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A melancholy dirge o'er the dead year

Gone from the Earth forever."

THE DIRGE OF THE YEAR. G. D. Prentice.

"No war, or battle's sound,

Was heard the world around

The idle spear and shield were high up hung; The hooked chariot stood

Unstain'd with hostile blood;

The trumpet spake not to the armed throng; And kings sat still with awful eye,

As if they surely knew their sovereign Lord was by.

"But peaceful was the night

Wherein the Prince of Light

His reign of peace upon the earth began; The winds, with wonder whist,

Smoothly the waters kissed,

Whispering new joys to the mild ocean,

Who now hath quite forgot to rave,

While birds of calm sit brooding on the charmed wave."

HYMN ON THE MORNING OF CHRIST'S NATIVITY. — Milton.

"Hearken, hearken!

God speaketh in thy soul!

Saying, 'O thou that movest

With feeble paces o'er this earth of mine,

To break beside the fount thy golden bowl

Filled with salt tears from out thy mournful eyne,—
Direct them upward to my heaven, and see

My right hand hold thine immortality

In an eternal grasping! Thou that lovest

The songful birds and grasses underfoot,

And eke what tombs shall hide and change pollute-.

I am the end of love! —give love to me!

O thou that sinnest, grace doth more abound
Than all thy sin! sit still beneath my rood,
And count the droppings of my victim-blood,
And seek none other sound!'

"Hearken! hearken.

Shall we hear the lapsing river
And our brother's sighing, ever,

And not the voice of God?"

SOUNDS. - Mrs. Browning.

"Ascension morn! I hear the bells
Ring from the village far away;
How solemnly that music tells
The mystic story of the day!
Fainter and fainter come the chimes,
As though they melted into air,
Like voices of the ancient times,
Like whispers of ascending prayer!
So sweet and gentle sound they yet
That I, who never bend the knee,
Can listen on and half forget

That heaven's bright door is shut for me.
Yes, universal as the dew,

Which falls alike on field and fen,

Comes the wide summons to the true,

The false, the best and worst of men."

"Hush! is he sleeping?

BOTHWELL. Aytoun.

They say that men have slept upon the cross;

So why not he? . . . Thanks, Lord! I hear him breathe.
And he will preach thy word to-morrow! - save
Souls, crowds, for Thee! And they will know his worth
Years hence-poor things, they know not what they do!-
And crown him martyr; and his name will ring
Through all the shores of earth, and all the stars
Whose eyes are sparkling through their tears to see
His triumph-Preacher! Martyr! — Ah- and me?
If they must couple my poor name with his,
Let them tell all the truth - say how I loved him,
And tried to damn him by that love! Oh Lord!
Returning good for evil! and was this
The payment I deserved for such a sin?
To hang here on my cross, and look at him
Until we kneel before Thy throne in heaven!"

ST. MAURA.

"Soon, trembling in her soft and chilly nest,
In sort of wakeful swoon, perplexed she lay,
Until the poppied warmth of sleep oppressed
Her smoothéd limbs and soul fatigued away;
Flown, like a thought, until the morrow day;
Blissfully havened both from joy and pain;

- Kingsley.

Clasped, like a missal, where swart Paynims pray,
Blinded alike from sunshine and from rain,

As though a rose should shut, and be a bud again.
THE EVE OF ST. AGNES.

"She sleeps: her breathings are not heard

In palace chambers far apart.

The fragrant tresses are not stirred

That lie upon her charmed heart.
She sleeps on either hand upswells

The gold-fringed pillow lightly prest:
She sleeps, nor dreams, but ever dwells
A perfect form in perfect rest."

- Keats.

THE SLEEPING BEAUTY.-Tennyson.

"Eftsoons they heard a most melodious sound
Of all that might delight a dainty ear.
Such as, at once, might not on living ground,
Save in this paradise be heard elsewhere:
Right hard it was for wight which did it hear
To weet what manner music that might be,
For all that pleasing is to living ear
Was there consorted in one harmony;
Birds, voices, instruments, winds, waters, all agree.
"The joyous birds, shrouded in cheerful shade
Their notes unto the voice attempred sweet:
Th' angelical, soft, trembling voices made
To th' instruments divine respondence meet;
The silver sounding instruments did meet
With the base murmurs of the water's fall;
The water's fall, with difference discreet,
Now soft, now loud, unto the winds did call;
The gentle, warbling wind, low answerèd to all."
THE FAERIE QUEENE.

FORCE, Continued.

VARIETIES OF STRESS.

Spenser.

The different kinds or varieties of stress are the Radical, Vanishing, Median, Compound, and Thorough Stress. Radical Stress is stress placed on the radical movement, or first part of the sound.

This stress is the sign of anger, positive affirmation, command, and of energetic sentiments of all kinds.

Impatience and mirth, being generally uttered in haste, demand radical stress for their appropriate expression.

"There are so few speakers able to give a radical stress with this momentary burst, and therefore so few.who may comprehend the mere description of it, that I must draw an illustration from the effort of coughing. A single impulse of coughing, is not in all points exactly like the abrupt voice on syllables; for that single impulse is a forcing out of almost all the breath; which is not the case in syllabic utterance: yet if the tonic element be employed as the vocality of coughing, its abrupt opening will truly represent the function of radical stress, when used in discourse.

"It is this stress which draws the cutting edge of words across the ear, and startles even stupor into attention: this, which lessens the fatigue of listening, and out-voices the murmur and unruly stir of an assembly: and a sensibility to this, through a general instinct of the animal ear, which gives authority to the groom, and makes the horse submissive to his angry accent. Besides the fulness, loudness, and abruptness of the radical stress, when employed for distinct articulation, the tonic sound itself should be a pure vocality. When mixed with aspiration, it loses the brilliancy, that serves to increase the impressive effect of the explosive force." — Rush.

Examples.

"Prythe, peace:

I dare do all that may become a man;

Who dares do more, is none."- Shakespeare.

"You can talk a mob into anything; its feelings may be-usually are on the whole generous and right; but it has no foundation for them, no hold of them; you may tease or tickle it into any, at your pleasure; it thinks by infection, for the most part, catching a passion like a cold, and there is nothing so little that it will not roar itself wild about, when the fit is on; - nothing so great but it will forget in an hour, when the fit is past. But a gentleman's, or a gentle nation's passions are just, measured, and continuous." Ruskin.

"The clear conception, outrunning the deductions of logic, the high purpose, the firm resolve, the dauntless spirit, speaking on the tongue, beaming from the eye, informing every feature, and urging the whole man onward, right onward to his object, this, this is eloquence; or rather it is something greater and higher than all eloquence, it is action, noble, sublime, godlike action." - Webster.

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"I have heard it said that, when one lifts up his voice against things that are, and wishes for a change, he is raising a clamor against existing institutions, a clamor against our venerable estab

lishments, a clamor against the law of the land; but this is no clamor against the one or the other, it is a clamor against the abuse of them all. It is a clamor raised against the grievances that are felt. Mr. Burke, who was no friend to popular excitement, who was no ready tool of agitation, no hot-headed enemy of existing establishments, no undervaluer of the wisdom of our ancestors, no scoffer against institutions as they are, has said, and it deserves to be fixed in letters of gold, over the hall of every assembly which calls itself a legislative body, Where there is abuse, there ought to be clamor; because it is better to have our slumber broken by the fire-bell, than to perish amid the flames, in our bed!'””. Lord Brougham.

-

"Back to thy punishment,

False fugitive, and to thy speed add wings,
Lest with a whip of scorpions I pursue

Thy ling'ring, or with one stroke of this dart

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Strange horror seize thee, and pangs unfelt before."
Reply of Death to Satan, in PARADISE LOST.

Median Stress is stress laid on the middle of the sound. It expresses dignity, plaintiveness, wonder, awe, respect, deliberation, solemnity, supplication, and reverential submission.

"Radical stress,' with its abrupt explosion, is the irrepressible burst of forcible utterance, in the language of unconscious and involuntary emotion. It is the expression of passion rather than of will. Median stress, on the contrary, is more or less a conscious and intentional effect, prompted and sustained and enforced by the will. It is the natural utterance of those emotions which allow the intermingling of reflection and sentiment with expression, and which purposely dwell on sound, as a means of enhancing their effect. The swell of median stress is accordingly, more or less ample and prolonged, as the feeling which it utters is moderate, or deep and full, lofty and awful.

"This mode of stress is one of the most important in its effects on language, whether in the form of speaking or of reading. Destitute of its ennobling and expansive sound, the recitation of poetry sinks into the style of dry prose, the language of devotion loses its sacredness, the tones of oratory lose their power over the heart.

"There is great danger, however, of this natural beauty of vocal expression being converted into a fault by being overdone. The habit recognized under the name of 'mouthing,' has an excessively increased and prolonged median swell for one of its chief characteristics. In this shape, it becomes a great deformity in utterance,-particularly when combined with what is no infrequent concomitant, the faulty mode of voice, known as 'chanting' or singing. Like sweetness among savors, this truly agreeable quality becomes distasteful or disgusting, when in the least degree excessive."-Russell

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