And sweet, calm days in golden haze

Melt down the amber sky.

-My Psalm: Whittier.

Though hearts brood o'er the past, our eyes

With smiling futures glisten;

For, lo, our day bursts up the skies,—

Lean out your souls and listen.

-To-day and To-morrow: Gerald Massey.

When the accented and unaccented syllables are indiscriminately long and short, the accent is least decidedly marked, and we have the poetic equivalent for soft force. This may convey an impression of strength, if it contain several long syllables-e. g. :

And so my silent moan begins and ends,

No world's laugh or world's taunt, no pity of friends
Or sneer of foes, with this my torment blends.

-Only a Woman: Mulock.

But it must convey an impression of weakness, if made

up mainly of short syllables—e. g. :

Though not disordinate, yet causeless suffering

The punishment of dissolute days; in fine,

Just or unjust, alike seem miserable,

For oft alike both come to evil end.

-Let him slip down,

—Samson Agonistes: Milton.

Not one accompanying his declining feet.

—Timon I., 1: Shakespear.

-Nothing routs us but

The villany of our fears.

-Cymbeline V., 2: Idem.

Here are distinctively imitative effects, first, of loud

ness:

And my pulses closed their gates with a shock on my heart, as I heard The shrill-edged shriek of a mother divide the shuddering night.

*

*

*

*

And the vitriol madness flushes up in the ruffian's head,
Till the filthy by-lane rings to the yell of the trampled wife.

Is it peace or war? better war! loud war by land and by sea!
War with a hundred battles and shaking a hundred thrones.
-Maud: Tennyson.

And here of loudness with more or less strength:

On came the whirlwind,-steel-gleams broke
Like lightning through the rolling smoke ;

The war was waked anew.

Three hundred cannon mouths roared loud,
And from their throats, with flash and cloud,
Their showers of iron threw.

Beneath their fire in full career,
Rushed on the ponderous cuirassier;
The lancer couched his ruthless spear,
And, hurrying as to havoc near,

The cohorts' eagles flew.

In one dark torrent, broad and strong,
The advancing onset rolled along,

Forth harbingered by fierce acclaim,

That from the shroud of smoke and flame

Peal'd wildly the imperial name.

-The Charge at Waterloo: Scott.

Loud sounds the axe, redoubling strokes on strokes-
On all sides round the forest hurls her oaks
Headlong. Deep echoing groan the thickets brown,
Then rustling, crackling, crashing thunder down.

Iliad, 23: Pope.

Here of weight or strength :

When Ajax strives some rock's vast weight to throw,
The line too labors, and the words move slow.

-Essay on Criticism: Pope.

Then those eight mighty daughters of the plow
Bent their broad faces toward us, and addressed
Their motion.

Here of softness:

-The Princess: Tennyson.

And let some strange mysterious dream
Wave at his wings in aëry stream,

Of lively portraiture display'd,

Softly on my eyelids laid.

And, as I wake, sweet music breathe
Above, about, or underneath,

Sent by some spirit to mortal's good,

Or the unseen genius of the wood.

-Il Penseroso: Milton.

While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.

So she low-toned, while with shut eyes I lay
Listening, then looked. Pale was the perfect face;
The bosom with long sighs labored; and meek
Seemed the full lips, and mild the luminous eyes,
And the voice trembled and the hand.

-The Princess: Tennyson.

Look once more now at the passage from weak force to strong, as well as from fast time to slow, in the following:

The cherubim descended; on the ground
Gliding meteorous, as evening mist
Ris'n from a river o'er the marish glides,
And gathers round fast at the laborer's heel
Homeward returning. High in front advanced,
The brandish'd sword of God before them blazed,
Fierce as a comet.

-Par. Lost, 12: Milton.

CHAPTER VI.

FORCE AS THE SOURCE AND INTERPRETER OF POETIC MEASURES.

Gradations of Force or Stress, representing Reflective Influence exerted on Instinctive Tendency-What is represented by the Different Kinds of Elocutionary Stress-Why Elocutionary Stress corresponds to Poetic Measure Classification of English Poetic Measures, and their Classic Analogues-What is represented by Initial Double Measure-Its Classic Form-By Terminal Double Measure-Why used in Our Hymns— Its Classic Form-Triple Measures; Median-Its Classic Form-Initial Triple Measure-Could also be termed Compound Measure, corresponding to Compound Stress-Its Classic Forms-Its Use in Greek Pæonics-In Pathos, corresponding to Tremulous Stress-Terminal Triple Measure-Can correspond to Thorough Stress-Its Classic Forms-Blending of Different Triple Measures Of Triple and Double Measures to prevent Monotony-Quadruple Measures, Initial and Terminal-Blending of all Kinds of Measures to represent Movements.

WE pass on now to the next way, in which the force em

ployed in emphasis has been said to differ—namely, in gradation, or what is technically termed stress. In discoursive elocution, the force or exertion necessary for the pronunciation of any given syllable or word may be used because of an internal or an external motive, or of a combination of the two; in other words, either because a man desires to express an idea for his own sake; or because he wishes to impress it upon others; or because he wishes to do both. In the first case, the sound bursts forth explosively, as if the speaker were conscious of nothing but his own