6. Oral, Natural, and Orotund Qualities; High Pitch; Varied Movement; Tremor of Rapture. 7. 'The Hielanders! Oh! dinna ye hear The Macgregor's? Oh! I ken it weel; God bless the bonnie Hielanders! We're saved! we're saved!' she cried; -Robert Lowell-The Relief of Lucknow. Prevailing Pectoral, with intermingled Natural and Orotund Qualities; Strong Aspiration. Median and Final Stress, Final predominating in the last five lines. Increasing Tremor of Fright through the last six lines. Now all is hushed and still as death! 'Tis dreadful! Whose ancient pillars rear their marble heads, FOR DAILY PRACTICE. THE VARIOUS FORMS OF STRESS, ILLUSTRATED BY SHORT EXAMPLES. THE EQUABLE Concrete. To detect the flavor of an olive is no less a piece of human perfection than to find beauty in the colors of the sunset. THE LOUD CONCRETE. The year's at the spring, The hillside's dew-pearled; The lark's on the wing; God's in his Heaven All's right with the world! BRIGHT RADICAL STRESS. So light to the croupe the fair lady he swung, VIVID RADICAL STRESS. Let earth withhold her goodly root, Let mildew blight the rye, Give to the worm the orchard's fruit, But let the good old crop adorn The hills our fathers trod; Still let us, for his golden corn, Send up our thanks to God! IMPASSIONED RADICAL STRESS. Upon them! Victory sits on our helms! Be ready, gods, with all your thunderbolts, Turn, turn, thou traitor knight! FINAL STRESS. If it be the pleasure of Heaven that my country shall require the poor offering of my life, the victim shall be ready at the appointed hour of sacrifice, come when that hour may. Up, all who love me!-blow on blow! And lay the outlawed felons low! MEDIAN STRESS. The moan of doves in immemorial elms, The broad ambrosial aisles of lofty lime The splendor falls on castle walls, And snowy summits old in story. Hurrah! hurrah! for Ivry, and King Henry of Navarre! THOROUGH STRESS. Ye guards of liberty, I'm with you once COMPOUND STRESS. Dost thou come here to whine? To outface me, by leaping in her grave? What! weep ye, when ye but behold Our Cæsar's vesture wounded? Look you here! Here is himself, marred as you see, with traitors! What! to attribute the sacred sanctions of God and nature to the massacres of the Indian scalping-knife? TREMOR. Laughing. Joyous. Oh! then I see!-Queen Mab hath been with you! Joy, joy forever! my task is done! The gates are passed, and Heaven is won! Weeping. Sobbing. Oh, I could weep the spirit from my eyes! I have killed my son. I have killed him—but I loved him-my dear son. THE EMPHATIC TIE. The Emphatic Tie-so named by Doctor Rush-may well be considered under the head of Special Force; although it involves also, and as much, the elements of Time, Pitch, and Quality. What the Emphatic Tie is, will be more clearly told by illustration than by definition. Take this sentence from Browning (I follow his punctuation) : My thumb which yesterday a scorpion nipped(It swelled and blackened)-lo! is sound again!— and the clear presentation of the thought depends on the reader's making the syntax plain. The principal clause, 'My thumb is sound again,' has its subject at the very beginning of the sentence, and its predicate at the very end, with two entire clauses between them. The reader's problem is, to bring together, to the ear, those widely separated but closely related parts. It is accomplished by the employment of a kind and degree of emphasis-especially on the word of suspension and the word of resumption—that would be altogether unnecessary and misplaced, were the words of the broken construction in uninterrupted sequence: hence the name, Emphatic Tie. To the average ear, perhaps the most obvious factor of the Tie is the enlarged force of utterance; but more time is also given, and melody and quality are so managed as to make the clause sound 'all of a piece.' The interrupting clauses are spoken in slur, that is, with light syllabic touch and purposely accelerated movement, or Flight of the Voice, as Doctor Rush called it. The melody of the slurred portion or portions is usually the double-waverising sweep, ~, pointing away from its own passage to the main thought. In the example, there are two interpolated clauses. These are both to be slurred, but must not be run together confusedly; each should have its own sweep of melody. The clause inclosed in marks of parenthesis might be slurred more than the other; or, it might well be given higher pitch, fuller volume, and slower time than even the principal clause, on account of its descriptive and dramatic value. Purpose and principle are always the same, but in their practical working-out often go by the rule of contraries. The last remark is more strikingly illustrated in the following sentence, from Everett's oration on Lafayette. One can never think of that French boy, eighteen years of age, just married, rolling in wealth, and basking in the sunshine of court favor, sending up from the Tuileries of Paris his shout for us and our cause, without the deepest emotion. 'One can never think of that French boy without the deepest emotion,' is syntactically the principal clause; but, oratorically, the interpolated deterrent circumstances and the conduct in contradiction of them demand to be brought directly into the foreground. The clause just quoted, should be read all of a piece', with natural quality, moderate movement, and conversational melody and force; but the circumstances should be given with larger volume, stronger force, higher pitch, and slower time, with a specializing rising-wave inflectional or melodic outline on 'age,' 'married,' 'wealth,' and 'favor'; while 'sending up from the Tuileries of Paris his shout for us and our cause' should be rendered with full orotund quality, a rising sweep of melody, animated but stately movement, wellmarked rhythm, and the closing word, 'cause,' held on the monotone. If this scheme of rendition is followed, there is quite a wide interval of pitch to descend discretely, from 'cause', in order to give 'without' its appropriate pitch, at the level of 'boy.' The transition in quality, force, and time is equally remarkable. |