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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
My soul in agony.

The many men, so beautiful!

And they all dead did lie!

And a thousand thousand slimy things
Lived on-and so did I.

I closed my lids and kept them close,
Till the balls like pulses beat;

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,
And stars to set-but all,

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
The curtained sleeper.

Thou sure and firm-set earth,

Hear not my steps which way they walk, for fear
The very stones prate of my whereabouts,

And take the present horror from the time
Which now suits with it.

9. CARDINAL WOLSEY.

Farewell, a long farewell, to all my greatness.
This is the state of man; to-day he puts forth
The tender leaves of hope, to-morrow blossoms,
And bears his blushing honors thick upon him;
The third day comes a frost, a killing frost;
And when he thinks, good easy man, full surely
His greatness is a-ripening-nips his root,
And then he falls, as I do. I have ventured,
Like little wanton boys that swim on bladders,
This many summers in a sea of glory—

But far beyond my depth; my high-blown pride
At length broke under me; and now has left me,
Weary, and old with service, to the mercy

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;
Even of their mutual hideousness they died,
Unknowing who he was, upon whose brow
Famine had written Fiend.

11. HIAWATHA.

O the long and dreary Winter!
O the cold and cruel Winter!

Ever thicker, thicker, thicker

Froze the ice on lake and river;
Ever deeper, deeper, deeper

Fell the snow o'er all the landscape,
Fell the covering snow, and drifted
Through the forest, round the village.

BYRON

LONGFELLOW.

EXAMPLES OF MOVEMENT.

VERY SLOW.

Farewell, a long farewell to all my greatness.

SLOW.

Alone, alone, all, all alone.

MODERATE.

There was a sound of revelry by night.

FAST.

Come and trip it as ye go
On the light fantastic toe.

VERY FAST.

Hurry! hurry to the field!

Require each pupil to make out and read in the class a similar set of quoted illustrations.

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