In grand opera, music of the highest grade, and themes taken from heroic legends or romances, are used.

History. The dramatist frequently portrays historical characters, and in many instances the personages thus described in a historical play are more clearly understood by one who sees the play, than if he were reading history. This is true of Shakespeare's Julius Cæsar and Henry V.

In comedies and histories, this dramatist often mingles prose with poetry, but in times of a great crisis in the play, he almost always resorts to poetry. In the strictly modern plays, prose is more frequently used than poetry. In most instances now, poetry does not enter at all into the speeches of the play. But in the higher types of the play, poetry is used, perhaps because of the fact that in poetry so much can be said in so few words.

EXERCISES BASED ON PICTURES

Lake Como, Italy. This region has been a favorite resort of pleasure seekers since old Roman times. Its shores are bordered by splendid villas, with gardens, terraces, and vineyards.

1. Tell a little story of a visit made by you to this villa. Make it a story that could easily happen in such a beautiful place as this.

2. A Travel Letter. You are away from home. It occurs to you that your friends at home might be glad to read something of what you see, and of your experiences as a traveler. Write such a letter.

The Stanza. Where the verse is not continuous, as in Shakespeare's plays, and in Milton's Paradise Lost, it is divided into groups, corresponding to paragraphs in prose, and called stanzas.

Kinds of Stanzas. Couplets and triplets contain two and three lines, respectively. Quatrains. Stanzas of four lines are called quatrains. The lines may rhyme two and two; that is, the first and second, and the third and fourth; or alternately, the first and third, and the second and fourth; or the first and third may not rhyme, while the second and fourth rhyme.

A quatrain consisting of iambic pentameter, the alternate lines rhyming, is called elegiac stanza, Gray's Elegy being in that form.

Tennysonian stanza consists of a quatrain of iambic tetrameter, the first line rhyming with the fourth, and the second and third rhyming.

Five- and six-line stanzas are frequently found, generally rhyming alternately.

Spenserian Stanza. - Spenserian stanza consists of nine lines, the first eight being iambic pentameter, and the ninth being iambic hexameter; the first and third rhyme together; so do the sixth, eighth, and ninth; and the second, fourth, fifth, and seventh. It derives its name from its use by Spenser in The Faerie Queene.

Roll on, thou deep and dark blue ocean - roll!
Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain;
Man marks the earth with ruin - his control
Stops with the shore;-upon the watery plain
The wrecks are all thy deed, nor doth remain
A shadow of man's ravage, save his own,
When, for a moment, like a drop of rain,

He sinks into thy depths with bubbling groan,
Without a grave, unknell'd, uncoffin'd, and unknown.

-Childe Harold, Byron.

EXERCISES IN POETRY AND THE DRAMA

(a) Selections for Study.-Scanning, Determination of Meters, Style, and Form.

Determine the meter, the style of poetry in which each is written; and indicate in each instance what you consider to be notable lines in the selections given below.

(3)

Whose word no man relies on:

Nor ever did a wise one.

- Epigram on Charles II, Rochester.

Till said to Tweed:

Though ye rin wi' speed,

And I rin slaw,

Whar ye

I droon twa.

droon ae man,

-Lines quoted by Ruskin.

1 To this epigram of Rochester's, the witty King Charles is said to have replied that it was quite true, as his sayings were all his own, while his acts were those of his ministers !

(4)

(5)

A knight there was, and that a worthy man,
That from the tyme that he first began
To ryden out, he lovede chyvalrie,
Trouthe and honour, fredom and curteisie.
Ful worthi was he in his lordes werre,
And thereto hadde he riden, noman ferre,
As wel in Cristendom as in heathenesse,
And evere honoured for his worthinesse.

-Geoffrey Chaucer.

Thus said Hiawatha, walking
In the solitary forest,
Pondering, musing in the forest,
On the welfare of his people.

From his pouch he took his colors,
Took his paints of different colors,
On the smooth bark of a birch-tree
Painted many shapes and figures,
Wonderful and mystic figures,
And each figure had a meaning,
Each some word or thought suggested.

-Picture-Writing, Hiawatha, xiv, Longfellow.

(6) O the days gone by! O the days gone by!

The music of the laughing lip, the luster of the eye;
The childish faith in fairies, and Aladdin's magic ring-
The simple, soul-reposing, glad belief in everything,-
When life was like a story, holding neither sob nor sigh,
In the golden olden glory of the days gone by.

James Whitcomb Riley.

(b) Exercises in Poetic Forms. - Try one or more of the following: 1. Advertising writers depend much on the pleasing jingles of Mother Goose in preparing attractive advertisements. Do not parody either here or in any exercises you are called upon to write, but study carefully some one of these rhymes until the rhythm "sings itself" into your mind. Then write a