3. THE ANCIENT MARINER. Alone, alone, all, all alone, Alone on the wide, wide sea; And never a saint took pity on The many men, so beautiful! And they all dead did lie! And a thousand thousand slimy things I closed my lids and kept them close, For the sky and the sea, and the sea and the sky Lay like a load on my weary eye, And the dead were at my feet. 4. THE HOUR OF DEATH. Leaves have their time to fall, COLERIDGE. And flowers to wither at the north-wind's breath, Thou hast all seasons for thine own, O Death! 5. TO A WATERFOWL. Whither, midst falling dew, MRS. HEMANS. While glow the heavens with the last steps of day, Far through their rosy depths dost thou pursue Thy solitary way? Vainly the fowler's eye Might mark thy distant flight to do thee wrong, As, darkly painted on the crimson sky, Thy figure floats along. V. VERY SLOW MOVEMENT. BRYANT. Very slow movement prevails in the expression of deep emotions, such as awe, reverence, horror, melancholy, and grief. In this movement the rhetorical and grammatical pauses are very long, and the vowel and liquid sounds are dwelt upon and prolonged. The prevailing inflection in this movement is the monotone. EXAMPLES. 1. Air, earth, and sea resound his praise abroad. 2. Roll on, thou deep and dark blue ocean, roll. 3. Old ocean's gray and melancholy waste. 4. Childless and crownless in her voiceless woe. 5. It thunders! Sons of dust, in reverence bow. 6. Unto Thee I lift up mine eyes, O Thou that dwellest in the heavens. 7. Thou hast all seasons for thine own, O Death! 8. Now o'er the one half world Nature seems dead; and wicked dreams abuse Thou sure and firm-set earth, Hear not my steps which way they walk, for fear And take the present horror from the time 9. CARDINAL WOLSEY. Farewell, a long farewell, to all my greatness. But far beyond my depth; my high-blown pride Of a rude stream, that must forever hide me. 10. DREAM OF DARKNESS. SHAKESPEARE. The crowd was famished by degrees. But two And they were enemies. They met beside Where had been heaped a mass of holy things For an unholy usage. They raked up, And, shivering, scraped with their cold, skeleton hands, Blew for a little life, and made a flame, Their eyes as it grew lighter, and beheld Each other's aspects-saw, and shrieked, and died; 11. HIAWATHA. O the long and dreary Winter! Froze the ice on lake and river; Fell the snow o'er all the landscape, BYRON LONGFELLOW. EXAMPLES OF MOVEMENT. VERY SLOW. Farewell, a long farewell to all my greatness. SLOW. Alone, alone, all, all alone. MODERATE. There was a sound of revelry by night. FAST. Come and trip it as ye go VERY FAST. Hurry! hurry to the field! Require each pupil to make out and read in the class a similar set of quoted illustrations. 1. Pitch, or key, denotes the highness or lowness of the voice in tone. The range of the voice from the lowest to the highest tone is called its compass. 2. The compass of the voice among readers corresponds, in some degree, to the tenor, soprano, contralto, and bass, among singers; but every voice has its own relatively low, middle, and high tones. 3. For every one, the middle pitch is that tone to which the voice inclines in conversation, or in unimpassioned reading. 4. The three main divisions of pitch are the low, the middle, and the high; but these, for convenience, are subdivided into very low, low, middle, high, and very high. 5. The general key in which a selection should be read is determined by the general sentiment or character of the piece. 6. In order to avoid monotony, there should be some slight variation of pitch at the beginning of each successive paragraph that marks a new topic of discourse, or a change of idea. 7. Low pitch is the tone expressive of serious thought, of awe, of reverence, of adoration, of horror, and of despair. 8. Middle pitch is the tone of conversation, and of unimpassioned narrative or descriptive reading. |