Thou who didst waken from his summer dreams Thy voice, and suddenly grow gray with fear, If I were a dead leaf thou mightest bear; Scarce seem'd a vision, I would ne'er have striven I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed! A heavy weight of hours has chain'd and bow'd One too like thee: tameless, and swift, and proud. Make me thy lyre, ev'n as the forest is: Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind! VII. The Sonnet A sonnet is a short poem of fourteen lines, an octave and a sestet. The first eight lines give what is considered the body, and the remaining six lines, the soul, or the first eight lines might be considered the statement of proposition, and the remaining six lines the application. In some of Shakespeare's sonnets we find a deviation from the general proposition laid down by the poets, in which the proposition is made in the first twelve, and the application in the last two lines. The form is often compared with the sky-rocket-the last lines being the showering thoughts. TO SCIENCE Edgar Allen Poe. Science! true daughter of Old Time thou art! Albeit he soared with an undaunted wing? Hast thou not torn the Naiad from her flood, The Elfin from the green grass, and from me The summer dream beneath the tamarind tree? From fairest creatures we desire increase, That you were once unkind befriends me now VIII. The Ballad The Ballad is one of the oldest forms of poetry. It was originally recited with music, and in all probability each chorus was a dance. The Ballad had its origin with the Italian, and it was several hundred years before the Ballad was introduced into England. It is a cousin to narrative verse. THE WEE WEE MAN As I was wa'king all alane, Between a water and a wa', There I spy'd a wee wee man, And he was the least that e'er I saw. His legs were scant a shathmont's length, And between his shoulders there was three. He took up a meikle stane, And he flang't as far as I could see; Though I had been a Wallace wight, I couldna liften't to my knee. "O wee wee man, but thou be strang! On we lap, and awa' we rade, Till we cam' to yon bonny green; We lighted down for to bait our horse, And out there cam' a lady sheen. Four and twenty at her back, And they were a' clad out in green, Though the King o' Scotland had been there, The warst o' them might hae been his Queen. On we lap, and awa' we rade, Till we cam' to yon bonny ha', Where the roof was o' the beaten gowd, And the floor was o' the crystal a'. When we cam' to the stair foot, Ladies were dancing, jimp and sma’; But in the twinkling of an e'e, My wee wee man was clean awa’. IX. The Apostrophe Apostrophe turns the mind away from animate to inanimate things, and the speaker talks to them as though they were animate; the dead as though living. For instance, the human being becomes discouraged with and disgusted at the ways and actions of his fellow-men, he turns to God's handiwork and creates in his own imagination, people out of trees, rocks, hills, valleys, and the great ocean; for in them and through them he finds a sympathy and a response which his fellow-men deny him. It is like the monologue, in some respects, and only differs in one way, that is, the monologue imagines the animate as an interlocutor and the apostrophe has the inanimate for its interlocutor. Therefore, in rendering the Apostrophe, it will be necessary to speak to this inanimate thing at some imagined particular place, and the speaker must for the time being, carry himself to this spot and speak to his inanimate friend oblivious of his surroundings. Some fine examples from the Bible:-King David, on hearing of the death of Absalom, exclaims: "O, my son Absalom, my son, my son!" Another apostrophe more extended, and equally beautiful, is the lament of David over the death of Jonathan. (2 Sam. 1: 21-27.) THE OCEAN Lord Byron. Roll on, thou deep and dark blue Ocean-roll! Without a grave, unknelled, uncoffined, and unknown. |