Elocution for Advanced Pupils Author:John Murray Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER VIII. Application Of The Various Hints, And SumMary Of The Principles. Selections From Thanatopsis. Whittier's Barclay Of Ury. Browning's Herve Riel. ... more » Apply the various hints given, to the reading of Bryant's blank verse in Thanatopsis. Take the following passage, " Yet not to thine eternal resting-place Shalt thou retire alone ; nor couldst thou wish Couch more magnificent. Thou shalt lie down With patriarchs of the infant world,—with kings, The powerful of the earth,—the wise, the good, Fair forms, and hoary seers of ages past, All in one mighty sepulchre. The hills, Rock-ribbed and ancient as the sun ; the vales Stretching in pensive quietness between ; The venerable woods; rivers that move In majesty, and the complaining brooks, That make the meadows green; and, poured round all, Old ocean's gray and melancholy waste,— Are but the solemn decorations all Of the great tomb of man ! " It is not without positive knowledge of the fact, that I have written of the difficulty many readers have in the management of the circumflex; and even when, strange to say, they experience no difficulty of the kind in colloquial intercourse. In the passage quoted, the word " alone " uttered without a decided circumflex accent is robbed of half its sublime significance. The word " wish" emphasized only by a stress, and unaccompanied by a positive fall of the voice loses its force. After such a fall the words "couch more magnificent" are to be kept on a low pitch. "Thou shalt lie down" are the words which end the third line, but surely there should be no pause or lingering of the voice after "down." The metrical beat, indeed, should not be lost; and it is preserved, and sense and rhythm too are satisfied, by placing a pause after the word "world." Test the matter...« less