FORMS OF STYLE.

Verse.

61. What is Verse? What is the property that distinguishes it from Prose? Define Verse. Read the following lines and mark all accented syllables with a macron (-) over the vowel.

1. Let endless Peace your steadfast hearts accord,
And blessed Plenty wait upon your board.—SPENSER.

A pleasant noise till noon,

A noise like of a hidden brook

In the leafy month of June,

That to the sleeping woods all night
Singeth a quiet tune. - COLERIDGE.

4. Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The soul that rises with us, our life's star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,

And cometh from afar;

Not in entire forgetfulness,

And not in utter nakedness,

But trailing clouds of glory do we come

From God, who is our home. WORDSWORTH.

5. Down sank the great red sun, and in golden, glimmering

vapors,

Veiled the light of his face, like the prophet descending

from Sinai.

- LONGFELLOW.

62. Copy the preceding verses and divide them into feet by short vertical lines. Never put more than one accented syllable in one foot. Notice the position of the accented syllable in each foot. What seems to be the greatest number of plainly pronounced unaccented syllables that can stand together? Define foot. Define verse or line.

63. Copy the following, mark the vowels of the accented syllables as before, and those of the unaccented syllables with the breve (~), and divide into feet; notice the number of syllables in each foot, and the predominant foot in each line.

1. Favors to none, to all she smiles extends;
Oft she rejects, but never once offends.
Bright as the sun, her eyes the gazers strike,
And, like the sun, they shine on all alike. - POPE.

2. When will the clouds be aweary of fleeting?
When will the heart be aweary of beating?
And Nature die?

Never! oh, never! nothing will die;

The stream flows,

The wind blows,

The cloud fleets;

The heart beats,

Nothing will die. - TENNYSON.

3. Oh, the little birds sang east, and the little birds sang west, And I smiled to think God's greatness flowed around our

incompleteness,

Round our restlessness, his rest.

MRS. BROWNING.

4. Let nothing disturb thee,
Nothing affright thee;

All things are passing ;
God never changeth ;
Patient endurance
Attaineth to all things;
Who God possesseth

In nothing is wanting;

Alone God sufficeth.

LONGFELLOW, Santa Teresa's Bookmark.

5. Come, cuddle your head on my shoulder, dear,

Your head like the golden-rod;

And we'll go sailing away from here

To the beautiful Land of Nod.

Away from life's hurry and flurry and worry,

Away from earth's shadows and gloom,

To a world of fair weather, we'll float off together
Where roses are always in bloom. ELLA WHEELER.

64. Kinds of feet. A dissyllabic foot accented on the first syllable is a Trochee. A dissyllabic foot accented on the second syllable is an Iambus. A trisyllabic foot accented on the first syllable is a Dactyl. Look up the derivation of these three words and explain their application. A trisyllabic foot accented on the last syllable is an Anapest, and one accented on the second is an Amphibrach. In the preceding examples name the feet, decide which foot is most frequent in each, and name the verse from it. What dissyllabic foot will interchange easily with what trisyllabic foot? Why are they thus equivalent? What is gained by the substitution? In selection I opposite, what dissyllabic

feet are made interchangeable?

Is this interchange

common? See if you can find another example of it. What effect has it on the verse?

65. Bring to class to read an example of iambic verse, of trochaic verse, of dactylic verse, of anapestic verse, of amphibrachic verse. Which of these gives the lightest and most buoyant measure? Which is the heaviest and most solemn? Has the verse any harmony thus with the thought? Can you find any examples of monosyllabic verse? Such feet are sometimes found in English; the syllable is always accented. What is the effect of such verse?

66. In the following count the number of feet in the line, and decide which is the predominant foot.

1. Gathering still, as he went, the May-flowers blooming around him,

Fragrant, filling the air with a strange and wonderful sweet

ness,

Children lost in the woods, and covered with leaves in their LONGFELLOW.

slumber.

2. The men are ripe of Saxon kind
To build an equal state,

To take a statute from the mind,

And make of duty fate.- - EMERSON.

3. Take her up tenderly,

Lift her with care,

Fashioned so slenderly,

Young and so fair. - THOMAS HOOD.

4. I was sitting with my microscope, upon my parlor rug, With a very heavy quarto and a very lively bug;

The true bug had been organized with only two antennæ, But the humbug in the copperplate would have them twice as many.

5. The time draws near the birth of Christ;
The moon is hid, the night is still;

A single church below the hill

Is pealing, folded in the mist.

HOLMES.

TENNYSON.

6. All along the wayside is everybody's garden!

Come out and gather posies: the very air is sweet.
Come out with hearts of gladness, ye big and little children,

Into our Father's garden, made for our strolling feet.

The flitting butterfly,

The fragrant winds that sigh,

The tiny clouds that hover above us in the blue,

The bird's song high and clear,

Make heaven draw more near;

In everybody's garden the world once more is new.

GLADWIN.

7. Suns that sink on the wan seas' brink, and moons that kindle

and flame and fade,

Leave more clear for the darkness here the stars that set not and see no shade,

Rise and rise on the lowlier skies, by rule of sunlight and moonlight swayed. SWINBURNE.

67. Kinds of lines. Single lines are named from the number of their feet: monometer, dimeter, trimeter, tetrameter pentameter, hexameter, etc., from the Greek numerals. Name the lines in the preceding examples.