IV. SLOW MOVEMENT. Slow movement prevails in the utterance of praise and adoration, and in all expression when the mind is under the influence of meditation, grief, melancholy, grandeur, sublimity, vastness, or power. It is the characteristic rate of thoughtful and powerful oratory. In slow movement, the rhetorical pauses are long, and the voice dwells on the liquid and the long vowel sounds. EXAMPLES. 1. ASTRONOMY. Generation after generation has rolled away, age after age has swept silently by; but each has swélled, by its contribútions, the stream of discovery. Mysterious móvements have been unraveled; mighty laws have been revealed; ponderous órbs have been wèighed; óne barrier after another has given way to the force of intellect; until the mind, majestic in its strength, has mounted, stép by step, up the rocky height of its self-built pýramid, from whose star-crowned súmmit it looks out upon the grandeur of the úniverse self-clothed with the prescience of a God. 2. THE RAVEN. MITCHELL. Ah, distinctly I remember, it was in the bleak December, And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor: Eagerly I wished the morrow;-vainly I had sought to borrow From my books surcease of sorrow-sorrow for the lost Lenore For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore Nameless here for evermore. POE. 3. THE ANCIENT MARINER. Alone, alone, all, all alone, Alone on the wide, wide sea; And never a saint took pity on The many men, so beautiful! And they all dead did lie! And a thousand thousand slimy things I closed my lids and kept them close, For the sky and the sea, and the sea and the sky Lay like a load on my weary eye, And the dead were at my feet. 4. THE HOUR OF DEATH. Leaves have their time to fall, COLERIDGE. And flowers to wither at the north-wind's breath, Thou hast all seasons for thine own, O Death! 5. TO A WATERFOWL. Whither, midst falling dew, MRS. HEMANS. While glow the heavens with the last steps of day, Far through their rosy depths dost thou pursue Thy solitary way? Vainly the fowler's eye Might mark thy distant flight to do thee wrong, As, darkly painted on the crimson sky, Thy figure floats along. V. VERY SLOW MOVEMENT. BRYANT. Very slow movement prevails in the expression of deep emotions, such as awe, reverence, horror, melancholy, and grief. In this movement the rhetorical and grammatical pauses are very long, and the vowel and liquid sounds are dwelt upon and prolonged. The prevailing inflection in this movement is the monotone. EXAMPLES. 1. Air, earth, and sea resound his praise abroad. 2. Roll on, thou deep and dark blue ocean, roll. 3. Old ocean's gray and melancholy waste. 4. Childless and crownless in her voiceless woe. 5. It thunders! Sons of dust, in reverence bow. 6. Unto Thee I lift up mine eyes, O Thou that dwellest in the heavens. 7. Thou hast all seasons for thine own, O Death! 8. Now o'er the one half world Nature seems dead; and wicked dreams abuse Thou sure and firm-set earth, Hear not my steps which way they walk, for fear And take the present horror from the time 9. CARDINAL WOLSEY. Farewell, a long farewell, to all my greatness. But far beyond my depth; my high-blown pride Of a rude stream, that must forever hide me. 10. DREAM OF DARKNESS. SHAKESPEARE. The crowd was famished by degrees. But two Of an enormous city did survive, And they were enemies. They met beside The dying embers of an altar-place, Where had been heaped a mass of holy things For an unholy usage. They raked up, And, shivering, scraped with their cold, skeleton hands, The feeble ashes; and their feeble breath Blew for a little life, and made a flame, Which was a mockery. Then they lifted Their eyes as it grew lighter, and beheld Each other's aspects-saw, and shrieked, and died; 11. HIAWATHA. O the long and dreary Winter! Ever thicker, thicker, thicker Froze the ice on lake and river; Fell the snow o'er all the landscape, BYRON LONGFELLOW. EXAMPLES OF MOVEMENT. VERY SLOW. Farewell, a long farewell to all my greatness. |