clearness and precision of thought, and a corresponding definiteness and exactness in sound."-Russell.

SELECTIONS.

ILLUSTRATIONS OF MEDIAN STRESS.

THANATOPSIS.

William Cullen Bryant.

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
And eloquence of beauty, and she glides
Into his darker musings, with a mild
And healing sympathy, that steals away
Their sharpness ere he is aware. When thoughts
Of the last bitter hour come like a blight
Over thy spirit, and sad images

Of the stern agony, and shroud, and pall,
And breathless darkness, and the narrow house,
Make thee to shudder, and grow sick at heart;
Go forth, under the open sky, and list

To Nature's teachings, while from all around
Earth and her waters, and the depths of air,-
Comes a still voice-Yet a few days, and thee
The all-beholding sun shall see no more
In all his course; nor yet in the cold ground,
Where thy pale form was laid with many tears,
Nor in the embrace of ocean, shall exist

Thy image. Earth, that nourished thee, shall claim
Thy growth, to be resolved to earth again,
And, lost each human trace, surrendering up
Thine individual being, shalt thou go

To mix forever with the elements,

To be a brother to the insensible rock

And to the sluggish clod, which the rude swain
Turns with his share, and treads upon. The oak
Shall send his roots abroad, and pierce thy mould.
Yet not to thine eternal resting-place

Shalt thou retire alone,- nor could'st thou wish
Couch more magnificent. Thou shalt lie down
With patriarchs of the infant world with kings,
The powerful of the earth - the wise, the good,

Fair forms, and hoary seers of ages past,
All in one mighty sepulchre. The hills
Rock-ribbed and ancient as the sun; the vales
Stretching in pensive quietness between;
The venerable woods; rivers that move

In majesty, and the complaining brooks

That make the meadows green; and, poured round &ll, Old ocean's gray and melancholy waste,

Are but the solemn decorations all

Of the great tomb of man.

The golden sun,

The planets, all the infinite host of heaven,
Are shining on the sad abodes of death,
Through the still lapse of ages. All that tread
The globe are but a handful to the tribes
That slumber in its bosom.-Take the wings
Of morning, traverse Barca's desert sands,
Or lose thyself in the continuous woods
Where rolls the Oregon, and hears no sound
Save his own dashings—yet—the dead are there:
And millions in those solitudes, since first
The flight of years began, have laid them down
In their last sleep - the dead there reign alone.
So shalt thou rest, and what if thou withdraw
In silence from the living, and no friend
Take note of thy departure? All that breathe
Will share thy destiny. The gay will laugh
When thou art gone, the solemn brood of care
Plod on, and each one as before will chase
His favorite phantom; yet all these shall leave
Their mirth and their employments, and shall come
And make their bed with thee. As the long train
Of ages glide away, the sons of men,

The youth in life's green spring, and he who goes
In the full strength of years, matron, and maid,
And the sweet babe, and the gray-headed man,-
Shall one by one be gathered to thy side,
By those who, in their turn, shall follow them.

So live, that, when thy summons comes to join
The innumerable caravan, that moves
To that mysterious realm, where each shall take
His chamber in the silent halls of death,

Thou go not, like the quarry-slave at night,

Scourged to his dungeon, but, sustained and soothed
By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave
Like one who draws the drapery of his couch
About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams.

THE VISION OF IMMORTALITY.

I who essayed to sing, in earlier days,
The Thanatopsis and The Hymn to Death,
Wake now the Hymn to Immortality.

Yet once again, oh! man, come forth and view
The haunts of Nature; walk the waving fields,

Enter the silent groves, or pierce again

The depths of the untrodden wilderness,

And she shall teach thee. Thou hast learned before
One lesson and her Hymn of Death hath fallen
With melancholy sweetness on thine ear;

Yet she shall tell thee with a myriad tongue
That life is there-life in uncounted forms-
Stealing in silence through the hidden roots,
In every branch that swings-in the green leaves,
And waving grain, and the gay summer flowers
That gladden the beholder. Listen now,
And she shall teach thee that the dead have slept
But to awaken in more glorious forms-
And that the mystery of the seed's decay
Is but the promise of the coming life.
Each towering oak that lifts its living head
To the broad sunlight, in eternal strength,
Glorious to tell thee that the acorn died.

The flowers that spring above their last year's grave
Are eloquent with the voice of life and hope—
And the green trees clap their rejoicing hands,
Waving in triumph o'er the earth's decay!
Yet not alone shall flower and forest raise

The voice of triumph and the hymn of life.
The insect brood are there! each painted wing
That flutters in the sunshine, broke but now
From the close cerements of a worm's own shroud,
Is telling, as it flies, how life may spring
In its glad beauty from the gloom of death

Ibid.

« PředchozíPokračovat »